Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.
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.
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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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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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 Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.
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In that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.
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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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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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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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It 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.
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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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On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
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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 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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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.”
ABBY SUNDERLAND






