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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.

Abby Sunderland

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Abby Sunderland
Age: 31
Born: 1993
Born: October 19
Explorer
Sailor
LA
California
Wild Eyes (sailing vessel)
Abigail Sunderland
Abby J. Sunderland
Abigail J. Sunderland
Abigail Jillian Sunderland
Abby Jillian Sunderland
Abigail Jillian Abby Sunderland
Moments
Minutes
Forty
Better
Came
Twenty
Might
Wrong
Twenties
Would
Lasts
Degree
Last
Quickly
Water
Wave
Moment
Eight
Sweep
Bigs
Degrees
Drowning

More quotes by Abby Sunderland

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Being at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition.
Abby Sunderland
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On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
Abby Sunderland
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When I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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One day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.
Abby Sunderland
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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. One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.
Abby Sunderland
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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
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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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 Sunderland
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The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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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
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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. If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn't run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.
Abby Sunderland
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Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.
Abby Sunderland
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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.
Abby Sunderland
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Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.
Abby Sunderland