A 16-year-old American girl who was feared lost at sea has been contacted by search teams and is alive and well, a family spokesman said today.
William Bennett said searchers aboard an Airbus A330 spotted Abby Sunderland’s boat in an upright position and made contact with her via radio.
Speaking outside the family’s Thousand Oaks home in southern California, Mr Bennett said the girl said she was inside the boat and doing fine with a space heater and at least two weeks’ worth of food.
Mr Bennett said the mast had broken off the disabled boat.
He said a fishing vessel was en route to pick her up. The vessel is expected to reach her in about 40 hours.
Before being spotted Ms Sunderland was last heard from about 2pm yesterday, when she broke off a satellite phone call with a member of her support team.
Her last-known location was far from land, about 3,219km east of Madagascar and 2,000 miles west of Australia and the closest ships were said to be some two days from reaching her.
During a blog entry written on Wednesday, Ms Sunderland, who began her trip in January, described sailing her boat, Wild Eyes , through several days of extremely rough weather, which apparently damaged a sail.
She said she was able to patch the sail, but added: "It wasn't the most fun job I've had out here. Wild Eyes was rolling around like crazy."
Mr Sunderland said her Internet system was also down and it was possible she would not be able to fix it.
In a post on her blog, her family wrote she had battled 60-knot winds and 6-to-7.6-metre seas before going missing and had been "knocked down" several times - a reference to the boat tipping until the sails touch water.
Ms Sunderland had hoped to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe alone nonstop but had to give up her chance at that record when she was forced to pull into a port at Cape Town, South Africa, for repairs to her boat.
Her parents have been criticized by some in the media for allowing her to undertake the solo voyage at 16.
Sailing experts have said that she was ill-advised to leave California in January, because she risked arriving in the Indian Ocean at the start of the winter season.
Agencies