Jun 05 2008
Way to go, Zac!
OK, this is hands-down ubercool. I mean, uber, ubercool. Zac Sunderland is organizing a circumnavigation, on his boat, the Intrepid, an Islander 36. (Surely that fact will at least goad Zen into commenting. =) . Check out his website and the NPR interview with him. The interview is pretty lame, frankly, since the interviewer is kind of clueless. They keep emphasizing his age, over and over and over. And asking goofball questions about what he’s going to do “when he grows up”.
Um, hello, has no one figured out that Zac is demonstrating more maturity than 90% of the “adults” I’m acquainted with? His mom, Marianne, says
Some people really focus on his age, as if suddenly in 18 months he is going to be more capable. Maturity and age, they don’t always go together in a black-and-white fashion.
A few of her other comments to the media just crack me up. I wonder what they’re thinking? Well, scratch that, the language makes it clear. Most people are thinking fear. There’s a lot of fear, worry, angst, and drama, in the language the interviewers in all the media are using on Zac and his family. Someone has also apparently reported the Sunderlands to CPS for “allowing” Zac to do this. (One of these days, I’ll finish my tirade about how messed up Americans’ abilities to appropriately assess risk are…). Although I really like how the Yahoo! sports blog article started out:
Exploration. It’s one of the founding tenets of advanced Western society, but the furthest us coddled modern people ever get is, say, a cab around a big city, or a flight to a safe, sanitized European tourist trap. Few of us still foster that pinnacle of human curiosity. Most of us just stay put.
Isn’t that the sad, sad truth? I also really liked a comment a friend of the family made on a Yahoo!Answers page:
So you can certainly say that I’m a bit biased and very pro-Sunderland. However, I want to say that I’m so tired of hearing milk-toast parents say “I wouldn’t let my child…”. What a depressing lack of imagination! No wonder so many kids turn to drugs and alcohol and become pathetic underachievers. I know many teens and older adults, who never achieve one third of their potential. They just plod along from day to day wishing good fortune would fall from the sky in front of them, but work for it? Try a different approach? Never! As for child abuse, we all know what that is: the denial of essential comforts and needs by the adult responsible for their upbringing. Why not teach children to excel in their lives and let them know they are loved and supported positively, rather than suppress their dreams and lock them in boxes?
He continues on:
If something happens to Zac, I’ll be devastated by the loss of such a fine example of youth and the loss of a lifetime friend, but I’ll be glad to know that he dared to be better, sought to do more than the mundane. Yes, the sea is treacherous, but so are cities and so are highways. No mother seems to think twice about letting her children attend a party with multiple perils, a high school filled with drugs, sex, treachery and misinformation, nor to allow driving the perilous highways and freeways at 70+MPH in a car that can kill them in the blink of an eye, because the same parents most likely have taught that behavior to their kids by being drug and sex abusers themselves. Probably the same parents were underachievers themselves, who were pigeon-holed by their parents before them.
I wonder why no one has thought to just say “wow, Marianne (and Laurence), you guys have done a bang-up job in providing a great environment in which a young man like that can grow! Can’t wait to see what the six other Sunderlands grow up to be like!” (They are a family of seven children. Seven! And a boat family! HA!)
The gallery photos on Zac’s site make me smile; babies on boats speak to me, currently.
I guess what makes me just so unbelievably stoked about this story is that, well, Zac is demonstrating everything that I was hoping for when we set out to raise boat kids. He’s been doing real, practical, hands-on skillful work since he was a small child. He is doing something he loves. He is capable of visualizing a goal, and working like a longshoreman to make it happen. He is educated, in any practical sense of the word. After 16 years in, on, and around boats, he is someone who is competent to sail around the world.
Zac is writing a book, naturally. And you can bet I’ll be buying the first copy I can lay my hands on, for bedtime reading for the boyos.
Zac is all that except for his tendency to start every entry with an apology. We’ll have to coach him out of it. Other than that, he strikes me as the prime Example A for the results of homeschool and boat life. It turns all children into highly competent, rugged, individualistic madmen. I look forward to learning what insane idea my girls will come up with after living aboard for a few years.
Heheahah, ok I’ll take the bait
I had heard about this from the I-36 group of which I am a member. Even though mine is an I-29, I get to hang out with them as a “pet” member
Good for the kid! Being a boat child does good things for their spirit seems like. It will be interesting to read about your in the future.
When is the media not clueless !?
Oh BTW are you guys going to the Summer Sail event @ TI next week?
Hey Zen!
If I haven’t had this baby yet (see my other blog for details), then no. If I have, then yes. How’s that for an equivocal answer?
Right on, Zac! And, yeah, right on, Marianne and Laurence. Sheep are constitutionally incapable of understanding what is is to NOT be a sheep. I get tired of trying to talk to them.