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sitesALIVE! Founder Challenges Australian Gold Rush Record
Rich Wilson Returns to Sea to Break Another Clipper Ship RecordBOSTON, MA: August 1, 2001—A New York-to-Australia clipper ship sailing record set nearly a century and a half ago will be challenged this fall by a 53-foot trimaran manned by two veteran American sailors. The 14,000-mile voyage will coincide with Australia’s 150th anniversary observance of the Down Under discovery of gold in 1851. In mid-September, Rich Wilson and Bill Biewenga will embark from Chelsea Piers in Manhattan aboard the trimaran Great American II bound southeast for Melbourne, Australia.
In 1855–56, the American clipper ship Mandarin completed the trip in a record 69 days, 14 hours, sailing from New York southward through the Atlantic, around the African continent’s Cape of Good Hope, and on through the Indian Ocean to Melbourne, capital city of Australia’s state of Victoria.
Back then Melbourne was the destination for thousands of eager fortune hunters from around the world. Those from America booked passage on American clipper ships, the speediest vessels then plying the seas. As had happened in California two years before, gold had been discovered in 1851 just a few miles west of Melbourne in a region that is now Ballarat, Victoria’s largest inland city.
“This will be the second time, actually the third, that I’ve gone after a clipper ship sailing record set during a gold rush,” said Wilson, a life-long sailor and founder of the global educational web site sitesALIVE!, based in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1993, Wilson and his co-skipper Biewenga sailed Great American II from San Francisco around treacherous Cape Horn on the tip of South America and then north to Boston, in 69 days and 20 hours, breaking the venerable record set in 1853 for the 15,000-mile voyage by the clipper ship Northern Light.
An earlier attempt by Wilson and then co-skipper Steve Pettengill, in 1990, ended in disaster when the original Great American trimaran capsized and was lost in high seas off the west coast of South America, some 400 miles short of Cape Horn. In one of the great rescue stories of modern seafaring lore, the two men were plucked from their stricken vessel by the crew of the giant container ship New Zealand Pacific, which quickly responded to Great American’s satellite distress signals. Ironically, the rescue took place on the holiday Americans traditionally give thanks for their good fortune, Thanksgiving Day.
“This ‘gold rush’ voyage will coincide with the celebration in Victoria of the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold in Ballarat. When we sail into Port Phillip Bay, Bill and I will be looking forward to joining the party,” said Wilson, who lives with his wife, Lesley, in the seaport town of Rockport, north of Boston.
With his early voyages, Wilson proved the concept that real life adventures could be translated into solid educational fare for use in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. A former high school math teacher himself, as well as a talented tale-spinner, Wilson was invited to several Greater Boston schools to recount his dramatic initial voyage and rescue. “The enthusiasm of the kids and their pointed questions confirmed our belief that there was a place for learning adventures in the classroom,” Wilson recalls. “Their excitement also convinced me to make another try at the Cape Horn sailing record.”
Before the second voyage, Wilson arranged with a dozen newspapers throughout the United States to publish a series of articles about the trip that he would write at sea and that would be distributed to some 10,000 classrooms nationwide, connecting more than 250,000 students with the journey. In addition, Great American II was linked to classrooms and homes around the country through the first interactive learning adventure produced by Prodigy.
If Wilson had any doubts about the potential of this educational venture, they dissolved when he and Biewenga sailed into Boston Harbor in April1993, after breaking Northern Light’s record. Great American II was greeted by more than a thousand school children and their teachers.
Based on his experiences, Wilson launched Ocean Challenge, Inc., to develop similar educational adventures for classrooms. From this parent firm emerged sitesALIVE!, an interactive educational web site that connects classrooms with learning adventures on land and sea all over the world. sitesALIVE! will present eight other learning adventures for schools concurrently with the Great American II voyage.