Laura Dekker: a heroine for our times

What do you do when you fulfil your life's ambition at the age of 16? Laura Dekker, the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe single-handedly, arrived at the Caribbean island of St Maarten on Saturday to a rapturous welcome and a relieved family. While we wait to hear what does next, we celebrate her life so far.

She was born to sail

Her Dutch parents were living on a yacht in a port in New Zealand when Dekker was born and she was six when she first sailed solo. At eight, she decided her dream was to sail around the world, and, aged just 13, Dekker sailed solo from the Netherlands to England and back – a trip her father had hoped would "cure her wanderlust", according to her website. Her mother has said "she sails like a devil", while her grandfather says "she's a stoic. She will keep a cool head in the most extreme of situations."

She is good with cockroaches

She took on six-metre-high waves and extreme weather – on one occasion, heading in to the Cape of Good Hope, her storm jib (a sail used in storms) got jammed and she finally managed to take it down in the early hours of the morning. Another of her sails ripped completely during the voyage. She slept on a damp bed and lived on rice and pasta, with cookies and pancakes as an occasional treat. She dodged near-collisions with cargo ships, and worried about pirates. Not in the least squeamish, she had to rescue live flying fish that had flung themselves into her cabin, and scrub the stinking remains of decomposing squid from the deck. She survived weeks at sea with no company – except for the ants and cockroaches that had stowed away in her cabin. On top of all that, she had to do schoolwork.

She is determined

All of the above was nothing compared to the battle she faced against the Dutch authorities before she set off. Although her parents supported her plans, Dekker was placed under state guardianship by a Dutch court, which stopped her attempt to start her world voyage when she was 14, saying it was unsafe and would damage her development. A few months later, she ran away but was found in St Maarten and escorted back to the Netherlands. In July 2010, a court lifted the state supervision and said the trip could go ahead (in the meantime, Dekker had done training in first aid and sleep management, and was a more experienced solo sailor). "Over a period of 11 months I was constantly afraid that Youth Care would lock me up," she wrote on her blog. "It was all a frightening and traumatic experience. So often these terrible memories come to me. I can't ignore them. Now, after sailing around the world, with difficult port approaches, storms, dangerous reefs, and the full responsibility of keeping myself and [her boat] Guppy safe, I feel that the nightmares the Dutch government organisations put me through, were totally unfair." In their defence, Joost Lanshage from the Netherlands Bureau of Youth Care said: "If Laura had drowned we would be accused of not doing enough to protect her. Thank God she's OK and I think that's partly due to the safety measures we enforced as part of the condition for allowing her to go."

She becomes the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe

Dekker has just pipped the previous youngest, Jessica Watson, an Australian who sailed around the world, arriving in Sydney In May 2010, three days before her 17th birthday. In June 2010, Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old sailor from the US, was rescued in the Indian Ocean after breaking her mast in an attempt to do the same. It was back in 2009 that a boy – 17-year-old Michael Perham, from England – held the record. However, Guinness World Records will not verify any of these claims, saying they do not want to encourage minors to take on dangerous challenges.

She is a reluctant superstar

Reading the blog Dekker kept during her voyage, it is clear that she values solitude and a proximity to nature. She writes about meeting penguins, seals, birds, whales and dolphins and has a deep appreciation of the beauty the world has to offer. "Yesterday the clouds gathered in an arch that reached down to the sea far on the horizon, and when the sun came down floating in the water it turned the arch into a barrel vault of lights," she wrote on Christmas Eve. "Sometimes I try [to] adjust the sails to make us go faster, but mostly I simply enjoy the endless silky blue ocean and the quiet peace that it brings," she wrote earlier in December. You can feel the apprehension of the media attention she knew she would eventually attract. "At sea, I feel comfortable and I come to rest."