Search On For Teen Sailor Lost at Sea

A search and rescue team has been dispatched for Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old girl who earned media attention for her bid to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe, is feared lost at sea, according to ABC News. Sunderland’s crew has lost contact with her in the southern Indian Ocean, and an engineer on her support team says that two emergency beacons from her boat are going off. Abby’s mom, MaryAnne, says her daughter manually activated the beacons; they were not set off automatically by contact with water. When she was last heard from, Abby was sailing through 20-25 foot waves with 35-knot winds and she said that twice her sail had hit the water. The closest ship to the area of her disappearance is 400 miles away.