THE HAGUE  Dutch solo sailor Laura Dekker, 14, began her round-the-world record bid from Gibraltar Saturday, after slipping away from the media spotlight and Portuguese police, the television company covering her voyage said.
"She left the harbour of Gibraltar," Marijke Schaaphok, whose television company Masmedia has signed an exclusive rights contract with Dekker, told AFP, saying she had spoken to the teenager's agent Peter Klarenbeek.
Schaaphok said Dekker would probably head for the Spanish Canary Islands or possibly Portugal's Madeira, depending on the wind, arriving in six or eight days.
She said Dekker had finally decided to make the British possession at the southern tip of Spain the starting point for her voyage because "the Portuguese police were making problems because of her age."
The police had paid her a visit at sea while she made final tests of her boat, the red-hulled, 11.5 metre (38 foot) ketch Guppy, in which she had arrived from the Netherlands in the southern Portuguese port of Portimao a week ago, Schaaphok said.
Klarenbeek had told AFP that she would be leaving Portimao on Saturday, but other sailors in the marina there said she and her boat had not been seen since Wednesday.
Port authorities confirmed a report by the Lusa news agency that Portuguese law does not allow a minor to sail alone.
At the end of July Dekker won a 10-month court battle with Dutch child welfare authorities who had been preventing the voyage for fear it would stunt Dekker's social and emotional development.
The petite blonde wants to break the record for the youngest world solo sail set in May by Australian teenager Jessica Watson. Watson completed a non-stop, unassisted round-the-world trip a few days before her 17th birthday.
Dekker turns 17 on September 20, 2012, allowing her a little over two years to complete the trip, during which she intends to stop at several ports along the way.
She has said her route from Portugal will take her across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Pacific via the Panama Canal. She plans to stop at the Galapagos islands before heading to Australia, Thailand and through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden back to Europe.
