Catching a breeze, copping some z's

Adventurer Rich Wilson will need to get his sleep in the mother of all ocean races

I met Rich Wilson last week at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he had just seen a sleep specialist. He has suffered from serious asthma since he was a kid and takes drugs for it that keep him up at night. But that's not the problem.

The problem is that he'll be sailing around the world by himself later this year, and the drugs will only exacerbate his chronic lack of sleep at sea. He has to get more of it than he did in 2004, when he sailed solo across the Atlantic averaging three hours and 20 minutes over each 24-hour period. (He wore a monitoring device on his wrist.)

Wilson got away with that one, but it was a mere 3,000 miles. Global circumnavigation is 26,000. Fifteen weeks. He's shooting for five hours of sleep every 24 hours this time. Seven would be excellent but, as he put it, "There's not a solo sailor on this planet that gets that amount of sleep."

He's also on an unorthodox physical training regimen to build strength, particularly in his legs. Over a long time at sea, he explains, your upper body ripples with muscle while your legs are reduced to sticks. They atrophy because they remain in a static position most of the time.

He's got exercises to address the problem. Here's my favorite: one-legged deep-knee bends with weights on your shoulders - on a trampoline.

Then there's the food. He carries near zero body fat, which in this case, is not a good thing. He needs to bulk up and eat like a truck driver at sea. His goal is to consume 6,000 calories a day. Freeze-dried goodies and a lot of granola-like things. That diet could drive me off food forever.

What Wilson, 58, will be doing is racing in the Vendée Globe, the mother of all ocean races and the ultimate challenge to a sailor. ("France to France, leave Antarctica to starboard," he calls it.) Around the world, solo, nonstop, without assistance. A rudder breaks and all the best.

He'll be on a 60-foot mono-hull named Great American III. The fleet of about 30 boats will leave the French Atlantic seaside village of Les Sables d'Olonne on Nov. 9 and head south around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa, east across the Indian Ocean, and down between Australia and Antarctica. Then around Cape Horn at the tip of South America and up the Atlantic to Les Sables.

"This is really tough stuff," he says in stunning understatement.

Wilson, by the way, looks normal from the outside: 6 feet, predictably trim, gray hair, small mustache, and deep set, haunted eyes. He talks softly. He says he likes solitude and differentiates it from loneliness. I get the distinction but I'd still be talking to mermaids by the end of the second day.

He has an eclectic résumé: Two degrees from Harvard and one from MIT. A teacher briefly in a Boston public school, a defense analyst in Washington, a successful investor here. Somehow, he does not consider himself a big risk taker. He's either in stone wall denial or else he's one cool customer.

I ask him about fear.

"It's there. It's important. I don't have a lot of bravado," he says. "The question is, how do you try to manage the risk? Something like this is all about risk management."

This will be the sixth time the Vendée has been held, and a mere handful of Americans have competed in it. What's wrong with us? This race conforms to our classic American myth - one man, alone in perilous seas. Worse, Wilson couldn't get a single corporate outfit around here to throw him a dime of support.

Wilson says he wouldn't dream of doing this now if it weren't for the teaching program he created that will be used on this trip. He has distributed 2,000 manuals to teachers across the country who can teach relevant subjects like science and geography as he continues his voyage. In addition, he'll make daily audiopods and, also on the laundry list, write an article a week for 17 newspapers that have signed up with him.

He won't be totally alone. Back on dry land, he'll have a team of experts available by satellite phone including: a cardiologist, a psychiatrist, a nutritionist, a professor from MIT who works with NASA on physiology monitoring and, get this, the superintendent of the United States Merchant Marine Academy. There are more.

If you think this race is lunacy for a man his age - or any age - remember that Wilson has been doing wild stuff on oceans for ages.

For starters, he and a friend retraced three great routes of the clipper ships and beat their times.

First was the classic San Francisco to Boston run via Cape Horn, triggered by the gold rush in the West. The second, prompted by the Australian gold rush, runs from New York to Melbourne. Last was the China tea trade, where clippers sailed from Hong Kong, down the South China Sea, west across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up the Atlantic to New York.

So there's no stopping this guy. All we can to say is: Rich Wilson - sail well and come home safe.