Great American II

Racing A Ghost Ship
The Incredible Journey of Great American II
by Rich Wilson
(c) 1996, Walker & Co., NY

Click here to see the book and read the jacket cover!

Daily radio transmissions from
Great American II on her record-breaking voyage from San Francisco to Boston by way of Cape Horn!!

Click here to listen in Real Audio

The Voyage of Great American II
Winter, 1993
(An overview)

By Rich Wilson

Skipper of Great American II, and President of Ocean Challenge Inc.

I formed Ocean Challenge, Inc. in September, 1991 to challenge the San Francisco to Boston record again, and to organize more timely and more detailed information to go to students in classrooms and at home.

We asked the Boston Globe if they would publish weekly articles that we wrote aboard the boat during the voyage. They agreed and directed us to their Newspaper in Education program, which delivered teaching materials and newspapers into classrooms. Their NIE people thought this would be a terrific idea.

For our communications that we were guaranteeing, we would use Inmarsat-C, a system of 4 satellites, evenly spaced around the equator, in geostationary orbits. Through them, our office computer (286) could link to the GA2 computer (386) and transmit and receive files back and forth.

The Boston Globe then introduced us to NIE colleagues at major newspapers across the country. Trip Lowell, a friend from New England, had teamed with me to scour the countryside for sponsors and to set up the education program. Ultimately, 11 more papers signed on: Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Miami Herald, Detroit News, Indianapolis Star, Portland (ME) Press-Herald, Rochester (MN) Post-Bulletin and the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

Each week, on the day when our article appeared, newspapers would be delivered to the classrooms participating. Teachers also received a guide with 11 weekly lesson plans (the record was 11 weeks!) written by Dr. Barbara Radner of DePaul University in Chicago.

We visited Prodigy Computer Services and convinced them that they had the perfect technology to bring the voyage to families across the country. With them, online users could Trace the Race on a map with our position and Northern Light's position; they could read our Ship's Log and Journals; they could Send Notes to Boat (questions e-mailed to Prodigy were relayed to our office and then to us offshore, to be answered and relayed back in reverse).

Furthermore, Prodigy directed NOVA and National Geographic (both of whom were already writing monthly activities) to write those activities on topics relevant to the voyage.

We set up another 900# and committed to calling in daily again through the radiotelephone. We worked again with the American Lung Association (my asthma hadn't gone away!).

Unable to find corporate sponsors, despite the fact that we could guarantee their exposure in the newspaper pieces, thus giving 13.5 million weekly readers x 11 weeks inserts = 150 million exposures, we sought individual investors and raised the money from people who understood what we were trying to do.

Trip and I continued this search, and Lyon Osborn came onboard to finish the Teacher's Guide, to operate the linkages, to produce the NIE pieces, and to coordinate and feed the Prodigy feature.

They saw that if you brought a multidisciplinary adventure, which was uncertain in outcome, and could personalize it via good links, that the students would be able to form a bond with the adventurers, and, once the bond was formed, would CARE about what happened to them. Once they cared, it mattered to them about the weather, and our watch system, and our nutrition, and our teamwork, and the physics of the boat, and the communications links, and on, and on... Reality had come to their classroom.

Bill Biewenga, who had been our radio contact and teamed with Bob Rice to do our weather routing, signed on to sail with me aboard another trimaran, 53 feet long by 45 feet wide, which we acquired in June, 1993. We christened her Great American II. With Bud Sutherland, GA2 was delived from Boston, through the Panama Canal, to San Francisco in the Fall, 1992. She was prepared in December, and on January 11, 1993, Bill and I headed south for Boston.

A storm brewed the first night, and by the next morning steep nasty waves had formed. One wave crested over the top of GA2, and swept across her. When the water receded, we saw that 8 feet of the bow of the port pontoon had been broken off. With 12 watertight compartments, we were in no danger of sinking, but clearly we had to return to San Francisco.

Here now was the beauty and the trauma of a reality-based education program. Some teachers called their newspapers to find out if the program was cancelled, but NO WAY!

Now we were able to add a lesson plan on materials technology, and how to shape composite materials, as boatbuilder Walter Greene flew in from Maine to lead a team including Bud, Ed Sisk, Peter Hogg and Marc Ginisty, to build and attach a new bow. They worked around the clock and finished in an astounding 9 days.

GA2 set sail for Boston, Take #2, on January 27, 1995.

This time we succeeded. Streaking south, we reached the equator in 11 days, a day ahead of Northern Light's passage, and were 3000 miles off the coast at that time. We passed Easter Island and Pitcairn Island 10 days later. Bill hit an astounding 24 knots of boatspeed, unintentionally, in a squall one night off Easter Island. We wrote our NIE articles, answered 3 questions every other day from Prodigy, made every day's 900# report, wrote journals for Prodigy, and sailed the boat.

Both Bill and I spent about 3 hours each, daily, on the onshore school programs. We slept about 3 hours in 24. As we approached Cape Horn again, the Thanksgiving Day capsize was always in my mind. But King Neptune smiling on us and gave us fair weather. We rounded in record time.

A Prodigy student sent us a poem and a question, and signed the missive "Fish", his nickname. We answered his question and then posed ours, since someone with the nickname "Fish" was obviously the right person to ask: What do albatross eat?? We had seen them hunting, but didn't know what they ate. "Fish" went to his local library, and several days later the missive came back, "Albatross eat squid, and we must be careful not to throw over any plastic that the albatross might get caught in." Here was interactive education, true interactive education, between a student somewhere, and a boat off Cape Horn.

Double rainbows off Brazil, encountering a refrigerated ship heading south for Buenos Aires to pick up a load of frozen orange juice concentrate to deliver to Florida (??), dust from the Sahara desert drifting 2000 miles to cover the boat at 10 degrees North latitude -- these were some of the adventures we had as we raced for Boston. And all along we wrote, and answered questions, and talked on the radio with classrooms.

When Great American II finally arrived in Boston on April 7, 1993, 69 days 20 hours out of San Francisco, she had broken Northern Light's record. A thousand students, teachers and parents were on the dock to greet us on a bright, cold spring day. The kids had banners and cheered, and gathered around as we stepped on land. It was a dream come true. We were no longer theoreticians that this kind of education could work, we had proven it did work.

The press had followed, since we were publishing our articles in the newspapers each week, and we made the front page of both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, had stories on NBC Nightly News, and did the Today Show from the trimaran the next morning. What a whirlwind!

In the weeks to follow, letters and calls poured in from students and teachers about the success of the school program. In visiting classrooms, we found one decorated like a kelp forest (from an encounter with kelp on our daggerboard 4 days out of San Francisco), another with accurate models of GA2 and gold-panning sluices (from Northern Light's era!). In another we were regaled with a rap song, and a play, both about GA2.

Our dream had worked. We determined to continue on and produce other linkage programs between real adventures, expeditions and events and classrooms.

To listen to the following Real Audio files, click here to download the Real Audio Player. The following files are encoded for 14.4 modems (and work equally well for 28.8 modems).

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/9/93 - 0 m 42 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/10/93 - 2 m 00 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/11/93 - 2 m 57 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/12/93 - 4 m 06 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/13/93 - 3 m 37 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/14/93 - 3 m 43 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/15/93 - 3 m 45 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/16/93 - 3 m 02 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/18/93 - 2 m 56 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/20/93 - 1 m 50 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/21/93 - 1 m 54 s

Great American II - Rich Wilson - 1/23/93 - 1 m 46 s