After months of preparation, and years of planning, the Plastiki Expedition has finally set sail, with David de Rothschild taking his now famous boat, made from more than 12,000 plastic bottles, out to sea. de Rothschild and crew will now spend 100 days sailing from San Francisco to Sydney, as he raises awareness of the growing problem with the accumulation of plastic waste products. On the voyage, they’ll also visit the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of accumulated trash that is believed to be at least the size of Texas.
The Plastiki set sail on Saturday morning, with expedition leader de Rothschild joined by co-skippers Jo Royal and David Thompson, expedition diver Olav Heyerdahl, and filmmakers Vern Moen and Max Jourdan. The latter two will be filming the expedition, and telling the story of the ship, which receives inspiration from Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition.
To follow along with the adventure, check out the Plastiki Project website, where you can track the progress of the boat. You can also follow along on David de Rothschild’s twitter feed, and the expedition will no doubt continue to get plenty of notice on adventure websites, like the National Geographic Adventure Blog, which has been covering the project for some time. That’s where I came across the video below this morning of CNN covering the departure of the ship. CNN is also posting updates on the voyage as well, which can be found here.
Good luck to the entire crew! Safe voyage!
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nice article, cool that so many people are talking about it! we were stoked to see them off last week and snag an interview about their vertical garden (aka how they plan to eat leafy greens throughout their voyage).
if you're interested check out http://www.yourgardenshow.com/latest for the video.
its a pretty amazing feat of engineering!
Really interesting article.