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

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

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.

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.

Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.

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.

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