Sweet sadness

Laura Dekker, the Dutch girl who at the age of 14 set out to be the youngest person to sail solo around the world, is expected to complete her voyage tomorrow, just about a year after she started.

She is 16 now and headed for landfall on St. Maarten island in the Caribbean (Jan. 21, 2012). Why the Caribbean instead of the Netherlands? That is the not-so-sweet part of the sadness.

My own experience with longer voyages has always involved that. On the last day or so of many I have gone through a period of depression. I finally figured out that my unconscious was telling me the voyage was over and that led to the sadness. I have always liked the going more than the arriving. As Gordon Bach sings, "Half the fun of getting there is going." I make it 90 percent.

Anyway I expect some of this is going through Laura's head today as she guides her Guppy and that island comes up over the horizon. (I know it is she who is coming up over the horizon, but that is not how it looks from the deck.) For her the journey she has lived for a year is coming to an end. And the joy is not in the arrival, but in the going. More power to her.

Sadly she is not making her landfall nearer to home. That is because before she left, the authorities in the Netherlands apparently put her through an awful experience, almost sending her into child protective care and taking her away from her father. This was all because the government didn't think a girl her age should be allowed to make the attempt and her parent allowing her to amounted to something akin to child abuse.

As a result she eventually departed from St. Maarten and that is where she will complete her voyage. On her blog she imagined the party she and her friends and family would have had in their home country, but that the experiences Dutch officials put her through made her not want to return home. So Laura gets a double dose of the Sweet Sadness. One can only hope the jubilation of being the youngest person ever to sail alone around the world will make the sadness sweeter for this remarkable young woman.

Laura Dekker's blog in English

I wanted to steal a picture of her with her boat from somewhere, but instead of that here is her gallery of photos from the trip.

UPDATE: Landfall!