Abby Sunderland’s near-death experience

Abby Sunderland would do it all again, said Matt Higgins in Outside. For five months earlier this year, the 16-year-old was alone at sea, attempting to become the youngest person to sail around the world nonstop and unassisted. She was four months into her journey when, in the Indian Ocean, her small craft was battered by a raging storm. “There were mountains of water all day,” she says. “The boat was knocked down four times, but it always righted itself.” Then a monstrous rogue wave capsized the boat. “I flew across the cabin and hit my head. When I came to I was sitting on the ceiling in a foot and a half of water. It was pitch black.”

The boat righted itself, but when she went up on deck, Sunderland found that her mast had snapped in two. Knowing there was no chance for repair, she reluctantly activated her emergency beacon. “It was like admitting defeat,” she says. After drifting for two days, Sunderland was finally rescued by a French fishing boat. Back home in California, Sunderland has resigned herself to life on dry land, but she’s determined to try the journey again. “I don’t need to do it straight away,” she says. “For now I’ll do high school and get a driver’s license—all that normal stuff.”

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