Essay: Defining Success

Has Rich been successful in achieving his goals? At the start of the race Rich said he wanted to sail well and write well, to share his story with those on land, to deliver the sitesALIVE! content and to finish the Vendée Globe. He wasn’t defining success by winning or losing the race, since that was not his primary goal. Success can be defined in many ways.

Rich entered the Vendée Globe race in part for the challenge of the race, but mainly for the opportunity to create the sitesALIVE! education program designed to excite and engage students and families around the world. He says, ‘Once you’ve hooked kids with excitement, you can feed them whatever content you want—math, geography, teamwork, goal setting and more.”

Was his sitesALIVE! education program successful? Absolutely! Rich called in audio podcasts via his satellite phone, wrote Ship’s Logs, answered students questions, wrote essays in great detail, created videos of the gales, crossing the international dateline and prime meridian and on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, among others. With help from his shore team, he also published a weekly print series that has appeared in newspapers around the world, Rich did this while sailing the Great American IV in difficult weather conditions, on dangerously high seas, in the heat and freezing cold, over the course of more than 25,000 nautical miles.

Rich has been followed by thousands of students in classrooms and families around the world. He has received very positive feedback and support from his followers. These point to the success of the sitesALIVE! education program.

Now we anxiously await Rich to cross the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne and complete the Vendée Globe. Thank you Rich Wilson for your inspiration and perseverance in successfully completing the Vendée Globe with the admirable educational goals that you set up for yourself. We admire you!

Essay: What I'll Miss

The end of any great adventure brings a variety of feelings. First there is a sense of relief that comes from an end to the dangers and deprivations that have been endured. Then comes a sense of accomplishment from having worked so hard and long to achieve a very difficult goal. Rich will soon have circumnavigated the Earth solo nonstop not just once, but twice, an incredible accomplishment!

After being on the ocean, or any wild remote place for a long period of time it can be challenging to readjust to the “normal” world. Things we often take for granted like running water, fresh fruit, television, and a soft bed are much appreciated luxuries. On an expedition your priorities are different, and senses sharpened. You have to constantly innovate, solve problems and adapt. It is always nice to get back to civilization and all the comforts of home, at least for a while.

Then, despite all the hardship and fear, you start to reminisce about the amazing places you have been, and things you’ve seen that few people will ever experience. The shared experience of a challenging expedition often brings participants closer together and the friendships forged can be quite deep. While the comforts of home are appealing, to some people a life well lived means a series of great adventures. So, don’t be surprised if you see Rich Wilson set sail on yet another epic voyage, continuing to inspire people around the world to pursue their own dreams.

Essay: Teamwork, Perseverance & Asthma

When Rich Wilson was growing up, there were many mis-understandings about asthma. Many people still believed that asthma – with its cough, wheezing, shortness of breath, and tightness in the chest – was a psychological disease. Children with asthma were advised to sit out from sports and other strenuous physical activities, because exercise could provoke an attack of asthma. There were few, if any, famous role models with asthma whom a young person with asthma could admire and try to be like. Medicines to treat asthma were also quite primitive. They didn’t work terribly well and they often had unpleasant side effects, like nausea and jitteriness.

There have been major advances in our understanding and treatment of asthma since those times. We know now that for most children, asthma represents an allergic reaction of the breathing (bronchial) tubes. Muscles surrounding the tubes squeeze them into narrow passageways, and inflammation with swelling and mucus further plug them up. As you might imagine, exercise is good for the lungs as well as for the rest of the body. Children with asthma receiving proper treatment are encouraged now to play sports and be fully active without limitation. These days one can easily point to athletic superstars who have excelled despite their asthma, like Jackie Joyner-Kersee in track and field, Amy Van Dyken in swimming, Jerome Bettis in professional football, and, of course, Rich Wilson in sailboat racing. Also, our asthma medicines are stronger, safer, and simpler to use. For many people, that means simply taking one tablet once daily and perhaps one inhalation of medicine once or twice a day.

