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
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