THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — A California teenager who spent three days adrift on the turbulent Indian Ocean described her ordeal as “crazy” as she started a long journey home aboard a French fishing boat that rescued her Saturday from her crippled sailboat.
Abby Sunderland was bumped and bruised but otherwise healthy, her parents said after hearing from the 16-year-old in a 20-minute phone call to their home northwest of Los Angeles.
“She sounded tired, a little bit small in her voice, but she was able to make jokes and she was looking forward to getting some sleep,” her mother, Marianne Sunderland, told reporters outside the family home.
Her mother, who is close to giving birth to a boy, said her daughter joked about her ordeal affecting the baby and also talked about plans for the next school year.
The young sailor, who set out from Marina del Rey on the Los Angeles County coast Jan. 23, continued to blog after being rescued. She was more than 2,000 miles west of Australia two days after a wave broke the mast of her boat, Wild Eyes, satellite phone communication was lost and she set off emergency beacons.
“Crazy is the word that really describes everything that has happened best,” she wrote Saturday from “a great big fishing boat headed I am not exactly sure where.” She will spend more than a week traveling to Reunion Island, a French territory east of Madagascar.
“The long and the short of it is, well, one long wave, and one short mast,” she wrote.
She dismissed criticism that she was too young to undertake an attempt to sail around the world by herself. “Since when does age create gigantic waves and storms?” she wrote.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the French ship Ile De La Reunion brought Abby Sunderland aboard from her stricken craft Saturday afternoon at the site.
French authorities called it a “delicate operation” and said at one point the fishing boat’s captain fell into the ocean and had to be rescued but was in “good health.” Laurence Sunderland said the crew used its dinghy in the transfer.
Australian authorities were broadcasting a message to boats crossing through the area warning them that Sunderland’s sailboat is still adrift.
Sunderland will leave the French fishing boat in about two days to board a maritime patrol boat that will take her to Reunion Island, according to a statement from the office of the French Indian Ocean island’s top official. The transfer will take place off the Kerguelen Islands, with the exact timing depending on weather and ocean conditions.
