Victory!
Trimaran Breaks Hong Kong to NY Record with Larchmont Sailor Aboard

by Cynthia Goss of sitesALIVE!

(May 28, 2003) A legendary sailing ship record that has remained untouched for a century and a half toppled on Tuesday night when the trimaran Great American II sailed into New York Harbor, 72 days out of Hong Kong. This morning, American adventurers Rich Wilson (at right in photo) and Larchmont's Rich du Moulin were greeted by cheering family, students from the Hommocks Middle School, and other supporters as their 53-foot sailboat passed the Statue of Liberty soon after 10:00 AM.

"Two and a half months at sea is a long, long time for a classroom session . . . but it was worth every minute!" said Wilson, skipper of the Great American II, as he and du Moulin stowed their ship's sails at Chelsea Piers on Manhattan's West Side. For their entire journey, the two men have been communicating with Hommocks 7th graders and the rest of the 360,000 school children following the voyage via the sitesALIVE! program.

Great American's time from Hong Kong on the 15,000 mile passage to the Ambrose Light Tower off Sandy Hook at the entrance to New York Harbor was 72 days 21 hours 11 minutes and 38 seconds. Her time eclipsed the record of 74 days, 14 hours set by the extreme clipper ship Sea Witch in the China Tea Trade in 1849. The record, which is one day and 17 hours faster than the old mark, has been reported to the World Speed Sailing Record Council for formal ratification.

Although 154 years of technological development separated these two vessels, Wilson and du Moulin struggled to keep pace with the ghost of the 192-foot clipper ship, as they trailed her several times in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

"This voyage was never straightforward," said Wilson, recounting their day by day battle with the Sea Witch. "Every time we turned around, we were behind that great clipper ship . . . We have lots of appreciation for those great sailors who went before us. Even with the technological advances we enjoyed, we learned not to take any of that for granted. The ocean is a great leveler."

Du Moulin, who is also Vice-Commodore of the Storm Trysail Club, will be briefly at the desk of his Intrepid Shipping Company in Stamford, Conn., before helping to run the Club's biennial Block Island Race Week at Block Island, R.I., in late June.

Wilson is already planning future projects for his non-profit sitesALIVE Foundation, in Boston, Mass., with the aim of training teachers to make effective use of communications technology in their classrooms. Another goal is to identify funding sources for schools and school districts with insufficient resources to tap the full power of computers and technology.

This was the first time that du Moulin, a former America's Cup racer, has undertaken a passage of such duration. "I had to have an element of competition in this," said du Moulin. "I had to have the daily benchmark--so I was keeping all these statistics, my own tally. Until we got to the Northeast tradewinds off of Brazil, ten of the eleven fastest daily passages were held by Sea Witch. The Sea Witch could handle the heavy seas of the Indian Ocean. She could charge through them doing 300-mile days, one after another, while we had to slow down in those conditions. Our advantage was in the light stuff. Taking Sea Witch on in the trade routes was a bigger challenge than people realize."

On arrival, both men said time with their families and fresh food were their top priorities as they prepared to return to their normal business life after weeks cooped up in the tiny cabin of their wave-tossed boat. Without the benefits of refrigeration they were limited for most of the voyage to a diet of freeze-dried, preserved and packaged food.

Fatigued but buoyant, Wilson reported their arrival off New York Harbor to the Sandy Hook pilot vessel on Tuesday night after a frustrating day of slow sailing in calms and light airs that followed in the wake of wet and squally weather that drenched New York.

Hailing the pilots on VHF radio, Wilson employed the traditional vernacular of the era of sail. "Sandy Hook pilots, this is the sailing vessel Great American II," Wilson said. "We are 72 days out of Hong Kong by way of Sunda Strait, Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope, bound for New York. We request you log the finish time of our voyage at Ambrose Light."

Great American's return to New York Harbor marked a homecoming and the completion of a brace of record passages - the just-finished voyage from Hong Kong, plus one from New York to Melbourne, Australia, in 2001 when she smashed the record set by the American extreme clipper ship Mandarin that carried prospectors to the Australian Gold Rush in the winter of 1855-56.

Even though they broke the record on Tuesday night with their arrival at Ambrose Light, the two men continued sailing overnight, waiting out calms and light winds until a light breeze carried Great American II across her original 2001 starting line this morning at the Statue of Liberty.

HOW THE PUBLIC CAN FOLLOW GREAT AMERICAN II: The website tracking the voyage of Great American II is http://www.sitesalive.com. Daily position reports and sailors' logs are posted on the site for classrooms, students, and families who purchase licenses to follow the progress of the boat.

For information http://www.sitesalive.com/oceanchallengelive/. The saga of GAII will also be published in the Larchmont Gazette and a number of daily papers, in the Newspaper In Education supplements, and tracked on the AOL@SCHOOL program (keyword: sitesalive). Some 360,000 students, including those at Hommocks, are expected to follow the voyage.

The sitesALIVE Foundation addresses teacher training in computer technology and funding for budget-constrained schools. The mission of the foundation is to enhance K-12 education by promoting the use of technology with real-world, real-time content from around the world.

Photographs from the voyage: copyright sitesALIVE! 2003