Salon.com > Barry Hatton

Dutch teen sails for Canary Islands on world trip

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:52:00 +0000

A 14-year-old Dutch sailor aiming to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world is sailing in fine weather toward the Canary Islands off northwest Africa, her manager said Monday.

The first 48 hours of Laura Dekker's controversial voyage have gone smoothly, Peter Klarenbeek said.

"Everything is going well. She's very happy," Klarenbeek told The Associated Press by telephone from the Netherlands. "The weather is very good. There's a bit of a strong wind but ... it's no problem."

Dekker left Gibraltar, a British territory bordering the southwestern tip of Spain, on Saturday on the first leg of her global journey.

Klarenbeek said Dekker plans to spend at least two months in the Canary Islands 1,380 kilometers (858 miles) off Spain's southwestern tip waiting for the Atlantic storm season to abate.

While there she will catch up on her schoolwork, receive family visits and install cameras on her yacht for a film to be made of the voyage, Klarenbeek said.

After the Canary Islands Dekker intends to head south to the Cape Verde Islands off west Africa before continuing to the Caribbean on a trip expected to last a year or more.

Novelist Jose Saramago dies at 87

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Jose Saramago, who became the first Portuguese-language winner of the Nobel Literature prize although his popularity at home was dampened by his unflinching support for Communism, blunt manner and sometimes difficult prose style, died Friday.

Saramago, 87, died at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain's Canary Islands, of multi-organ failure after a long illness, the Jose Saramago Foundation said.

"The writer died in the company of his family, saying goodbye in a serene and placid way," the foundation said.

Saramago was an outspoken man who antagonized many, and moved to the Canary Islands after a public spat in 1992 with the Portuguese government, which he accused of censorship.

His 1998 Nobel accolade was nonetheless widely cheered in his homeland after decades of the award eluding writers of a language used by some 170 million people around the world.

"People used to say about me, 'He's good but he's a Communist.' Now they say, 'He's a Communist but he's good,'" he said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press.

Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said Saramago was "one of our great cultural figures and his disappearance has left our culture poorer."