D -Day!

Whew! My blog was not posting there for a few days. Bad timing as there has been a lot going on. First of all to all who have been emailing about where to see me take off tomorrow...

Burton Chace Park
13650 Mindanao Way
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
(310) 305-9595

Questions & press begin at 12:00.
Board Intrepid and chase boats 1:00

The Marina del Rey Boat Show will be going on at the same time. I think you can still see me take off from the park without going to the show which is $10 for ages 12 and up. The view would definitely be better from the show though. Parking is down Mindanao in the overflow parking. There are lots of signs. Good Luck!

Since the last posting...
We had a great first day at the boat show. Lisa Gizara, who has been taking a lot of the photos you see here in the past week, helped set up our booth with Darrell Steffey, who has been amazing with organizing our booth and coordinating with Duncan and Don at the boat show. Not only this but working on tying up Intrepid's bulging eletrical systems. Last I saw him tonight he had (at about 10:30) come up with a shore power cord since my mom took mine out of her car and left it at home. I don't know how he got it but, in his usual way, he saw that we needed something and just took care of it. JP spent half a day finding and fixing a water tank leak while his own boat's refit goes undone. Peter, Amparo, Rwanda, the list goes on...

We had a long sea trial on Thursday with NBC on board a chase boat with my dad. They got some great footage and will use some of it for The Today Show tomorrow. Friday was spent adding running back stays to the rig for extra reinforcement. Also had to perfect the reefing lines. Thanks Mike and Brett! Al from Panavision came down and hung out with us to run the wires to the cameras throughout the boat. Greg Lawson hung back and video taped the whole scene with food lined up along the entire dock and Lisa organizing everything into food groups! He also did impromptu last day interviews which should be interesting as we are all way tired.
People ask me what is going on inside my head. I tell them I can't wait to get out to sea so I can relax! Of course there will be a lot of work still to do underway. Hopefully it will make my first leg go by quicker. At 4,500 miles and figuring 1,000 miles a week, I've got at least 4.5 weeks until I see the Marshall Islands in Micronesia. What will you all have done in 4.5 weeks? Think of me out there!
My mom will be posting my emails here on my blog while I am away. My shipboard email is very slow and not able to handle large quantities of mail so keep sending them to zacsworldadventure@yahoo.com and I will get them via home. We will be expanding the web site in the next few weeks including making a way to sign up for feeds and updates, a whole page on Intrepid and her refit and equipment, my course and location and a new photo gallery with albums of photos taken so far. Come back soon!
Until tomorrow,
Zac