Although symptoms of asthma come and go, the tendency to develop narrow airways is present all the time for people with asthma. Asthma is a chronic condition. For many people with asthma, that means taking medicines every day to prevent asthma attacks and being on the alert to avoid things (called “triggers”) that might bring on asthma symptoms. Like sailing solo around the world, taking care of your asthma on a daily basis takes perseverance – not letting down your guard, even when things are going well. It also requires teamwork: patient, doctor, family, and friends, all working together to ensure healthy outcomes. Rich Wilson knows this: he takes his asthma medications every day; he checks his breathing frequently with a measuring tool called a peak flow meter, and he consults periodically with his medical team to ensure that he is getting the best treatments available. Smooth sailing takes perseverance and teamwork.

Essay: Fisheries Depletion

As Rich sails across the world’s oceans he will not see the thousands of fish species living in the waters far beneath his boat or the smaller prey species and plankton that they eat. Fish is a growing source of food for people around the world, but as more people eat fish and the technology to locate and catch them improves, many species have been depleted (or are being depleted) by overfishing, climate change, and other factors. Satellites and advanced sonars or fish finders are making it easier to locate schools of fish, and new nets equipped with sensors are catching more of the available fish. Bycatch, or catching fish you aren’t trying to catch, is a problem because it doesn’t allow those species to reach reproductive age to replenish their population.

Warming ocean waters are causing many fish populations, which prefer certain temperatures to grow and survive, to move to more preferable habitats which could be farther offshore and away from current locations. The same is happening to the prey fish eat, and as the source of food moves so do the fish that eat them.

Another increasing problem in the world has been illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which makes it very difficult to manage fisheries. It is a global problem that threatens ocean ecosystems and sustainable fisheries. Many governments, international organizations and private industry groups are working together to combat IUU fishing.

We want to be able to keep eating fish, but we won’t have enough for the future unless we allow depleted fish populations to rebuild and grow, and unless we keep other populations at healthy levels.

The good news is that fish are a renewable resource, and they can naturally replenish their populations if the right management measures are put in place.

As scientists we try to understand basic biological questions like how does each species of fish grow and reproduce, but we also need to know how the environment or ecosystem in which the fish live affects its behavior and life cycle. This way of looking at the whole picture (and not just the fish) is called ecosystem-based management, and it is being put into practice in many parts of the world. A number of depleted fish populations are recovering, but we have a lot more work to do.

As students, there are many ways you can become involved in helping to sustain fisheries around the world and especially in your local area. You can help track ocean currents through surface drifter programs (check out oceanographer Jim Manning’s drifter tracks), learning more about fish species that live in your area and catching only those fish that are not in danger of depletion.

Essay: Forces of Nature

As a young sailor and before I became an Officer and later a Master Mariner, I remember an elderly gentleman telling me, ‘The sea is safe until you forget it is dangerous’. This is absolutely true when considering the forces of nature. Theses ‘forces’ can include wind, waves, swells, currents, volcanoes, hurricanes and typhoons.

In my 50+ years at sea, nature twice dictated that her forces would have me very concerned as to whether I would get home. The first was in an area South of New Zealand, where ‘Great American IV’ will transit. In these latitudes a swell train goes virtually around the world coming basically from a WSWly direction. This voyage an extremely strong storm sent winds from the NW and thus with the standard swell and the storm swell from two different directions, there was a very confused sea state. Being in a quite small research vessel, it was impossible to sleep for almost two days as we struggled our way North to make the shelter of an island at the bottom of New Zealand. It is times such as this, that diligent ship handling becomes very necessary, otherwise serious ship damage can be incurred, with possibly, the loss of the vessel herself.

The second incident was in the South China Sea when caught in a Typhoon with very little room to manoeuvre. Winds in excess of 75 knots, and a swell height of at least 10 metres dictated that we needed to heave to, with the weather on our Port bow and speed rung on for around 10 knots. While the vessel pitched and rolled violently at times, we were able to hold our course, however our ‘speed over the ground’ on GPS showed that in fact we were going some 3 knots astern. The situation lasted some 12 hours until the weather abated somewhat, at which stage we were able to come back to our correct course. What was the most alarming bit, came next morning when the Chief Engineer informed me he had needed to nurse the main engine all night as there was a problem with one of the cylinders. Given that the engine was to stop, we would have been in dire straits.

