Thursday, July 16, 2009

Zac Sunderland Sails Home...

I mentioned a while back Zac Sunderland, the teen on a quest to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world singlehanded. He completed his journey, sailing into Marina Del Rey this morning after more than 400 days at sea. It's possible to make the trip faster, but Zac wasn't racing for a speed record, he wanted to meet people and explore countries along the way. Here's a short excerpt from his press conference.

I think his comment about teenagers being encouraged to do "difficult things," is good to heed. His mom says that a lot of people gave her grief about letting her boy take on such a dangerous task, but she point out that first, Zac an extremely experienced sailor, and second, life without risk is hardly worth living. There was a time when kids his age did all kinds of dangerous and exciting things. Romeo and Juliet were dead by his age! But I think another thing worth noting is the role of faith in this family. These are clearly religious people, as a few of their blog posts make clear. I think there is a relationship between having faith in something larger than ourselves and the ability to take risk.

-t

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