While ocean racers are rock stars in France and much of the rest of Europe, sailors aren’t given quite so much ink or air time here in the U.S. But American solo sailor Zac Sunderland has managed to get himself an article in ESPN magazine on his solo trip around the world in his bid to be the youngest circumnavigator. An excerpt is below:
“Zac Sunderland was four weeks into the hardest part of his journey, the long, mind-numbing leg between the tiny island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic and the tiny island of Grenada on the edge of the Caribbean. The crossing was the last great hurdle in his quest to be the youngest person to sail solo around the world. It was a desolate, often windless stretch — 4,278 nautical miles that, on a good day, he covered at just six nautical miles an hour. The math could make seasoned sailors talk to themselves, let alone a 17-year-old California kid who’d just realized he’d lost his radar.”