Underwater volcanoes are not rare in the western section of the Pacific Ocean. Extreme forces of nature can cause an underwater eruption which sends great clouds of steam to the sea surface, and given that this eruption continues over a long period of time, a small island can emerge. A classic example is the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii. This started in the same way and over many thousands of years becoming as it is today, still forming further land mass. One product of these underwater volcanoes is pumice. Once while on watch crossing the Pacific, I glanced up from something I was doing and briefly thought we were about to run aground on a sand bank. Virtually totally impossible, the vessel having a very accurate position, but still extremely concerning. Eventuated that the ‘sand’ was in fact a large mass of floating, light coloured pumice, which had originated from a subterranean disturbance, more than likely a volcano.

Thus there comes from these few words, another saying: ‘Love the sea but respect it fully’.

Essay: Decision Making

When was the last time you had to think hard about making a decision? Often our everyday decisions are easy, and the consequences aren’t likely to be life or death. At other times, decisions can be very difficult and the decision that you make can have life altering effects. Making difficult decisions can be broken down into a specific step-wise process that can help lead to positive outcomes. What is your goal and will your decision help get you to your goal?

When I work in the emergency department, my team is constantly making decisions that affect our patients. We must decide which patient to see first (the sickest usually get priority) and then decide what we need to do to make someone better. Some decisions are hard to make and sometimes we need to do things that may be uncomfortable for our patient, but in the end, we know that our patient will get better, which is our goal. Above all else, we need to make sure that we “do no harm.” We strive to make good decisions so we don’t make our patients worse.

Rich is also constantly making decisions that will allow him to finish the race in the fastest time possible for him. Some of Rich’s top priorities are for his boat and for himself. While he makes hundreds of decisions every day, the first questions he must always answer is what effect will his decision have on his boat or on himself. Will more sail or less sail protect the boat? Should he take a nap or stay awake? Should he go faster and finish sooner or slow down and be safer?

Rich recently encountered a violent weather system and if he had maintained his boat speed, he would have run directly into the worst part of the storm, potentially damaging his boat and maybe himself! Instead, he made the decision to slow down, letting the storm pass in front of him and avoiding very dangerous sailing conditions. In mid-December, another Vendée Globe skipper, Jean-Pierre Dick, took a huge detour passing north of Tasmania and through the Bass Strait to avoid a similar storm. No other skipper had sailed through the Bass Strait during the Vendée Globe- it is far from the shortest route around the world, but these decisions worked to preserve the skipper and the boat.

Remember, without an intact boat and an intact skipper, there can be no successful race- and that is the goal to keep in mind when making decisions in the Vendée Globe!

Essay: 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 of them flop right up on deck. Flying fish use wing-like pectoral fins to get themselves airborne, gliding for up to 655 feet before splashing back down again (or getting dumped back overboard with Rich’s help.) The fish do this to escape predators like marlin, swordfish, and tuna–who surely aren’t expecting their prey to leave the ocean, even for a short period!

Many billions of other animals float, swim, crawl and sit beneath and around and sometimes on the Great American IV. Rich has glimpsed a few of the stranger ones: squid, who can taste with their skin. Shrimp, who like lobsters, wear their skeletons on the outside instead of inside like us.

But without Rich even seeing it, he knows that creatures from whales to corals (who look like rocks but are really colonies of tiny animals) are doing extraordinary things beneath the waves he rides: Humpback whales are singing complex and beautiful songs, which they change from year to year. Crabs with hairy chests huddle near undersea volcanic vents in the icy Southern Ocean for warmth, and farm bacteria on their chest hairs which they scrape off with special mouthparts to eat. Brainless jellyfish are choosing to split into pieces to make copies of themselves.

The ocean is our planet’s largest wilderness. Yet so many of its creatures seem to us like outer space aliens, they are so different from us.

But one magnificent creature keeps Rich company from time to time, and these two have a lot in common. Both are riding the wind. Both are on epic, long-distance journeys. And both will be spending months on end without seeing others of their own kind.

