Searchers flying over the Indian Ocean made contact early this morning with the teenage American girl feared lost at sea attempting a solo sail around the world in a 40-foot boat.
Abby Sunderland, miraculously, was alive and well.
They spotted the 16-year-old’s boat in an upright position in a remote and treacherous section of the ocean off Madagascar and spoke to her by radio.
The intrepid young sailor told them she was inside her disabled boat and doing fine, with a space heater and enough food to last her at least two weeks.
Family spokesman William Bennett, speaking outside the family’s Thousand Oaks, Cal., home, said the mast had broken off the sailboat, the “Wild Eyes.”
“The plane arrived on the scene moments ago,” her joyful parents wrote on their blog just after 2:30 a.m. New York time.
“Wild Eyes is upright, but her rigging is down. The weather conditions are abating.
“Radio communication has been made and Abby reports that she is fine!”
They said a fishing boat from the French island of Reunion was diverted to the scene and would be there in a little more than 24 hours.
“Where they will take her or how long it will take, we don’t know.”
The Airbus 330, carrying an experienced team of spotters, had flown from Perth, Australia, to spot where the intrepid young adventurer had last been heard from.
The drama that captivated the world began when Abby set off two emergency rescue beacons east of Madagascar at around 10 a.m., sparking a massive air-and-sea rescue effort.
Just an hour earlier, she’d assured her dad that the worst of punishing 35-knot winds and daunting 20-to-25-foot waves had passed.
“Everything seemed to be under control,” her father, Laurence, told reporters. “But then our call dropped, and a hour later the Coast Guard called.”
Rescuers tracked the beacons, one of which was attached to Abby’s survival suit, which is water-tight and provides flotation.
Another was on her lifeboat.
Abby’s brother, Zac Sunderland, told KNX radio in Los Angeles earlier in the day that his sister was probably “banged up” by the rough seas but added, “The boat is most likely not completely submerged because there’s another alarm that sends off a signal if it goes 15 feet underwater,”
Happily, he was right.
Zac at age 17 completed his own round-the-globe solo voyage last year.
“She’s a very accomplished sailor but she’s in the Indian Ocean right now and its a really dangerous place,” Zac said in the anxious houras before his sister was found.
His father added:
“We all have breaking points and she’s had a couple of boisterous days out there. It’s going to take a bit of a miracle.”
The miracle came hours later.
The indomitable youngster started the 22,000-mile voyage on Jan. 23 in a bid to become the youngest sailor ever to circumnavigate the globe all alone and without touching land.
And though that hope was dashed on May 5 — about halfway through the trip — when she was forced to make emergency repairs in Cape Town, South Africa, she sailed on.
Along with her fans, there were critics of the trip — and the teen’s parents for letting her take on the challenge.
The teen’s mom, Mary Anne Sunderland, shrugged off the barbs.
“Could there be a tragedy? Yeah, there could be,” she told reporters before the voyage. “But there could be a tragedy on the way home tonight, you know, or driving with her friends in a car at 16. You minimize the risks.”
In addition, sailing experts have said Abby was ill-advised to leave California in January, because she risked arriving in the Indian Ocean at the start of the winter season.
The sailing adventure by a teen girl is not unprecedented — Australian teen Jessica Watson completed a similar sail just a month ago when she arrived in Sydney three days shy of her 17th birthday. She now holds the record.
The girls kept in touch throughout their voyages.
Abby kept a near-daily blog about her six-month adventure at sea, attracting tens of thousands of followers.
She also gave media interviews via satellite phone and Skype.
But recent days have been tough.
“The last few days have pretty busy out here. I’ve been in some rough weather for a while, with winds steady at 40-45 knots with higher gusts,” Sunderland wrote in her Wednesday blog.
“The wind is beginning to pick up. It is back up to 20 knots, and I am expecting that by midnight tonight, I could have 35-50 knots with gusts to 60, so I am off to sleep before it really picks up.”
And from the start her trip has been plagued by mishaps.
Within days of setting sail from Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, she had to dock in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, because she underestimated her supplies and needed repairs to her diesel engine.
She then ran into problems as she crossed the south Atlantic.
Her auto-pilot — on which her blog entries indicate she was reliant– was malfunctioning, forcing her to dock in Cape Town.
She finally departed on May 21 and soon encountered problems with rough seas.
“It’s so important to be focused on dealing with the problem at hand that fear becomes dangerous — it makes you hesitant to deal with things and knocks your confidence,” she wrote on June 2, after she was awakened by water rushing into her cabin.
She fought huge swells for the past week, she wrote.
“It’s really an amazing sight these walls of water that look like they’re just going to dump on you and then all of a sudden you pick up some speed and you go racing down at thrilling speeds.”
Additional reporting by Candace Amos and Wire Services