When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there’s a massive sense of accomplishment.
ABBY SUNDERLANDWhen a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there’s a massive sense of accomplishment.
ABBY SUNDERLANDGoing up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.
ABBY SUNDERLANDSlowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe 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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDIf Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.
ABBY SUNDERLANDOn 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 SUNDERLANDIf 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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.
ABBY SUNDERLANDI wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.
ABBY SUNDERLANDI 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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDWhen I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.
ABBY SUNDERLANDI’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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDBut 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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDOn October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThere 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.”
ABBY SUNDERLANDI am twelve thousand miles wiser, twelve thousand miles more resilient, and I have twelve thousand miles more faith in God.
ABBY SUNDERLAND