Netherlands, September 05:The mother of Laura Dekker, the 13-year-old Dutch girl who wants to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, says she is against the idea.
“As far as I am concerned, I wouldn’t let Laura go,” Babs Muller, who divorced Laura’s father Dick Dekker in 2002 and has not lived with her daughter since she was six, told the left-leaning newspaper Volkskrant today.
“Laura told me: ‘if you forbid me, you will ruin my life and I never want to see you again’,” Muller said.
“It was the hardest decision of my life. But I have to accept the consequences. I prefer to have a living daughter whom I don’t see than a dead daughter.”
At a closed-door hearing a children’s court in Utrecht on August 28 placed the teenager in state care for two months, thereby stripping her parents of the right to make decisions about her in that period. Her father backs her bid.
The court also ordered an inquiry into the psychological and physical impact that such a voyage – expected to take two years – would have on the girl.
The court will decide whether to lift or maintain its care order in another closed door hearing on October 26.
Laura had planned to set out on her 8.3m-long Hurley 800 named Guppy in September, financed by sponsors, while pursuing her education by internet correspondence and keeping in touch with her family via satellite phone.
“She’s a fiendishly good sailor, but that’s not the problem,” Muller said, who is more concerned about the psychological pressure on her daughter and her personal safety when she put into port in developing countries.
“She is not yet an adult.”
—Agencies