While most newspaper editors have been cramming their editorial space this month with election year candidates/events and milestones, such as Associated Press’s lengthy Guantanamo Bay prison's 10th anniversary story yesterday, being overlooked is an adventure-courage story of a 16-year old Dutch girl nearing the finish of her solo sailing trip around the world, points out Grumpy Editor.
Few print readers and television news viewers are aware that Laura Dekker is on the final leg sailing from Cape Town, South Africa, to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, where she set sail on Aug. 21, 2010.
She’s due to dock on or around Jan. 24.
There’s even appealing material, stemming from the voyage, that’s tailored for Nancy Grace on HLN: Seems that Dutch truancy officers have issued Dekker’s father a summons after a newspaper quoted her as saying poor weather was keeping her from her studies.
Indeed, the Dutch sailor --- who piloted her first boat when six years old --- this week ran into squalls.
Sailing the high seas always is an adventure.
Yesterday, via her Website, Dekker reports: “The gusty and heavy squall that brought 40-knot winds and pouring rain finally dissolved.”
New Zealand-born Dekker’s adventure is similar to that of Abby Sunderland, who, at 16 in June, 2010, had to abandon her planned around-the-world solo sailing when bad weather with 30-foot waves snapped her $120,000 yacht’s mast in the Indian Ocean, 2,000 miles west of Australia.
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