PORTLAND – The Great American III doesn’t look much like a world-class sailboat as it undergoes renovations in preparation for the world’s ultimate sailing race. Instead, it looks more like a 60-foot shell of fiberglass.

But in the next few weeks, the boat will be transformed and launched into Casco Bay as it is readied for the 2008 Vendee Globe, an around-the-world solo race that’s held every four years.

The Great American III is the second boat to be refitted in Portland for the grueling competition at sea. Not only do Vendee Globe skippers sail by themselves for 25,000 miles, they aren’t allowed to stop along the way.

The race is about pushing limits and new frontiers.

“It embodies the attributes in which Americans pride themselves,” said the boat’s owner, Rich Wilson, who’s from Marblehead, Mass.

The Vendee Globe was born in 1988 when 13 skippers made their way out of the French harbor of Les Sables d’Olonne and sailed the globe below the southern tips of the Africa, Australia and South America. The winner completed the course in 109 days.

An American failed to finish that first race, and it wasn’t until the fifth Vendee Globe, in 2004, that Bruce Schwab became the first American to complete the course. His boat, Ocean Planet, was refitted at another Portland boatyard and came in ninth place.

Wilson, 57, plans to be the third American to sail the contest. A former teacher and investor, he hopes to use Newspaper in Education programs and his sitesAlive Foundation Web site to educate Americans about the race, which is relatively unknown in the U.S. but is followed closely by millions of sailing fans elsewhere.

Wilson has made some demanding sails in his time, setting speed records on his previous boat, Great American II, for trips from New York to Australia, Hong Kong to New York, and San Francisco to New York.

When he sold Great American II in 2004, he planned to give up long-distance sailing. But it wasn’t long before he changed his mind and decided to enter the Vendee Globe, which starts Nov. 9, 2008.

“This I believe is the greatest sailing race in the world,” Wilson said. “I’d like to see how I do.”

Wilson found a boat to his liking in the fall of 2005 after looking at several Open 60s in France and the United Kingdom.

The boat he settled on is a former Vendee Globe racer that sailed in 2000 and 2004 under the name Solitaires. After sailing it to Maine, he turned it over to Brian Harris, who had worked on Wilson’s Great American II in France.

In 2005 Harris moved back to Maine, where Wilson found him working as the general manager at Maine Yacht Center.

“Besides Bruce [Schwab], Brian’s the only guy in the U.S. who knows anything about these boats,” Wilson said.

At Maine Yacht Center, workers have repaired structural damage to the bow and installed new hardware and a new winch system, among other things.

Below deck, workers gutted the interior and rebuilt the central command area, installing electronic navigation equipment, autopilots, computers and three satellite telephones.

The crew put in a 30-horsepower engine, whose primary purpose is to run an alternator to charge batteries for the electronics. Solar panels and a small wind turbine will provide supplemental power to charge the batteries.

Also below, a sink and small stove will be installed next to a storage cabinet that will hold Wilson’s rations, mostly freeze-dried foods. A desalinater will provide fresh water.

The boat, which is made of fiberglass and carbon fiber with a foam core, weighs 8 tons and can cruise at speeds greater than 20 knots while topping out at 30 knots or more, Harris said.

By Vendee Globe standards, Great American III is considered a second-generation boat, no longer at the top of the fleet. But it’s still quite a vessel, Harris said.

“A whole lot of boat for one person, huh?” he said admiringly.

To buy and refit the boat will cost in the neighborhood of $1 million, but it would cost three or four times that to have a new one built, Wilson said.

Wilson and his boat still have to be certified by Vendee Globe organizers, but he expects to get the official OK.

Vendee Globe already announced this month that Wilson would represent the United States in the race, which will have a maximum of 27 boats.

Besides going through the certification process, Wilson also needs to line up sponsors. But he has been through it before and is confident he’ll find backers. He thinks AARP would be a good partner since he’ll probably be the oldest sailor in the race.

One reason few Americans are interested in the Vendee Globe is sailing’s reputation as an elitist sport, Wilson said.

But for him, there’s nothing hoity-toity about battling vicious storms and 40-foot swells while on a boat alone, deprived of sleep and not seeing land for weeks on end.