Abby Sunderland
American sailor who, in 2010, attempted to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world.
Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.
Fifty feet of mast lay in the heaving water, downed lines and shrouds holding it there.
The open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.
The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.
I’m one-hundred-fifty miles off Cape Horn, both autopilots are broken, and my boat is drifting toward one of the nastiest chunks of ocean on the face of the earth.
I saw the loose tiller jolt hard to the side as the boat began to spin.
On June 10, the worst storm in the series swept across the middle of the Indian Ocean and Wild Eyes was directly in its path.
Just as I was about to grab the rope ladder, a huge swell lifted the dinghy nearly to La Reunion’s deck level, and at least a dozen smiling French fishermen pulled me aboard.
After the week of stormy weather, she set sail under sunny skies, on a glassy sea with a big swell running.
In that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.
Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.
I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.
The critics barged in to harp on every decision we made. . .Sadly, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough sailor.
The only thing I knew to do was to pray. “Lord, if I’m going to be rescued,” I said out loud, “please let me know.”
If a big wave came at the wrong moment, it would sweep me off into forty-eight-degree water, where I might last twenty minutes. Drowning quickly might be better.
Against reason, I thought that the next swell would be it: another rogue wave would roll me again . . .At that moment, a noise from above caught my attention. And I looked up just in time to see a gigantic white airplane fly by.
Being at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition.
When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there’s a massive sense of accomplishment.
On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
Marianne tried to stay hopeful. But slowly her imagination bulldozed her optimism aside and pushed her mind into a dark place. There, she saw Abby tethered to the boat in her bright red foul-weather gear, being dragged along dead in the sea.