CANBERRA, Australia – 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 a tense 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.Â
The boat’s mast was broken — ruining satellite phone reception — and was dragging with the sail in the ocean … Details
Teen sailor Abby Sunderland, who today made international headlines by requesting a rescue via various distress-signal units, is in a portion of the southern Indian Ocean that is so remote it could take nearly two days for a ship to reach her position.Â
Sunderland, 16, had been a little past the halfway point in an attempt to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone  … Details
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.’Â
A support crew lost contact with Abby, who was in heavy seas in the Southern Indian Ocean, early Thursday morning.Â
Abby’s mother, MaryAnne Sunderland, told ABC News that Abby manually activated two beacons sometime before 6 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday … Details
Why do people hate cats? No, not the furry felines, but the multihulls. Sure, there’s the issue about them being more stable upside-down than right side up, but the same could be said of any boat without a weighted keel. Is it that they still haven’t shaken off the hippie image they earned in the 1960’s and 70’s, when grotesque backyard catamarans and trimarans made of plywood and even ferrocement were the eyesores of many a suburban neighborhood? Is it the ubiquitous beach cats that many of us watched rot away in front of our neighbor’s houses? You hear them poopooed by the old guard regularly, but why? Why do people dog on cats? Â
As we’ve reported before … Details