Zac Sunderland sounds pretty nonchalant for someone who has sailed halfway around the world on a quest for adventure and a world record.

"Everything's going well," the Thousand Oaks teen said by satellite telephone Thursday as he sat alone aboard his 36-foot sailboat Intrepid, some 170 miles southwest of Madagascar, a huge island off the southeastern coast of Africa. The sound of wind flapping through sails can be clearly heard in the background even though Zac is 12 time zones away from Ventura County.

Three weeks earlier, the then 16-year-old Zac had pulled into Mauritius, an island in the south Indian Ocean about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Zac's arrival in Mauritius marked the halfway point of his round-the-world journey.

He hopes to arrive in Southern California in April at the age of 17. Should he do so, he would become the youngest person in history to circumnavigate the globe alone in a sailboat. The oldest of seven children, he comes from a family of sailors and has spent much of his life at sea.

Australian Jess Martin, who completed a solo circumnavigation at the age of 18 in 1999, holds the record.

Zac set sail June 14, leaving Marina Del Rey en route to Hawaii for the first leg of his journey. From there, Zac went on to the Marshall and Solomon islands, and to Australia.

Rough patches on the way

He's encountered rough seas, a broken tiller and other mechanical problems on his boat. He also encountered a possible pirate boat in the Indian Ocean. The unidentified wooden boat came within a couple of hundred yards of Zac's boat before backing off.

Despite these and other scares, Zac so far has no regrets about his decision to circle the globe alone.

"It's been a great experience so far," Zac said. However, he confesses that it was a little different passing his 17th birthday, which he celebrated Nov. 29, alone.

"The day had finally come for me to open my presents that have traveled halfway around the world!" Zac wrote in his blog at http://www.zacsunderland.com. His presents included things every 17-year-old might want — CDs, a digital camera and candy bars from his grandmothers.

Zac wrote that he was also grateful for "this awesome cake that you just have to add water and microwave."

Since leaving Mauritius, where he spent two weeks visiting family and friends who flew there to visit, Zac has had to contend with light winds. The winds have made his journey to the African mainland slower than he might otherwise want.

But he's also grateful for the nice weather, considering this is summer and typhoon season in the Southern Hemisphere.

"He's happy to just move slowly and be safe," said his mother, Marianne, from her Thousand Oaks home.

To make sure her son is safe, Marianne and her husband, Laurence, monitor the weather and ocean currents from the Internet at home.

Zac also receives daily updates from ClearPoint, a weather information service that tracks weather around the globe.

Marianne hopes to fly to Cape Town, South Africa, with her husband in January to meet with her son.

Concern over pirates

Zac had considered going north around the horn of Africa and through the Suez Canal and then the Mediterranean Sea.

But Marianne said everyone decided that a southern crossing would be much safer because of all of the piracy off the Somalian coast.

"It's really getting out of control off of Somalia," she said, noting how pirates there recently tried to take over a U.S. cruise ship using high-speed boats. The ship outran the pirates.

Piracy along the northeast coast of Africa is convincing many ship captains that they should do what Zac is doing — sail around the southern portion of Africa.

All of the added ship traffic can be hazardous because some ships have decided not to broadcast their location, fearing this would draw pirates to them, Marianne said. She said her son can still track the ships from his boat using onboard radar.

Technology and all of the gadgets it has produced, including satellite phones and e-mail, definitely made it easier for Marianne to allow her teenage son to sail the world alone.

"There are not nearly as many unknowns as there used to be," she said, noting she speaks with her son at least twice a day by phone.

When he's not working on the boat or on the lookout for other boats and ships, Zac is hitting the books, working toward his high school diploma.

From South Africa, Zac plans to cross the South Atlantic to the northeast coast of Brazil. He'll sail north along the coast from there, through the Panama Canal, then along the western coast of Central America and Mexico before reaching California.