Abby Sunderland, 16, who cannot legally drive a car but is two months into a quest to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone, on Tuesday will face by far her most daunting challenge yet: the rounding of Cape Horn.
At a time when her friends back home in Southern California are enjoying the pleasures of spring, the budding adventurer is pondering the treacherous passage between South America and Antarctica. With its mountainous, heaving seas and gale-force winds, Cape Horn is a mariners' graveyard, regarded as the Mt. Everest of the yachting universe.
Reached Wednesday via email, Sunderland claimed she was not afraid."I understand very well how dangerous the ocean is, and especially where I am, and I sail carefully and never forget how fast things can turn bad out here," she wrote back, from west of Argentina and 700 miles from Cape Horn. "But fear would just get in the way. When things are going on, you don't have time to be scared about it; you have to just get your head around everything and deal with it."
If she is successful, it will mark her first major milestone and the beginning of an easterly Southern Ocean traverse aboard a 40-foot yacht named Wild Eyes. Her voyage is controversial because of her age, but also because she'll be entering this notoriously inhospitable stretch as the Southern Hemisphere summer fades to autumn and savagely cold and stormy weather begins to set in.
"My biggest hope is that she has he maturity to wait out any nasty weather rather than push too hard for a record and risk getting into trouble," says Charlie Nobles, executive director of the American Sailing Assn.
Sunderland, who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and embarked Jan. 23 from Marina del Rey, Calif., is one of two 16-year-old girls attempting nonstop, unassisted solo-circumnavigations, subsiding on freeze-dried food and drinking desalinated water, while accepting only verbal or online guidance from home-based teams.
Australia's Jessica Watson began her odyssey from Sydney last October and rounded Cape Horn on Jan. 13. Soon after she negotiated the passage she endured 70-knot winds that threatened to capsize her 34-foot pink sloop.
Watson, now more than 18,000 miles along and crossing the Indian Ocean, is five months older than Sunderland, so Sunderland can claim the record if she completes her trip within five months of Watson's ending date. (Abby's brother Zac, who completed his trip after making several stops at 17, briefly held the distinction as being the youngest sailor to solo-circumnavigate the planet. England's Mike Perham, who is slightly younger, stole that honor weeks later.)
Meanwhile, the intrepid mariner is faring reasonably well. "I miss my family, and my dog, and my friends," she wrote, adding that thoughts often turn to her 5-year-old sister, Katherine. They share a bedroom and Katherine idolizes Abby, and has not slept in the room alone since Abby's departure.
Aside from bouts of loneliness, the eldest Sunderland daughter--one of seven children, with an eighth on the way--insists she's relishing the experience of a lifetime. "Everything around me is so amazing, just standing out on deck is exhilarating," she explained. "Every day there are new experiences, and they always seem better than the last; everything from squalls to gales, to just racing along."
Her parents, on the other hand, are besieged by the same type of angst as when Zac was braving gales and encountering ghost ships carrying suspected pirates.
"I have definitely been recruiting the people in my life who pray," said the mother, Marianne, in reference to a recent convergence of severe weather fronts that were falsely predicted to slam Wild Eyes. "But I am super-impressed with how Abby has handled everything, from the boat and its workings to the loneliness and monotony of everyday life at sea. But I'll be glad when she has rounded the Horn and can get back up into some calmer waters."
Abby won't be totally alone when she rounds Cape Horn. Laurence, her father, has flown to Argentina and if the weather cooperates he'll hire a pilot to fly over Wild Eyes as his daughter attempts the passage.
They'll talk via radio and wave, if possible. Then, over the next few months, Abby will cross the southern Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean, pass between Australia and New Zealand and cross the Pacific on a northeast course toward home.
That's a lot of water to cover and, given her late start, perhaps a lot of icebergs to negotiate as well.
-- Pete Thomas
Top photo of Abby Sunderland courtesy of Gizara Arts. Bottom photo of Wild Eyes by Pete Thomas
Editor's note: This post also appears on GrindTV.com's new outdoors blog
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