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

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

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.

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.

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

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