“The UK-Halsey group is a proud sponsor of Zac’s record-breaking voyage. He put our sails to the test as he tested himself,” said UK-Halsey International’s General Manager Adam Loory. In fact, when Zac mentioned the help he got from his sponsors in his dockside news conference, UK-Halsey was the first company he mentioned.

When asked about his sails, Zac said, “After sailing over 25,000 nautical miles as a solo circumnavigated the world, my UK-Halsey sails proved themselves again and again. They sailed well on all points of sail and their durability was amazing. They kept me moving along in the light equatorial winds and stayed strong when I was tripled reefed going through storms.

The professionalism of the UK Halsey team was amazing. When my forestay broke in gale force winds and my genoa was shredded, it was a matter of days before they had made a new sail and shipped it around the world to the little island of Mauritius where INTREPID and I were recovering from a rough Indian Ocean crossing. I want to thank the team at UK Halsey for making the wings that carried me around the world.”

Sunderland’s 25,000-plus mile track went from Los Angeles to Hawaii, through the South Pacific -- with only two stops -- over the top of Australia, across the Indian Ocean to Cape Town and then up to the Caribbean and through the Panal Canal and then home after several stops in Central America and Mexico. He had some unplanned stops for some major repairs that included a broken boom, broken headstay and a broken bulkhead. But each time Zac brought his boat in safely. For details about his trip, read his blog at http://www.zacsunderland.com/ or you can buy his DVD with tons of video footage. Also look for his upcoming book.

Even after circling the plant alone by sailboat and writing his first book, Zac still has to finish high school and learn how to drive a car. You know he is 17 when he speaks because he frequently punctuates his sentences with “crazy,” i.e, “It’s been a crazy 13 months.” But yet his is wise for his age. At his post voyage press conference he said about his accomplishment, “Society puts younger people like 15 to 18 year-olds in a box. No one expects you to do much. They are just content for you to go to high school and play football. That’s pretty much it you know. There is so much more potential that people can do with the right motivation and ambition. So my thought would be to just get out there and do hard things; go for it with all you’ve got.”

As far as the legitimacy of Zac’s record is concerned, the editor’s of the San Francisco based-sailing magazine summed things up will in the online edition the day Zac finished by writing, “That said, asterisks and footnotes run rampant on lists of sailing records, especially when it comes to solo circumnavigations. In this instance, mainstream news reporters seem to be struggling to get the facts straight as to whose record Zac actually broke. Australian Jesse Martin, who returned home at 18, still holds the record as the youngest to go around nonstop and unassisted via the 'great capes'. David Dicks, another Aussie, was a few weeks younger than Martin when he returned home in pursuit of Martin's title, but was disqualified because he accepted a repair part en route. Zac Sunderland never intended to break the nonstop, unassisted record, nor round the great capes. But the simple fact is he's the youngest person to solo circumnavigate by any route. Period. Younger than Martin, younger than Dicks, younger than Graham, Brian Caldwell, Tania Aebi, John Guzzwell and all the rest. And it is that enormous accomplishment that we celebrate today. So three cheers for Zac Sunderland — and welcome home!”