Abby Sunderland - Unsinkable: A Young Womans Courageous Battle on the High Seas

UNSINKABLE

A YOUNG WOMANS COURAGEOUS BATTLE
ON THE HIGH SEAS

Abby Sunderland
and Lynn Vincent

2011 by Abigail Sunderland a/k/a Abby Sunderland

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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sunderland, Abby, 1993
Unsinkable : a young womans courageous battle on the high seas / Abby Sunderland and Lynn Vincent.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4002-0308-6 (alk. paper)
1. Sunderland, Abby, 1993- 2. Women sailors--United States--Biography. 3. Women adventurers--United States--Biography. 4. Voyages around the world. 5. Single-handed sailing. I. Vincent, Lynn. II. Title.
GV810.92.S86A3 2011
797.1092--dc22
[B]

2011000486

Printed in the United States of America

11 12 13 14 15 QGF 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Mom, for all your hard work behind the scenes.
You really did so much for me and my trip.

To Dad, for supporting my decision and believing
in me and my dream.

Thank you both for your love and encouragement.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: ISLA GUADALUPE
BAJA, CALIFORNIA, MEXICO: 2001

CHAPTER 2: ABBYS DREAM
MARINA DEL REY AND THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: 2006

CHAPTER 3: BOAT HUNTING
THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: 20082009

CHAPTER 4: WILD EYES
EASTERN SEABOARD AND ENSENADA, MEXICO: 2009

CHAPTER 5: RACEBOAT REFIT
MARINA DEL REY, CALIFORNIA: OCTOBERDECEMBER 2009

CHAPTER 6: CRITICS AND REALITY
THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: NOVEMBER 2009JANUARY 2010

CHAPTER 7: FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS
MARINA DEL REY, CALIFORNIA: JANUARY 2010

CHAPTER 8: DOLPHINS AND SUNSETS
MARINA DEL REY TO CABO: JANUARY 2010

CHAPTER 9: STARTING OVER
CABO SAN LUCAS, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 2010

CHAPTER 10: ABBY THE SHELLBACK
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN COAST: FEBRUARYMARCH 2010

CHAPTER 11: AROUND THE HORN
THE SOUTHERN OCEAN: MARCH 2010

CHAPTER 12: CLOSE CALL
CAPE HORN AND THE SOUTH ATLANTIC: MARCHMAY 2010

CHAPTER 13: TUNE-UP AND REFIT
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: MAY 2010

CHAPTER 14: GOING UP THE MAST
THE INDIAN OCEAN: MAY 2010

CHAPTER 15: NIGHTMARE AT SEA
40.513 SOUTH/74.457 EAST: JUNE 2010

CHAPTER 16: HOMECOMING
THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: JUNEJULY 2010

If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.

PSALM 139:910

Throughout the book, there are three icons. One represents Abbys voice . Another represents the narrators voice . The third represents those who took part in the rescue efforts to save Abby in the Indian Ocean . A change in icon indicates a change in speaker or location.

For a map of Abbys route, see .

PROLOGUE
THE INDIAN OCEAN

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.

Eclipsed in size only by the Pacific and Atlantic, the Indian Ocean covers 14 percent of the earths surfacetwenty-seven million square miles. Its waters are bounded on the north by the wide skirt of Southeast Asia, including India, and on the west by the African continent. To the east, the Indian churns ashore in Australia and Indochina. To the south, only Antarctica hems it in. Its vast waters are jeweled with exotic island nations like Madagascar, an eighteenth-century haven for pirates, and the Maldives, whose powder blue waters are home to twenty-six different kinds of sharks.

At turns beautiful and deadly, the Indian Ocean can charm sailors with fair winds and crisp, sunny days topsideor challenge them to a lightning-charged duel, man against sea. Even less than a hundred years ago, having your boat become disabled in the middle of the Indians immense rolling reaches was as good as a death sentence. A captain could only hope his rum didnt run out before his life did.

Because of modern technology, the odds are better today, but not much. The center of the Indian Ocean is two thousand miles from any search-and-rescue operation of significant size. That means any search plane that could fly low enough to spot a foundering sailboat would not have the fuel capacity to reach it.

-----------------------------------------------------

COMMANDERS WEATHER

(MARINE WEATHER SERVICE)

FORECA ST: JUNE 9, 2010

1230 UTC (GREENWICH MEAN TIME):

LOOK OUT FOR AN INCREASING NW TO N WIND BY 15 UTC WED, AND THEN WILL BE A VERY ROUGH PERIOD MAINLY BETWEEN 21 UTC WED TO ABOUT 06 OR 09 UTC THU, AS THIS NEXT STORM SYSTEM APPROACHES...

AS TROUGH PUSHES THRU, THERE WILL BE SOME SQUALLS, W/GUSTS UP TO 50-60 KTS POSSIBLE BY 21 UTC TODAY. BEHIND THIS TROUGH, WIND SHIFTS INTO NW, AND WILL BE QUITE STRONG FROM NW AHEAD OF COLD FRONT THRU ABOUT 0600-0900 UTC.

THIS NW WIND MAY BE SUSTAINED AT 35-50 KTS, AND COULD BE SQUALLS TO 60 KTS OVERALL.

WILL BE ABOUT A 9-12 HR PERIOD OF ROUGHEST CONDITIONS.

-----------------------------------------------------

The storms were amazingsometimes even fun. Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high. As a sailor, you dream of seeing waves like that, rolling mountains of water that look like theyre covered in dark gray silk. During the day, vast dark clouds hung low over the water. Sometimes the sun shined through in places. At night, the weather often cleared and I clipped myself in up on deck, racing along the swells under stars so big and bright they lit up the night like extra moons.

But in the second week of June, storms roared in one after another bashing Wild Eyes, my open 40 boat, shredding her sails, knocking out my gear. There was very little time between blows to patch up the damage. One day a screaming wind tore my genoa, the big sail on the front of the boat. What a pain! You have to thread the sail up the furler and it flogs all over the place while youre doing it, gets jammed, then sticks like a zipper. When that happens, you have to run it back down the furler and start over. In twenty-knot winds, it took a whole day to run up a new genoa. Another day the sail ties on my mainsail came loose and I had to climb all over the boom like a monkey trying to secure it again. The storm whipped the 120-pound Kevlar sail back and forth like it was as flimsy as a bed sheet.