Record within their grasp

Great American II endures storm as Wilson remembers his capsize at Cape Horn

Rich Wilson (left) with crewman Bill Biewenga (right)

Adventure sailors Rich Wilson and Bill Biewenga celebrated the American Thanksgiving holiday at sea today, 1,000 miles south-west of Melbourne, with the record for the sailing passage from New York to Melbourne within their grasp.

Sailing through storm conditions on Wilson's 53-foot trimaran Great American II, the pair was barely 400 miles ahead of the track of the extreme clipper ship Mandarin, the vessel that has held the sailing record for the 14,000-mile voyage for nearly a century and a half. The 400-mile lead is equivalent to about a day and a half of sailing time.

Wilson, from Rockport, Massachusetts, and Biewenga, who lives in Newport, Rhode Island, are out to beat Mandarin's record of 69 days 14 hours, set as she carried prospectors to the Australian Gold Rush in the winter of 1855-56.

The attempt is the latest education adventure program undertaken by Wilson’s Boston-based sitesALIVE! website. The program enables Wilson and Biewenga to share their experience with schoolchildren by linking to a curriculum delivered on the Internet to classrooms throughout the United States and Australia.

When they are not on deck and sailing the boat, the two adventurers send regular audio and text reports, lessons, photographs, and videos, and answer schoolchildren's e-mailed questions. They accomplish all this with the aid of a laptop computer in the navigation station, linked to an Iridium satellite telephone.

Speaking by satellite phone today, Wilson reported: "We've been thrashing along through the night with three reefs in the mainsail and a small staysail and we have been pushed 30 degrees off our course. Now, with daylight, conditions are improved and we only have one reef in the main. We’re on course for the mouth of Port Phillip Bay and making some time."

Wilson described today as a memorable Thanksgiving at sea. Eleven years ago on Thanksgiving, he and a crew member capsized off Cape Horn in an earlier trimaran named Great American while attempting to break the sailing record from San Francisco to Boston. They were rescued, and three years later claimed the record on Great American II.

"Those were dark times," Wilson said. "After some hours the boat was flipped the right way up by a wave. As far as anyone knows, that is the only time that has ever happened. Later we were rescued by the vessel New Zealand Pacific, also known as the Big Red Lady. She was the largest containership in the world.

"Because of the crew's remarkable seamanship in bringing the New Zealand Pacific alongside our partially submerged and wrecked boat in the middle of the night, in 45 to 50-foot seas, we lived to sail again."

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