An afternoon with Rich Wilson, American Sailing Hero

Saturday March 27th at 4:30PM, Duxbury Bay Maritime School will host a slide show and lecture by Rich Wilson. Described as an American hero, Rich will speak about his experience racing around the world, non-stop and alone. This presentation will appeal not only to sailors of all ages and experiences but to anyone with a sense of adventure!

Rich Wilson

Rich Wilson finished 9th in the Vendee Globe 2008-9, a grueling, solo, non-stop, sailing race around the world. He was the only American, the only asthmatic, and the oldest skipper (58) in the fleet. Of 30 starters, only 11 finished. Sailing 28,790 miles in 121 days, Wilson endured broken ribs, a facial gash, compressed vertebrae, hurricane force gales, an ascent up the 90’ mast, crushing fatigue, fear, and gear breakage. He braved the course via the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn in his 60’ monohull, Great American III.

The primary purpose of the voyage was to create a global K-12 school program off this uniquely global event. Says Wilson, “excite kids with bats, bugs, and snakes in the rainforest, or with gales, flying fish and dolphins at sea, and they will pay attention, not knowing what will happen next, and then the science, math, and geography flow freely.”

Wilson connected this voyage to 250,000 students and 7 million readers by publication of a 15-part weekly series (written aboard ship) in 50 U.S. newspapers, and via www.sitesalive.com. Schools in 15 foreign countries also participated online. The mission of the sitesALIVE! Foundation is to support and enhance K-12 education, in public, charter, and private schools, by promoting the use of technology and real world, real-time, global content in K-12 classrooms. sitesALIVE! has produced 75 live, interactive, full semester programs connecting adventures and expeditions worldwide to K-12 classrooms.

Rich Wilson has set three world sailing records challenging the great clipper records: from San Francisco to Boston by way of Cape Horn in 1993 (California Gold Rush); New York to Melbourne by way of Cape of Good Hope in 2001 (Australian Gold Rush); Hong Kong to New York by way of Cape of Good Hope in 2003 (China Tea Trade).

Tickets for this event are $15 and are available on the events page, at DBMS Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM (457 Washington Street, Duxbury) and, if space is available, $20 at the door. For more information please contact Betts Murray (betts@dbms.org) (781-934-7555).

DBMS Policies. Photos by David Grossman and site design & development by Mark Lewis.