Zac will have two radar units to warn of vessel traffic. He'll be able to e-mail and blog on his website: Zacsunderland.com.
He'll also have an Iridium satellite phone with software provided by ClearPoint, enabling free calls and access to detailed weather reports from anywhere.
That is a crucial instrument and a significant sponsorship arrangement. Martin's phone tab after his journey, Laurence Sunderland points out, was $50,000.
Still, if repairs are required along the way, the voyage could cost as much as $300,000.
Zac's first stop will be the Marshall Islands in Micronesia, 4,000 miles away. His dad will greet him there and at strategic destinations to offer moral support.
Then to Tarawa, Kiribati; to the Solomon Islands; to Thursday Island and Darwin, Australia; to Cocos (Keeling) Islands and across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, Durban and Cape Town, South Africa.
Most harrowing, Zac predicts, will be the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa.
Also referred to as the Cape of Storms, it is tumultuous and unpredictable. Sunderland considered sailing through the Suez Canal to avoid rounding the cape, but recent incidents involving pirates and gunplay off Somalia, which must be passed to enter the Red Sea, prompted him to plot a course around rather than through Africa.
Laurence Sunderland said a greater challenge for his son will be overcoming fatigue caused by sleep deprivation, periods of which Zac is bound to encounter, as he'll be able to nap only during fair weather.
"That kind of fatigue can make even the simplest task impossible," Laurence Sunderland said. "But the beauty is that Zac is familiar with that, because he has been sailing all his life."
After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Sunderland will sail across the Atlantic, pass through the Panama Canal then visit the Galapagos Islands before setting a northward course home.
All told he will sail about 40,000 miles. And when he returns, whatever his age, he will have become a man.
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pete.thomas@latimes.com
