Hartog/AP
Abby Sunderland, seen here on her sailboat in
January, is doing fine and has plenty of food.
Abby Sunderland's boat was found late Thursday in the southern Indian Ocean by a spotter plane after communications earlier in the day failed and the 16-year-old was feared lost at sea.
Rough seas, including 25-foot waves and 70 mile per hour winds, knocked off the boat's mast, setting it adrift.
"I think I knew in my heart that she was OK," Marianne Sunderland said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It was a very difficult several hours."
Critics of the family said a trip of this magnitude is too difficult for a teenager. Laurence Sunderland, Abby's father, said the decision to let her go was not easy, but he was confident she could handle any situation.
"Life is dangerous," he said.
Sunderland's boat, a 40-foot yacht named "Wild Eyes," has a space heater and at least two weeks of food, according to a family spokesman.
Three French ships were on their way from the coast of Africa.
Sunderland started her trip Jan. 23 from Marina del Rey, Calif.
Members of Sunderland's family believed Abby was injured and that the boat had possibly capsized, though they also thought she was onboard because two emergency beacons were manually activated, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"She's got all the skills she needs to take care of what she has to take care of, she has all the equipment as well," her brother Zac, who sailed around the world at age 17.
Zac Sunderland declined to say whether it was wise for his sister to start her voyage in late January when she would face heavy storms in the southern Hemisphere.
Jeff Casher, an adviser for the trip, responded, however, saying Abby Sunderland was tough.
"I was concerned going into this," Casher told the Times. "She's 16, and she's a girl. But she quickly disabused me of those notions."
In Sunderland's most recent blog post Wednesday morning she described wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour and that she had to repair a ripped sail, before saying she needed some rest.
"I am off to sleep before it really picks up."
On her website she said on June 8 she had finished a 2,100-mile leg from South Africa to north of the Kerguelen Islands. Sunderland still had more than 2,100 miles on a 10- to 16-day leg to a point south of Cape Leeuwin on the southwest tip of Australia.
With News Wire Services