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

Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.

I had begun to think that dreams are meant to be no more than dreams and that in reality dreams don't come true. Then my brother (Zac) left on his trip. It was amazing to see all the support that he got from around the world and to see how everyone worked together to help make his dream reality. Watching him do this really made me believe that I could too.

I knew that even if I was able to call for help, I was in a place so remote that it wasn't likely there would be anyone who could help me. And even if there were, it could take weeks.

On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.

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.