Adrift in a lifeboat on the Atlantic Ocean for more than 40 hours after the tall ship she was sailing on sank in the Atlantic Ocean last week, Erica Trimble arrives home in Whitehorse today.

"I don't remember what I said to her but there were a lot of hugs,” father Richard Trimble told the Star Tuesday from Calgary, where he and partner Ella LeGresley were reunited with their daughter.

Erica was among 42 Canadian high school and university students sailing on the S.V. Concordia as part of the Class Afloat program, when the tall ship sank in rough seas and weather 500 kilometres off the Brazilian coast Feb. 17.

All 64 students and crew were saved, but half were scooped from the waters by a ship bound for Brazil, while the others, including Erica, were saved by another ship heading to Argentina.

Because of this situation, Richard was originally informed that Erica would arrive first in Argentina, then travel to Brazil to be reunited with her classmates.

"That plan changed almost every hour, and the kids ended up getting airlifted (from the Argentina-bound merchant ship) to a Brazilian navy frigate and they got back to Rio overnight,” Erica's father explained.

"Then they took the bus to Sao Paulo, Air Canada to Toronto, then another flight to Calgary.”

Erica, a 17-year-old former Porter Creek Secondary School student, was accepted last year to study in the Class Afloat program, based in Lunenberg, N.S., and was in the midst of a 10-month journey.

She and her cabin mates had already crossed the Atlantic twice, making port in the Mediterranean and Africa, among other destinations.

Emergency training and preparation and a solid crew are being credited for the safe return of all students and crew members, but there were moments last week when LeGresley and Trimble were on pins and needles.

"We didn't sleep at all, and it was a pretty shaky night,” Trimble said of knowing little except that Erica's boat had sunk and that there were survivors.

"The first call was that the Brazilian Navy had spotted the life boats, but the message we got was life rafts were spotted with people aboard but it didn't say how many people or who they were.”

But by 3 a.m. last Thursday, Brazilian Navy officials informed Class Afloat that all 64 of S.V. Concordia's passengers had been plucked from the ocean.