When I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.
ABBY SUNDERLANDWhen I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.
ABBY SUNDERLANDOne day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.
ABBY SUNDERLANDOn October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
ABBY SUNDERLANDBeing at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition.
ABBY SUNDERLANDWild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.
ABBY SUNDERLANDOne place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.
ABBY SUNDERLANDTerror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below.
ABBY SUNDERLANDThe things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.
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 SUNDERLANDIn that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.
ABBY SUNDERLANDI will never forget the feeling of walking into my home, a place that while drifting helpless in the middle of the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would ever see again.
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 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.
ABBY SUNDERLANDI wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.
ABBY SUNDERLAND