Feb. 7/2023: Maybe this counts as progress. The new sailing flick that just dropped on Netflix—True Spirit, a dramatization of Jessica Watson’s 2009-10 solo non-stop circumnavigation—is not actually cringingly inaccurate as to the details and nuances of ocean sailing. They have, for example, done an excellent job of recreating Jessica’s boat, an S&S 34 she...
Over the weekend I had a chance to watch Maidentrip, the new documentary film about Laura Dekker, after Jillian Schlesinger e-mailed me a private Vimeo link on Saturday. This is Schlesinger's directorial debut--her "maidenfilm," if you will--and whatever Laura might think of it, I thought it was pretty damn good. Coincidentally, Lyall Mercer, who did...
Laura Dekker, current holder of the unofficial "youngest solo circumnavigator" record, who thumbed her nose at Dutch authorities and insisted on doing it her way, has announced in her own typically cryptic fashion that she doesn't think much of a film about her that has just been released to quite positive reviews. Maidentrip, an independent...
Lucky me. Seems I've been promoted to the Mt. Gay Rum beat, my third excursion to the islands in the last two months. Up top you see the view of the anchorage at Bridgetown from my hotel room, a worthy reward for the hellish treatment I received yesterday at the hands of American Airlines. (May...
For a while I was thinking that Reid Stowe and Laura Dekker might actually bump into each other somewhere off the northeast coast of South America. But no--in spite of her slow rate of speed, Reid's schooner Anne managed to make landfall in Guyana earlier this week (January 9) and is now tied up in...
Did I call it, or what? In my last post on the mysterious whereabouts of Dutch teen sailor Laura Dekker I predicted she would next appear in Durban or Port Richards, South Africa. And now comes word that she has in fact safely arrived in Durban after sailing 47 days non-stop (over 5,500 nautical miles)...
I haven't mentioned teen sailor Laura Dekker in quite some time, because, as I expected, her voyage--a standard westabout milk-run circumnavigation--has so far been largely uneventful. But now she's in the Indian Ocean. She left Darwin, Australia, headed west over a month ago and soon should be arriving at her destination. Only thing is... we...
What a difference a year makes. Last December right about this time I posted a story about Laura Dekker getting busted in St. Maarten after she ran away from home so she could sail around the world alone without the Dutch government messing up her plans. The kill-joy government deported her butt back to Holland...
It seems the sailing world's latest child circumnavigator, Laura Dekker, age 14, confounded hovering media vultures over the weekend by suddenly appearing in Gibraltar, then leaving again in secret to set out alone on her trip around the world. Dekker originally planned to make her solo departure out of Portimao, Portugal, where she and...
Here we go again. It's getting so you can write these "youngest solo circumnavigator" stories just by filling in some blanks on a form. Except in the case of Laura Dekker, age 14, who set out yesterday from Den Osse, Holland, on her 38-foot Jeanneau Gin Fizz Guppy on a shakedown cruise to Portugal with...
