The youngest circumnavigator advises focusing on the solution, not the problem
Issue 121: July/Aug 2018
I’ve sailed solo around the world, 518 days of solo. It takes a mental fortitude that few can appreciate and fewer still are prepared to endure. About my trip, I’m often asked, “Weren’t you lonely and scared?”
I wasn’t. As a solo sailor, my mental state was just as important as my boat’s seaworthiness. I had to always be in control of my mind. My father helped me to understand this.
I spent the first five years of my life at sea. For my sixth birthday, I was given an Optimist sailing dinghy. Soon afterward, I was sailing her alone, my father alongside on a surfboard, when he suddenly threw my boat upside-down. I was under water and unable to surface, my feet tangled in the sheet. Fear hit and then panic took over. All I could do was swim harder, unsuccessfully. My father dove down, untangled my feet, and pushed me free. Gasping for air, I clambered onto his shoulders and burst into tears. In a soft, firm voice he explained that things like that can happen at any time, and that if I wanted to sail my dinghy alone, I needed to learn to control my emotions, to prevent panic, no matter the situation.
He taught me to count to three if I ever felt panic arise and to focus on determining a solution to the problem at hand. He assured me that the time seemingly lost to counting and thinking I was putting to valuable use. In my sailing years that followed, he got me into the habit of constantly envisioning everything that could possibly go wrong, and then determining the best solution for each scenario.
In my 30,000 nautical miles of solo sailing, the ocean has thrown stuff at me I never could have imagined. My physical and mental states have been tested. I have screamed in pain and yelled at the wind and waves in anger. I have sat on my cockpit floor sobbing from exhaustion. But never have I allowed fear to take over my mind. Even when something critical was broken, when solutions did not present themselves, and when the wind screamed in defiance, I would seek temporary distraction, often in my guitar. I find distraction is an important tool for clearing the mind of fear so I can focus it where I need to.
When I first heard about the 2018 Golden Globe Race, I allowed myself to dream. A part of me yearns to be out there among the competitors, racing solo against the Southern Ocean. But I’m a newlywed, and a bigger part of me yearns to be ashore with my husband, and certainly not apart from him for all of the time that this race and its preparation would demand.
So, I’ll root for the racing sailors with everyone else, intrigued and with a keen insight into the mental stressors they’ll face. I hope they’re well prepared. For every challenge they’ll encounter, there will be an approach or solution — as long as they remain mentally capable of determining what that is.
Laura Dekker set off on her solo circumnavigation in Guppy, her 40-foot ketch, on August 21, 2010, at the age of 14, and completed it in Sint Maarten on January 21, 2012, at the age of 16, the youngest person to ever sail around the world singlehanded. She was born in New Zealand in 1995 while her Dutch parents were on a seven-year voyage. She spent her first five years sailing with them, and after the voyage was over, continued to sail in dinghies and keelboats. At 13, she sailed her Hurley 700 solo from Holland to England, after which she set herself the goal of sailing around the world.
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