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.

The open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.

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.

The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.

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

Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.

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.