I 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.
More Abby Sunderland Quotes
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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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Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.
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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.
ABBY SUNDERLAND -
On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
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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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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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One day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.
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The swells were amazing! As big as three-story apartment buildings!
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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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Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.
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I was so thankful that my parents trusted me enough and had enough faith in my abilities to let me follow my passion and try to do something great, even if I might fail.
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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.
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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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Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.
ABBY SUNDERLAND