A 13-year-old schoolgirl has become the youngest person to circumnavigate Bermuda in a tiny Optimist-class dinghy.

Rachael Betschart — a sailor since she was aged 4 — completed the gruelling trip in just over ten hours and admitted there were times she felt like throwing in the towel.

Rachael said: “I guess I feel proud. There were a few times that I felt like quitting but giving up is not what I do.”

She added: “It doesn’t feel real. It was difficult at the end. When I was sailing on North Shore, it was very challenging.”

But Rachael said: “I just held it together and, besides, it was my only way home.

“At the end I felt relief and that feeling of accomplishment.”

The Warwick Academy pupil added she had now charted a course for a future Olympic Games and the chance to represent the country in sailing.

She added: “I want to go to the Olympics. It will take a lot of hard work and focus. School is clashing a bit with sailing right now, so maybe in my twenties I would like to go for that.”

Rachael said that she concentrated on school, homework and violin practice when she started her trip from Dockyard to the finish line at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in Hamilton. But she added her mind started to drift to the denizens of the deep as she beat on.

Rachael said: “When I was coming into St George’s, sharks and whales were running throughout my head.

“I saw islands and rocks and I thought about that movie The Shallows, where a girl is stuck on a rock with a shark in the water and I was working out what I would do if I was in that situation.

“I didn’t feel scared but sometimes it felt like it would never stop — it felt endless.”

Rachael was inspired to take on the challenge after her former sailing coach, Tom Herbert-Evans, sailed around the island in an Optimist in 2013 and aimed to beat his time of nine hours, 36 minutes.

She did not manage to finish faster, but still became the youngest sailor to complete the challenge.

Rachael started her trip at 5.30am last Friday and sailed in an anticlockwise direction after Nathan Bailey, her coach at the RBYC, charted a course for her.

She was off the Reefs Hotel three hours later, tracked by her mother, D’Arcey, in a safety boat and her father, Roger, in a larger “mother boat” skippered by a family friend. Friends and supporters also followed her journey and lined up at the shoreline to cheer on.

Rachael said she could hear whistles as she passed the Astwood Park area of Warwick and a red flag — which she later found out was her aunt and cousins waving the Bermuda flag.

A group of Mount St Agnes Academy pupils, including a close friend, on board the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo’s RV Endurance off St David’s, lined the deck to shout encouragement.

Rachael also used the trip to raise cash through corporate and individual donations, which will be donated to the Bermuda Optimist Dinghy Association.