Zachary Tristan Sunderland (born November 29, 1991) is an American former sailor who was the first person under the age of 18 to sail solo around the world.

[12] Sunderland crossed the Pacific to his first port of call, the Marshall Islands, then headed west to Papua New Guinea, then Australia, the Indian Ocean, Mauritius and Madagascar, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, sailing across the Atlantic, and finally transiting the Panama Canal/Galapagos Islands back to the Pacific and home.

[16] Sailing from Majuro, Sunderland reached Darwin, Australia on September 18, 2008, with a faulty bilge pump and fuel problems forcing him a stop in Papua New Guinea.

250 km off the Indonesian coast, in the Indian Ocean near Cocos Islands, he encountered a large 60–70-foot wooden fishing boat without flags.

The pirates, after shadowing the Intrepid for some time, eventually lost interest and sped off, but not before Sunderland, as a precaution, had loaded his revolver and locked himself in his cabin.

Amid continuing engine and fuel problems, a snapped boom, and a broken tiller needing repairs, Sunderland reached Cocos Islands (a.k.a.

[24] Sunderland took short hops to East London, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, and finally got to Cape Town, where he had a chance meeting with Mike Perham, who was competing for the record as the world's youngest solo-circumnavigator, and Minoru Saito who, at 75, was making his eighth trip and held the record as the oldest solo, non-stop circumnavigator.

After stops in Mexico to dodge bad weather and repair a bulkhead, Sunderland tacked back up the coast to home, arriving July 16, 2009.

According to John Reed, Secretary to the WSSRC, Sunderland used an engine at various times during the attempt, stopped, had assistance and did not sail around Cape Horn.