The albatross has the longest wingspan of any bird—more than 11 feet for the largest kind, the wandering albatross (there are 22 species). With its snowy white body and grey wings, the bird looks rather like a sea gull crossed with a limousine. It’s a spectacular sight many mariners like Rich have enjoyed through the ages. An albatross will often follow a boat, hoping for a handout from the crew, or at least some tasty fish guts tossed overboard. So it’s no wonder that albatrosses occupy a special place in maritime lore.
Some sailors believed that the albatross carried the soul of dead sailors—and seeing one was good luck. The soul of the dead sailor, some insisted, would protect them from harm. Others though the bird was a bad omen, foretelling the death of a seaman.

The truth about these magnificent sea birds is even more amazing. Without even flapping once, an albatross can glide for hours and cover several hundred miles! No other creature can do this. The bird’s secret? It’s called dynamic soaring. They spend half their time gaining height by angling their wings while flying into the wind. They then turn back toward the sea, swooping along at speeds up to 67 miles per hour, till they catch another updraft skyward. And do it again and again, expending remarkably little energy. By studying exactly how they do it, engineers are trying to design more efficient airplanes.

Rich and his albatross friend also face a common enemy at sea. Two of the other boats in the Vendee Globe have already been knocked out of the race by “UFOs”: Unidentified Floating Objects. Smaller UFOs threaten albatrosses as well, though in a different way. Albatrosses eat mainly fish and squid, but there’s so much trash in the ocean today that many of them are eating plastic by mistake! They even mistakenly feed plastic to their babies when they finally alight and nest each year on land. We humans are such slobs with our garbage that by the year 2050, scientists say there will be more of our plastic in the ocean than fish!

Many seabirds, as well as whales, dolphins and sea turtles, choke or die of starvation with stomachs full of trash. Numbers of many of these creatures are crashing. And that makes a special albatross named Wisdom particularly important. Wisdom, a Laysan albatross (who wanders the North Pacific), is the oldest seabird in the world—and as this article is being written, she’s incubating an egg!

So Rich—the oldest sailor in the Vendee Globe race–and Wisdom, the world’s oldest seabird– have something else in common: they both are showing the world that no matter how old you are, you can still do something wonderful to enrich our precious blue planet.

Essay: 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 physical or mentally exhaustive days and nights on the boat. Each workout had a beginning, middle and a final stretch very much like what he is doing while racing, although on a much smaller scale. We would begin each workout with a warmup period. He would do a five minute dynamic warmup increasing blood flow the muscles in his body that we were going to be working. We would then concentrate on core strengthening.

At the Midpoint of the workout we would be focusing on training his muscles to have as much strength, endurance and agility as possible. The Midpoint of each session was the toughest section of the workout because it had the most intensity. We were exhausting him physically which also simultaneously exhausted him mentally and emotionally. During this section of each workout I would remind Rich to stay focused, to take it one exercise at at time, one rep at a time. I knew if he could get through this section of the workout the rest of the workout would be smooth sailing!

The middle section of any competition is always humbling. It is the time when your mind wants to drift, your body wants to quit and you may question why you are doing it. Rich is probably having some of these thoughts right about now but I am confident that because of his preparation, both physically and mentally, he will not question whether or not he can finish but will instead look ahead with excitement to completing his race. He may have a few moments of doubt for that is part of being human but I know that positive thoughts will mainly be filling his mind. I believe that once he passes through that Midpoint of the race he will have a sudden surge of confidence that he is well on his way to a very successful voyage.

Essay: 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 with the biggest factor in human-caused climate change: Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has steadily increased. In the eight years since 2008, its levels have climbed from 385 parts per million (ppm) to 407 ppm. Is this 22 ppm change a lot or a little? Measurements from air bubbles trapped in ice long time ago in the Antarctica show that this increase is much greater than what happened in the 2000 years before our industrial age. It is a lot, and it is happening quickly!

