Abby Sunderland - the final minutes

by Sail-World Cruising roundup on 3 Jul 2010 Sixteen-year-old adventure sailor Abby Sunderland told the detail of her rescue to the world's press when she arrived back in Marina del Rey in Los Angeles this week.

She described how she blacked out when a giant wave smashed her yacht's mast to pieces in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

Now safely home after her dramatic high-seas rescue, Sunderland today recounted the moment her dream of becoming the youngest to sail the globe alone came to a sudden, violent end.

Sunderland was below deck fixing her engine when a 'rogue wave' struck her yacht, Wild Eyes, on June 10.

'The boat rolled fast, I didn't have a lot of warning,' she said.

The 16-year-old surfaced to find her mast gone.'I got outside and there was no mast there - just a one-inch stub,' she said.

Despite the trauma, she escaped with few injuries.'You get a little banged and bruised but nothing serious,' she said.

'I did hit my head kind of hard and things went black for a second, but just for a second.'

Aware she had no alternative, Sunderland sent out emergency beacons, which set off a major two-week rescue and provoked a fierce global debate about whether her parents were irresponsible for letting her make the perilous world record attempt.

Australian officials have said they have no intention of asking her family, based in California, to reimburse taxpayers the hundreds of thousands spent on the teenager's rescue.

Sunderland today acknowledged Australia's generosity. 'I'd also like to thank the people of Reunion Island and Australia who indirectly funded my rescue,' she said.

The young adventurer, whose brother Zac has also sailed the globe alone, vowed to keep sailing.

'The more I sail the more I like sailing and I'm definitely not going to stop for a minute.'

She admitted she felt scared during her ill-fated four-month journey, but insisted she had been prepared for the worst.

'There have definitely been times when I was terrified,' she said.

'I knew when I headed out for this trip that I was going to be testing myself,' she said.

Her mother Maryanne has just given birth to the family's eighth child, whom they named Paul after Paul-Louis Le Moigne, the captain of the French-flagged ship that rescued Abby, Ille De La Reunion.