Race France to France: Leave Antarctica to Starboard
by Rich Wilson ’68
sitesALIVE!, August 2012
In 2008–2009, Rich Wilson became only the second American to finish the Vendée Globe, deemed the “most grueling and dangerous prolonged competition on the planet.” (Garry Emmons, HBS Bulletin, 2009) The senior skipper at age 58, and a severe asthmatic, Rich finished ninth of 11 finishers, out of 30 starters, racing 29,000 miles over 121 days in his 60′ boat, Great American III.
Rich Wilson’s book brings you onto his boat in the heat and doldrums of the tropics, in the gales and cold of the south, to see the beauty of the albatross and southern stars, and to feel his fear, fatigue and emotions in the unending stress of a global ocean race.
A lifelong educator, Rich fulfilled a primary goal of his race: to excite and engage students about science, geography and math in the real world, by a program produced by sitesALIVE!—an online educational series that links remote field sites with classrooms around the world. Reaching seven million readers weekly, and 200,000 students, Wilson and a team of experts—doctors, professors, merchant mariners, artists and authors—answer students’ questions, connecting them with real-world situations and exciting new discoveries.