What does this mean for the ocean? Just like our atmosphere, the ocean has warmed also, but not the same everywhere. In places like the Arctic Ocean, the increase has been a lot. But elsewhere, like in the Southern Ocean that Rich is skirting right now, the ocean may actually have cooled a little. Why? The answer is the wind. What makes the wind blow is the difference in air temperature and pressure between two points. Cold air is denser and results in higher atmospheric pressure, and this high-pressure air wants to flow toward warmer, lower pressure, areas. As the planet’s atmosphere warms, these differences in hot and cold are getting bigger. An example is the difference between the Antarctic cold air and the surrounding sub-tropical warm air, and the result is that the winds in the ocean around Antarctica are getting stronger. These stronger winds cool the ocean through evaporation, just like, if you are a little sweaty, you’ll feel the wind start chilling you!

That, though, is climate, and what Rich has to worry about is weather—the storms and calms that our changing climate spawns. From a climate perspective, you’d predict that the storms on average have become a little stronger, but that doesn’t mean that all storms are more intense. Either way, let’s wish Rich and all the other skippers luck to avoid the worst ones!

Essay: Polar Art

I write this just as Rich has begun rounding the southern tip of Africa at 40 degrees and 27 minutes south and has begun some of the most arduous sailing, highest wind speeds and biggest waves he expects to encounter. He has entered the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which rings the Antarctic continent and essentially passes through all the major oceans. For racing sailors like Rich, sailing into the strongest current in the world has obvious benefits as it will carry him very quickly. For centuries, however, this current and its extreme conditions proved a formidable barrier for ships sailing south.

During the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries – the age of exploration – theories about a vast southern continent were based in notions that land on the earth’s surface somehow had to be balanced, and since there was so much land in the northern hemisphere, there had to be an equivalent amount of land to the south. Some of this imagined land even appeared ringing the bottom of world maps, labeled Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, Unkown South Land. They had never seen it, but they felt sure it must be there.

Although their theories were wrong, the land at the bottom of the world does, in fact, exist. Captain James Cook encountered a vast field of icebergs during his second voyage in the 1770s and his official on-board artist drew sketches and ultimately an engraving of it to illustrate the voyage account. By 1840, several expeditions claimed to have sighted the Antarctic mainland. A fabulous print by the French expeditionary artist Louis Le Breton shows men climbing excitedly onto rocks from small boats with penguins standing by watching – the whole scene surrounded by towering icebergs. The hazards of floating ice ringing Antarctica inspired traveling artists for many years following, no doubt in part because their size evoked a sublime sense of nature and its dangers, and were more overtly dramatic than the relentlessly barren snowfields inland. Antarctica is a magnet for artists to this day, many of who revel in disproving our notions of it being a barren and colorless environment. Since the 1950s, the Antarctic Artists & Writers Program of the National Science Foundation has sponsored the work of more than 100 artists who desired to visit Antarctica in the course of their work.

Essay: Invisible Places

The first time that I went to sea on a boat (I was 5 years old), I felt several very strong feelings: entering another world with different colors, a different smell and different sensations; the impression of travelling on a living being, which moved and smelt very salty. I also felt a certain humility, the impression of a great vulnerability but also the strong desire to discover, to experience and tame this world full of mysteries.
The first time that I crossed the Atlantic Ocean, I discovered the immensity of this liquid dessert and I realized that our planet was really very big. We were heading westward, towards America, the days and weeks passed and we still hadn’t seen land in front of us yet. Life seemed absent: no sea birds or fish and few whales. A solitary and wild world, with no other guide than the stars and so far from man and civilization.

At night we progress without seeing the landscape pass-by, the celestial sphere is our only vision and we feel alone in the universe.

In the day, the sea is there with the waves, the clouds, the sun and sometimes a sea animal or a bird of passage; we can get very close to land without seeing it and that is very frustrating. I remember having come close to the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean; the land was roughly twenty miles away and we could smell the slightly spicy odor of its vegetation, see the coastal clouds and simply sense the presence of this great island, but there was nothing on the horizon, it was as though the Earth was imaginary.

