250 people took to the water at Town Beach, Port Macquarie to take part in the 2024 attempt at breaking the paddle-out world record. Although unsuccessful, organisers are not deterred.
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00:00Well, we're hoping obviously we're going out pretty soon.
00:27We want to take out the world record on the Guinness Book of Records for the largest paddle
00:31out in the world.
00:33This is a community event.
00:34It's really getting everybody in the water, young or old, keeping them safe.
00:38And so we have to beat 511 is the number.
00:41Last year we got 643.
00:43And the next thing we've got to do, we've got to hold hands for 30 seconds.
00:47So we didn't do that last year.
00:48We got way above the number, but we missed out on not holding hands.
00:53So the swell was bigger than this year.
00:55It's not perfect, but it's smaller than it was last year.
00:58So we're going for the world title and let's see if we can do it.
01:02So that's us.
01:03Yeah.
01:04Listen, Zach's story is quite famous.
01:07It's not only a story for our family, but when he was in the water and he'd just been
01:11in a shark attack, you can imagine it's at a critical time when he knows today he's not
01:16coming home and he knew he wasn't coming home.
01:19And the strange thing is in the book and the movie, the documentary we're doing will explain
01:24the reason behind that.
01:25But we talked about 12 weeks before and he said things to me that were concerning.
01:30He said to me that, Dad, I'm not going to be around much longer.
01:33And I didn't realize when we did the documentary, we interviewed all of his friends and he'd
01:37been saying that for about six months.
01:40He knew that he was going home.
01:41And so he'd become a Christian and he really fell in love with God and not just a religious
01:47belief system.
01:48He actually had a relationship with God and it's true, God is love.
01:52And when you look at Zach, Zach really had a handle on that.
01:54He really, I think you'd say the biggest thing about Zach was he just loved all people, didn't
02:00matter who you were.
02:01And the last few minutes of his life, he spent praying for his friends to be safe.
02:06And you see it in that situation.
02:09And so when we think about what love is, love is about being unselfish, about thinking about
02:14other people.
02:15That's really our event today.
02:17It's not just a, it's a community event.
02:19It's not about me or even about Zach.
02:22Zach really in some ways, I think he wouldn't want me to make it about him.
02:26You know, it's about other people.