The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.

If a big wave came at the wrong moment, it would sweep me off into forty-eight-degree water, where I might last twenty minutes. Drowning quickly might be better.

Terror ripped through me as I was falling, falling, falling toward the sea.

All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.

I will never forget the feeling of walking into my home, a place that while drifting helpless in the middle of the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would ever see again.

In that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.

Being at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition.

I'm one-hundred-fifty miles off Cape Horn, both autopilots are broken, and my boat is drifting toward one of the nastiest chunks of ocean on the face of the earth.

Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.

When I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.