The competitors in the Vendée Globe Challenge will cover over 24,000 miles, or right round our planet without ever seeing land unless it is a few faraway summits of some isolated island. For three months they will only see millions of cubic metres of salty water that make up the sea and the oceans. In these great desserts of solitude that they will cross, civilization will seem very far away to them and everyone, at a given moment, will wonder if mankind still exists. Is it real? It is in these great liquid desserts that man feels insignificant and vulnerable, and it is there, more than anywhere else, that he must be aware of the need to preserve and protect what is, after all, a fragile sphere of life.

(For full essay, view this post).

Essay: Plastic in Our Oceans

Do you ever wonder what happens to a plastic drinking straw after you are finished using it and throw it away? Where is “away”? Where does it end up?

The answer depends on where in the world you live. In some places, the straw is probably buried in a landfill, or burned to produce energy in a power plant. In other parts of the world where there may not be enough garbage cans, or garbage trucks, or places to safely contain this trash, the plastic straw might end up in a river, or on a beach, or in the ocean.

An estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year. That’s enough plastic trash to line the entire coastline of the world with a stack of 5 plastic grocery bags chock-full with plastic garbage. What happens to this plastic?

Most of the plastic packaging that we use breaks down into floating fragments, smaller than your pinky fingernail, that collect in vast regions of the oceans often referred to as “garbage patches”. These are not giant landfills, or plastic islands made of trash, but instead consist of millions of tiny pieces carried by ocean surface currents to dead-end collection zones in the oceans.

Marine animals as small as plankton and as large as whales can eat these small plastic bits, and so can the fish and shellfish that we enjoy as seafood. We’re not sure what effect the plastic has on the animals, or if there is any harm to humans who eat them, but surely you wouldn’t choose to eat plastic for dinner!

The best way to stop this plastic pollution is simply to use less plastic. Skip the straw. Choose reusable containers and bags instead of those designed to be thrown away after one use. Recycle when you can. And teach your friends and family about this pollution problem that we can all help solve by making small changes in our daily lives.

Essay: Equator Crossing

People often speak of drawing “a line in the sand,” meaning a boundary that cannot be crossed without serious consequences. Next week Skipper Rich Wilson will cross a line in the water. Although no one can see that line threading through the ocean waves, still the Equator constitutes a real borderline between the northern and southern hemispheres. At the Equator, the Sun and planets pass more nearly overhead, the temperatures at sea level change little with the seasons, and the girth of the Earth is widest. Perhaps most important for the person sailing from north to south, the Equator marks a ship’s passage into the mythic realm of King Neptune.

The slow winds—or no winds—in the so-called doldrums near the Equator left European sailors of centuries past plenty of time for mischief. The old experienced hands would put the new recruits through a rite of passage that could include smearing their heads with foul slops, “shaving” their faces with jagged bits of iron that pierced the skin, pouring salt water down their throats, flogging them, and pitching them blindfolded into makeshift pools (sails filled with seawater). One senior sailor would dress up as King Neptune and preside over the shenanigans. When the initiation was over, the crew headed into whatever dangers awaited them in the southern ocean.

On ships that observed such line-crossing ceremonies, no first-timer could demand exemption. Charles Darwin experienced the indignity aboard HMS Beagle in 1832, en route to his encounter with the interesting wildlife of the Galapagos Islands.

Rich has plunged southward across the line several times before. Even if he were making his first crossing now, there would be no one else aboard Great American IV to induct him —except, perhaps, old King Neptune himself.

Essay: Marine Transportation

Most people go about their daily lives never thinking about how the goods they use every day end up in their home.  World trade is bigger today than ever before in history, and 98 percent of everything that comes to the United States and most other countries arrive by sea. Only passengers and some very small packages arrive by airplane. Giant tankers weighing as much as 330,000 tons carry crude oil for refineries. Smaller product tankers take gasoline jet fuel, and heating oil from refineries, to our nearby ports for distribution. Bulk carriers as large as 440,000 tons transport iron ore, coal, alumina, corn and wheat, and other “dry” commodities. Car carriers- big floating 13 deck parking garages- carry as many as 8000 automobiles. Containerships- today the worlds biggest ships – can carry as many as 20,000 containers, each the size of an 18 wheel truck. Millions of these containers packed full of manufactured goods arrive each year.

