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Struck Down in the Pacific
Sailing the South Pacific may seem like an idyllic pursuit, but when American Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her British boyfriend Richard Sharp were caught in a category four hurricane 19 days into what should have been a 30-day crossing, the dream turned into a nightmare.

In the May 2002 issue of National Geographic Adventure, Ashcraft described how she had to fight the desire to just give up, how she fixed a makeshift mast and sail, rationed her supplies and plotted a course for Hawaii, 1,500 miles away.

She continues to sail and in 2000 published an account of her ordeal in the book, Red Sky in Mourning.

When she woke 27 hours later, Sharp was gone, his safety line broken, and while the boat had righted itself, the mainmast had snapped.