16-year-old sailor alive and well
16-YEAR-OLD SAILOR ALIVE AND WELL AS SHE CONTINUES HER TOUR, Wired from MSN.com
LOS ANGELES – A 16-year-old California girl who was feared lost at sea while sailing solo around the world has been found alive and well, adrift in the southern Indian Ocean as rescue boats head toward her damaged yacht, officials said. After 20 hours of silence, a search plane launched from Australia’s west coast made radio contact with Abby Sunderland on Friday in the frigid southern seas where her boat was repeatedly knocked down by huge waves and she lost satellite phone contact. Her family told TODAY’s Meredith Vieria that the wait for news was “tense.”
“They’re not enjoyable moments, of course, and your mind does play tricks with you,” said her father, Lawrence Sunderland, a shipwright who owns a yacht management company. He said the family was fortunate the search and rescue team acted as quickly as they did to find Abby. When the rescuers located her, they found her boat’s mast was broken — ruining satellite phone reception — and was dragging with the sail in the ocean, said search coordinator Mick Kinley, acting chief of the Australia Maritime Safety Authority that chartered a commercial jet for the search.
But the keel was intact, the yacht was not taking on water and Abby was equipped for the conditions, Kinley told reporters in Canberra, adding that “she sounds like she’s in good health.” This was a “testimony to her will to survive and deal with the situation,” Lawrence said on TODAY.
BOATS MAY REACH HER SATURDAY
A lifelong sailor, Abby had begun her journey trying to be the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop around the world and continued her trip after mechanical failures dashed that dream. Abby told searchers Friday that she was doing fine with a space heater and at least two weeks’ worth of food, said family spokesman William Bennett. Support team member Jeff Casher said the boat had gotten knocked on its side several times. The French regional administration on the island of Reunion, off Madagascar, said it had sent three boats in her direction and they were expected to reach her Saturday.
Friday’s communication with Abby was the first since satellite phone communications were lost early Thursday. She had made several broken calls to her family in Thousand Oaks, California, and reported her yacht was being tossed by 30-foot waves — as tall as a 3-story building. An hour after her last call ended, her emergency beacons began signaling. The observers aboard the search plane — a chartered Qantas Airbus A330 jet that left Perth early Friday — spoke with her by close-range VHF marine radio, western Australia state police spokesman Senior Sgt. Graham Clifford said.
He said the jet faced a 4,700-mile round trip from Perth to Sunderland’s boat, which is near the limit of its range. Qantas spokesman Tom Woodward said the airliner flew five hours out to sea to reach the area where the beacons were transmitting, then maneuvered for another hour before spotting the 40-foot yacht.