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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.
More Abby Sunderland Quotes
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The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below.
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Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.
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The swells were amazing! As big as three-story apartment buildings!
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Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.
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Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.
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It seems like people my age are over-protected today, even to the point where a lot of parents refuse to put their kids in the position to make important decisions, to aspire to great things, because they don’t want to put them in a position to fail.
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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.
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The seriousness of my situation started to sink in, and again I fought panic. I pushed it down, but it was harder this time, like my insides were an open can of shaken soda and I was trying to keep it from bubbling up out of the top.
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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.
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If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.
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I knew that even if I was able to call for help, I was in a place so remote that it wasn’t likely there would be anyone who could help me. And even if there were, it could take weeks.
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One day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.
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The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.
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The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.
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All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.
ABBY SUNDERLAND