Teachers, welcome to Sailing in the Vendée Globe! Science NetLinks is excited to be able to offer you the opportunity to share Skipper Rich Wilson’s experience in a solo trans-global sailing race with your students.

Here’s a quick trip through the site and how you might use it in your science classroom:

• The blog is written for students so that they can follow Skipper Wilson on this adventure. We’ll post a couple times a week, so encourage them to check back during the week. In each post, we’ll give a science-related spin to Wilson’s latest missive as well as send the student over to sitesALIVE! to read his first-person observations of life at sea. We have opted to make this blog one directional, so commenting is not enabled. Please feel free to use the contact link at the top of the page to share your thoughts or those of your students. We welcome feedback.
• The map is interactive. Roll over the various points to see the date of each blog post. Click on the point and get additional information, including the latitude and longitude (in decimal format) of where Wilson has most recently reported from as well as a link to the corresponding blog post. [Be aware, if students roll over the map using their mouse's scroll wheel, it will zoom in or out, which students may find frustrating. If they move their mouse outside of the map while scrolling, they can avoid the magnification issues.]
• Additionally, each blog post will have a box aimed at you, the educator. This educator feature will include appropriate Science NetLinks resources that relate to the day’s post, as well as other relevant Thinkfinity partners’ resources.

More detailed information about Wilson, his sailboat, and the race can be found by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page.

Right now, we don’t have archives, although we’ll add them if it seems appropriate further down the line. In the meantime, you can use the calendar to navigate through the site. On days where we have new material posted, the date will turn blue. You can click on the date to go immediately to the post.

Interested in only certain maritime topics? Use the search box to type in your query.

We hope your class enjoys this site and that you find the supplementary material useful as well. Please visit us at Science NetLinks to check out resources in other science topics and visit Thinkfinity for resources in other subject areas.