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

In that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.

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.

Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.

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

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.

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