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...

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...