Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.
On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.
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 terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.
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.