Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.

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

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.

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

All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.

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

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.