Zac Sunderland Youngest Person To Sail The World (Photos)

Hundreds of people gathered to meet the teenage boy, Zac Sunderland, who is the youngest person to sail the world. Read more on Zac Sunderland below.

Zac Sunderland, 17, left Marina del Rey when he was only 16 on June 14, 2008, and became the youngest person to sail the world alone.

Sunderland beat the record that was previously held by Jesse Martin of Australia, who was 18 when he completed his trip in 1999.

Zac crossed three oceans and five seas, and crossed the equator twice, covering more than 25,000 miles.  During his travels, he dealt with a pirate scare, a broken boom, broken tiller, broken forestay rigging, a broken bulkhead, and he was swamped and almost washed overboard by a huge wave off Grenada.

Zac returned to his home in Thousand Oaks that he shares with six younger brothers and sisters.

Laurence Sunderland, Zac’s father, watched his son mature during his odyssey: “He left thinking that he knew a lot about life, and the difference now is, he does. You look into his eyes; he’s very much a deep thinker now. He tries to anticipate things more so now, before they happen.”

Many criticized his parents for letting a teenager embark on what could be a risky adventure. “This is our whole life — boating, and Laurence has felt a huge amount of responsibility,” Zac’s mother, Marianne Sunderland, said early in the trip. “Zac has had all the best safety equipment — from satellite phones to his own meteorologists, and everyone to help him. With modern technology there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be successful.”

For Zac, there were certainly some difficulties of being alone at sea for such long stretches. “The hardest thing to get used to is that there’s no normalcy,” he said at one point. “Every day is different. Never being anywhere at a certain time is hard to get used to.”

Congrats to Zac Sunderland on his accomplishment!

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Posted by: Monya

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