Teenage sailor, Abby Sunderland, feared lost in Southern Ocean

by ABC News on 11 Jun 2010 The brother of Abby Sunderland, 16, feared lost at sea in her attempt to become the youngest sailor ever to circumnavigate the globe, said Thursday afternoon that Abby's boat was 'most likely not completely submerged.'

A support crew lost contact with Abby, who was in heavy seas in the Southern Indian Ocean, early Thursday morning.

Abby's mother, MaryAnne Sunderland, told ABC News that Abby manually activated two beacons sometime before 6 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday.

Her brother, Zac Sunderland told KNX that the support crew was 'still trying to figure out the rescue situation.'

'The boat is most likely not completely submerged, because there's another alarm that sends off a signal if it goes 15 feet underwater,' Zac Sunderland said in a radio interview with Ron Kilgore of KNX radio in Los Angeles.

'There's two boats headed out to her position. One of them is an estimated 40 hours, the other is 48. So right now we're just trying to figure out if there's any way faster. She's in the middle of nowhere pretty much, in the Southern Indian Ocean, there's nothing closer.

'We're just hoping everything's all right out there. There's nothing we can really know for sure out there right now.'

Abby was in 20-25 foot waves at the time of last contact, with 35-knot winds, said MaryAnne Sunderland, who is due to give birth at the end of the month. She was shaken but focused on trying to get a rescue effort together.


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