Marine Life

Sometimes it feels lonely sailing around the world alone on a small boat on a big sea. Except Rich Wilson hasn’t really been alone. He’s joined from time to time by other living creatures—creatures with lives as wonderful, and journeys as compelling, as his own. Some...

Wildlife

Often I am asked – don’t you feel confined in that little boat? And my answer always is – not at all! Because where else can you live every day, all day, with a 360 degree view of the horizon and a hemispheric dome of sky overhead? Immersed in open nature this...

Midpoint

A midpoint invites you to look both forward and backward in a project. Looking backward, are we attaining our goals that we stated at the start? For this project, it was to sail well, to tell the story of the sea to those on land, to deliver all of our promised...

Midpoint

When preparing Rich for his Vendée Globe voyage, we worked on three aspects of his training. One was getting him physically prepared, another was mental toughness and the third was training him emotionally so that he would be able to better deal with extenuating...

Climate Change

As the Great American IV speeds along the South Atlantic, the ocean will look much the same to Rich as it did during his race in 2008. But if you look closely, there have been some pretty big changes in our global ocean and in the climate of our planet. Let’s start...

Climate Change

When we sailed east past Marion Island in the Indian Ocean a few days ago, we were 220 miles further north than when we sailed past here in Vendée Globe 2008. Then, as now, there were course restrictions for safety from icebergs breaking off Antarctica that we had to...