Nicknamed the Everest of Seas and known as the hardest and most famous sailing race in the world, many in the U.S. may not even know about the Vendee Globe race.
“It’s a huge deal there [in France],” said Rick Simpson, who lives in Hancock and is the cousin of Rich Wilson, one of 29 skippers in this year’s race around the globe. “It’s probably a combination of the Super Bowl and the Boston Marathon.”
Simpson was one of thousands who flooded into the seaside town of Les Sables d’Olonne in western France on Nov. 6 to watch skippers depart on a grueling 128,000-mile voyage that involves sailing around the world alone, without stopping and without assistance as part of the Vendee Globe 2016 – 2017 race.
Wilson competed in the 2008 – 09 Vendee race, a feat that took him 121 days to complete. He was one of 11 who finished the race that year out of 30 who started the voyage.
During the circumnavigation, choppy waters tossed Wilson across the boat, cracking his ribs, opening a gash over one of his eyes and smashing his neck. He wasn’t able to sleep for more than four consecutive hours the entire trip.
Through all of that, Wilson’s promise to connect with 250,000 students in the United States through curriculum aimed at incorporating science, math and history lessons in spoken and written materials for teachers to use, pushed him to continue until the end.
“It’s obviously a very tiring race,” Simpson said. “When he finished, he thought ‘I’ll never do it again.’”
But eight years later, at the age of 66, Wilson is in the midst of sailing around the globe again in the 2016-17 Vendee race.
Simpson said many begin the race hoping to win, others compete for the adrenaline rush of an adventure, but Wilson is a competitor for a very different reason: to broaden his outreach to students, encourage seniors to remain active and provide inspiration to people who may not view themselves as athletic.
Wilson has degrees in mathematics from Harvard and in sciences from MIT and has worked as a teacher for more than two decades. He has been sailing for his entire life and made his mark in 1980 when he won the Newport – Bermuda Race. Ten years later, he decided to use sailing as an educational-teaching tool for children.
This year, Wilson entered the race with the hopes of expanding adventure-based curriculum to more students around the world. So far an estimated 1 million students in about 50 countries are following Wilson’s voyage through a website called SitesALIVE, a program that links adventures and expeditions to K-12 classrooms and homes.
Every day Wilson updates the Ocean Challenge Live! page with written blog posts, audio reports, video sessions, pictures, and curriculum and essays for students to use. Students can interact with Wilson on a Facebook page, where they can post videos and take pictures that wish him luck as he sails around the world.
Sy Montgomery, an author based in Hancock who is friends with Simpson and his wife, has made herself available to answer questions about marine life on the educational website.
Montgomery said she was honored to be part of Wilson’s voyage.
“Adventure-based learning is very exciting for kids,” Montgomery said. “Rich’s adventure provides the perfect scaffolding for learning about so many things, from foreign language to marine biology to the physics of winds and waves.”
Simpson said he is not sure if any schools in New Hampshire, and more specifically the Monadnock region, are using the curriculum available to students. There has been some outreach to schools in the Granite State, but he said that it is difficult to track if teachers are downloading the material and following along from those schools.
But it’s not only students who Wilson hopes to inspire, Simpson said. Wilson has struggled with a lifelong battle of asthma, which he needs to closely monitor while at sea. And at 66 years old, he is also the oldest skipper in the race.
“He really wants to send the message, ‘If he can do this what can the rest of us do?” Simpson said.
Only about 65 people have ever sailed non-stop solo around the world. Already, Wilson is part of that elite cadre.
In comparison, he said, 500 people have gone into space and about 4,000 have climbed Mt. Everest.
“It’s really hard to fathom,” Simpson said about Wilson’s feat.
Simpson said he will likely return to that small town in western France when Wilson completes his circumnavigation. When that time comes, he’ll be one of at least a million others cheering Wilson to the finish line.
Abby Kessler can be reached at 924-7172, ext. 234 or akessler@ledgertranscript.com.