But shipping is a “hidden” industry unless you happen to live on the shoreline in a major seaport. Ships spend over 90 percent of their lives at sea over the horizon, only seen by other ships or curious dolphins. In the days before high seas radio was invented by Marconi, when a ship left port one of two things happened: she arrived safely at her destination, or she was never heard from again. Over the centuries thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of sailors have disappeared. About 110 years ago, radio and the use of Morse code changed all that. The famous tragedy of the Titanic in 1912 was not the first use of radio for rescue, but it was the most famous “SOS” in history. The ocean liner Carpathia heard the SOS and arrived a few hours later to rescue about 700 survivors of the original 2000.

Merchant (non-military) ships generally have a crew of 20-25 trained mariners of many nationalities. These professional sailors live pretty isolated lives when they are on board, connected to the world through satellite communications only. Typically a sailor serves on board for about six months then rotates home. Most mariners are men, although women are now getting more involved in seagoing careers. There can be a lot of stress on families given the separation, so the increasing availability of satellite communications is a good thing. It is through satellite that Rich Wilson will be communicating with all of us during the Vendée Globe. But he will still be pretty alone and lonely in some very remote parts of the Earth, where the nearest rescue will be his fellow competitors.

Essay: Following Your Dreams

I have never wanted to do anything else but study space. I grew up in anthracite country in eastern Pennsylvania, where there were no professional scientists or nearby colleges where one could be exposed to enrichment programs in science. But living there worked for me because at night the skies were dark, and that is what I really needed most. While in elementary and middle school I checked out textbooks from the library and taught myself astronomy, physics, and optics. With the help of my grandfather, a very smart man who left school in eighth grade to work in the mines to support his family, I built telescopes to observe the night sky. And I spent hours and hours doing so, learning the positions of all the bright stars, and the locations of major galaxies and nebulae. I observed all the planets except for Pluto (which was a planet back in those days).

I attended the University of Pennsylvania to study astronomy and geology, and then Brown University where I received my master’s and Ph.D. in planetary geophysics. After completing my education, I went to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and got involved in robotic missions to Mars and the Moon. Because I wanted to work with students I moved on to faculty positions at Johns Hopkins University and then MIT. I have had the extraordinary opportunity to work on many space missions with great colleagues and students at universities, NASA centers, and industry. I work hard, but I explore the solar system for a living and what could be better than that? Imagine what it would be like if your job could be your hobby? That’s the life I lead.

Essay: Preparation

Michel Desjoyeaux, the only two-time winner of the Vendée Globe, once said “the race is won before the start”. In other words, preparation is everything.

The three parts of our program which we must prepare are: the skipper, the boat, and our school program sitesALIVE! Fortunately, we have terrific teams for each who are smart, experienced, creative, dedicated, and hard-working. Although this is a solo race, I will not sail only for myself. I will sail for our teams, and for you students, as you are the most important reason that we are doing this.

For my physical preparation, I trained again with Marti Shea (see our Team of Experts). Marti is a former All-American distance runner and World Champion cyclist, and is an imaginative and demanding trainer. She said that, except for natural degradation of fitness due to age (she estimated 5% loss), I am in as good shape as I was 8 years ago when we sailed and finished Vendée Globe 2008-9.

Left to right: Rich Wilson, Joff Brown, Jonathan Green, Rob Sleep, Olly Young, Hugues Riousse

For the boat, Great American IV (formerly Mirabaud, with Swiss skipper Dominique Wavre, and built in New Zealand in 2006), our technical leader is Joff Brown (English), who has been captain for three successful Vendée Globe boats. His attention to detail is astonishing. It is the correct approach, since the Vendée Globe can succeed or fail on the tiniest of details within this highly complex machine that must thrive in a hostile environment.

For our sitesALIVE program, we have a multi-talented team led by Rick Simpson and Lauren Zike. They oversee our global partnerships and content distribution in 50 countries and 4 languages. Our curriculum is ready, the website is ready, and our Team of Experts is ready.

We have been three years in these preparations – and now it’s time to sail!