She spoke to reporters after coming to shore early Saturday on the French island of Reunion off of east Africa, brought by a French patrol boat.
She says she plans to keep sailing. The accident June 10 "ended my trip but it didn't end my dream."
Her brother Zac flew to Reunion to greet her.
Sunderland, whose father is a shipwright and has a yacht management company, set sail from Los Angeles County's Marina del Rey in her 40-foot (12-meter) boat, Wild Eyes, on Jan. 23. In April she had to give up hope of breaking the record for being the youngest when she was forced to stop for repairs.
Then three-story-high waves broke her boat's mast and cut off her satellite communications.
She was rescued by a French fishing boat 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) west of Australia.
Sunderland said she wants to write a book eventually and definitely wants to keep sailing, but for now she's most looking forward to getting home.
Sunderland had spent the past 10 days on the French patrol boat Osiris as it returned from the Kerguelen Islands, a remote and barren patch of rocks north of Antarctica, where she was taken briefly after the rescue.
AP contributed to this report.