Bringing the High Seas Home

By CHRISTEN B. BROWN

CONTRIBUTING Writer

2,700 people have climbed Mt. Everest. 500 astronauts have traveled into space. Fewer than 50 people have sailed around the world. Alone. For 121 days. In a 60-foot sailboat.

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Nearly 20 years ago, the trimaran Great American capsized off the Cape of Good Hope. No one knew that 20 years after his rescue, the sole skipper of the Great American would not only succeed on an equally extensive and fatiguing expedition, but would set two milestones along the way.

In March 2009, Harvard alum Rich Wilson ’78, MBA ’82 became the first American and the oldest person to ever complete the Vendee Globe sailing race, a four-month expedition in which sailors travel around the world, starting and finishing in France.

Wilson sailed 29,000 miles on the turbulent path around the Cape of Good Hope, which is legendary for its frightening storms.

Yet, the magnitude of the dangers of Wilson’s journey would escape one’s imagination until he describes the loss of his comrades.

“Two boats and two skippers were lost,” he reminisces. “One was saved by the Australian Navy off of Cape Horn.”

Of the 30 boats that started, Wilson finished ninth. But the distinguishable finish wasn’t the reason he entered into the race.

“As a school teacher, I knew how bored to tears kids would be in the classroom,” he quips.

So he founded sitesALIVE! in 1993, a foundation that documents Wilson’s expeditions to broadcast in classrooms throughout the country and around the world.

“The idea is to connect to students with adventures and expeditions,” Wilson explains. “Students in grades 5-9 don’t know how the journey will turn out, but since it’s connected to real people, they pay attention.”

SitesALIVE! has collected 75 semesters’ worth of adventures and expeditions.

Although Wilson’s documented journey in 1993 was only a pilot project, it turned out to be a sensational success. The interactive experience superseded Wilson’s targeted online audience, leading Wilson and partners to found another distribution channel.

This network reached a quarter of a million students through the Internet, which was 5% of the online market at the time, and newspaper publications ran for 11 weeks and reached 13 million readers. SitesALIVE! was the first online interactive learning experience at the time of its creation.

Accounts of his latest expedition in March were published in 50 U.S. newspapers and broadcast to schoolchildren in 15 other nations, including China, Taiwan, Australia, Italy, and Argentina.

“It’s a transforming experience for [the students] to virtually go out into the real world and experience things,” Wilson says.

And real world experience Wilson certainly has.

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Sailor by day, math teacher, Washington defense analyst, technical consultant in Saudi Arabia, and writer for the Dukakis campaign by night?

Well, not in the literal sense. But Wilson has served in all of these roles at some point in his life.

He was a math teacher in the Boston public schools during the first year of desegregation, a Washington defense analyst on B-52s and cruise missiles, a technical consultant for power and desalination plants in Saudi Arabia, and a writer for Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign.

He holds three long-distance world sailing records. His book, Racing a Ghost Ship, won the Scientific American Young Readers Book Award. His MIT master’s thesis on the Antarctic Krill Fishery spawned legislation in Congress to build a fisheries research vessel capable of traveling to the Antartic.

“Who would’ve thought my thesis would be used as research for a congressional bill?” Wilson laughs.

His wide array of interests have led him to not only pursue his passions but also excel in each one, and he encourages Harvard undergraduates to do the same.

“Expose yourself to as many cultures and disciplines as you can,” Wilson advises. “You have the opportunity to do whatever you want—an opportunity that others might not have. Don’t be swayed by the idea of making a lot of money or studying something simply because your parents did.”

And he understands that finding that perfect fit takes time.

“I knew my role would be in education, and I knew I would be a teacher somehow, but I wanted to reach more students,” Wilson reflects. “It just took awhile to find the niche that suited.”

Despite his achievements, Wilson continues to take on risky yet admirable feats to achieve his ultimate goal—to show kids that there are no limits in life.

“I’ve had asthma since age one, and as a kid, it would’ve been nice to see someone doing something—anything—with asthma,” Wilson says.

And although completing the Vendee Globe was a major success, Wilson admits to having reservations in the beginning.

“The Vendee Globe was too long, too hard, too dangerous,” he says, joking that “I would’ve rather go played in a Superbowl with the Patriots just to take a day off.”

But inspiring kids of all ages to persevere in the face of difficulty gave him the motivation to push through to the end.

Lorraine Leo, a teacher at the Jackson School in Newton, Mass., has used sitesAlive! with her students since 2001. In that time, she has witnessed first-hand the level of inspiration Wilson creates for her students.

“The younger girls thought it was nice to see him competing against women from other nations,” she explains. “They really liked that.”

Leo used Wilson’s journeys to teach her students from a “global perspective.” Still, she hoped her students would take from the voyages something more than the experience of simply watching a sporting event.

“I always emphasized his perseverance,” she says, “to show that despite his severe asthma, his circumstances, and regardless of whether or not he won or lost, he would always keep trying.”