Column-Logbook for the Algemeen Dagblad
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Translation for Zeilmeisje Laura Dekker on Facebook
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Each week in her column-logbook for the Algemeen Dagblad Laura Dekker will relate her journey around the world aboard her sailboat Guppy on her attempt to become the world's youngest circumnavigator.
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A merry reception in Sint Maarten - just great!


It is great to be ashore again. For seventeen days all I did was climbing everywhere around my boat as I was being rocked back and forth. Now it is really nice to just let go of my controlled energy and to bite into a Hamburger. Here I can make phone calls, I can send e-mails and I can Skype with my father and with my friends. All of this is possible ashore, and it is just the same with the internet. It really felt strangely weird coming in Sint Maarten. All of a sudden there was an helicopter with a film crew flying above me and on the following day, as I was sailing under the bridge at the harbour entrance, there were hundreds of people cheering for me as the mega-yachts on the opposite side of the harbour blew their foghorns – that was great! Then I was invited aboard one of those huge yachts, this one belonging to a Russian family. It was so big that you easily could loose your way inside, and it also had a gym and all sorts of other crazy things. They really could not imagine that it was possible to survive, not even a single wave, aboard my miniature boat. True, my sailboat looks much like a guppy when compared to this yacht. Anyway, now I take it one day at a time. I already have had many invitations by different people to join them for Christmas but I still cannot decide what to do. In any case I will not be alone for the celebrations. And then? I want to sail through the Panama Canal in April so I have lots of time in front of me before I am there.

Regards, Laura.