_ When 16-year-old Laura Dekker tied the knot off St. Maarten on Saturday 21st, she became the youngest person to circumnavigate the world alone. It’s a remarkable achievement. As Laura and her now not-so-bright-red 38ft Gin Fizz ketch Guppy entered the Simpson Bay Lagoon, hundreds of spectators went wild. Mega yachts blew their sirens, people cheered, vuvuzelas screeched and drinks flowed at the yacht club bar. Exhibiting the same skills that saw her tackle the oceans of the world, Laura brought Guppy alongside the dock at the St. Maarten Yacht Club and stepped ashore into the arms of her family.

Laura’s voyage wasn’t without problems, but it wasn’t to do with the sea. Officials in Holland tried to prevent her from sailing and at one point even took her away from her parents and placed her in care.  If Laura reads this Blog, and she might because I have interviewed her twice, she will be annoyed that I have brought up the subject of her fight with the authorities. She makes no secret about the fact that what the authorities did now haunts her.

The sailing press is more inclined to focus on Laura’s remarkable achievement; however, much of the media is still banging on about her problems before she set sail. Some go as far as saying the officials were right and the voyage, by someone so young, should not have been allowed.

Hypocritical bastards!

These are the same reporters that every week fill the tabloids with photos of teenagers rampaging through British towns and cities, fueled on cheap booze and ecstasy, puking, pissing on war memorials and lying unconscious in the street. These are the same governments who introduced draconian laws to protect people from themselves, to coddle and control. Who turned kids into namby-pamby wimps whose only exercise is to lift the latest model cell phone to their ear or demand their parents buy them expensive and worthless designer training shoes.

The Nanny-State … you got what you wanted, control. Along the way you gutted a whole generation.

You would never see Laura Dekker lying drunk in the gutter in the freezing rain waving her legs in the air and showing her underwear, or lack of it, while her mates take pictures with their cell phones to later share on YouTube.

Laura Dekker took on the establishment and won. She showed them what can be achieved by someone so young. Teenagers owe her a huge debt of gratitude. Sadly, too many of them are too dumb to know it.