The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below.
ABBY SUNDERLANDIt was amazing to see all the support that he got from around the world and to see how everyone worked together to help make his dream reality. Watching him do this really made me believe that I could too.
More Abby Sunderland Quotes
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On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
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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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One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.
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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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The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.
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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.
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But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.
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The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.
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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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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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Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.
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I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.
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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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There are a number of places on marine charts where even the most weathered sailors point and say, “Right there, nothing can go wrong. Everything has to go right.”
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When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there’s a massive sense of accomplishment.
ABBY SUNDERLAND