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17-year-old Mike Perham just solo sailed around the world and snatched the record (set just a month ago by 17-year-old Zac Sunderland) for the youngest person to solo sail the globe.

Several younger teenage boys are trying to break Perham's record as I write this. Laura Dekker, a 13-year-old girl from the Netherlands, wants to try and break his 24,000-mile record, too.


But a Dutch court just ruled that she won't be allowed to try... at least not yet. Because her father, who's an experience sailor himself, supports her ambitions fully, they've named child protective authorities as Dekker's guardians until they can have her evaluated by a psychologist to see if she could mentally handle the journey.

Dekker's trip, which was scheduled to start yesterday, September 1st, would have taken her two years to complete on a 26-foot yacht named Guppy. She planned to sail to Australia through the Caribbean and then through Somali pirate waters and back through the Red Sea. The judge was quoted in this AP article as saying the trip was "undeniably daring and risky."

Dekker is taking the news well and insists she'll be able to go eventually and that it's worth the wait. "I wouldn't go if I or my boat wasn't up to it, so things have stayed the same, except it is going to take a little longer," she told Dutch national broadcaster NOS.

Her rival for the world record, Perham, had this to say about Dekker's plight after he pulled into port earlier this week: "It's whether she's got the physical strength, the mental strength and the technical ability," he said. "You know, can she strip an engine blindfolded? You know, can she build boats, is she an electrician, is she a mechanic as well — because you can't just be a sailor to do a trip like this."

What do you think? Should 13-year-old Laura Dekker be allowed to solo sail around the world?

Via National Geographic Adventure Blog