When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there's a massive sense of accomplishment.

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.

When I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.

The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.

One day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.

Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.

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.