The Plastiki, the catamaran made out of recycled plastic, set sail from San Francisco Bay 10 days ago. After four years of preparation, the 60-foot catamaran finally cast off her lines at a Sausalito pier, passed below the Golden Gate Bridge, and made for open ocean on Saturday, March 20. Currently the boat is off Baja and starting to bear away west with the trade winds.
The Plastiki on a shake-down cruise near San Francisco.
As almost every article about the expedition has noted, the boat’s flotation pontoons are made from over 12,000 plastic bottles. The most innovative part of the craft, however, is a new polymer called srPET. Self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate, or srPET, is fabric-like derivative of the plastic used to make water bottles. In the Plastiki it is a key element in the frame of the vessel. It has characteristics similar to fiberglass, but unlike fiberglass, srPET can be recycled.
As expedition leader, David de Rothschild has said, he wants to use the vessel to underline the idea that “waste is a design flaw,” as reported in Outside Magazine in December of 2009.
While Mr. Rothschild was lining up sponsors for the voyage and experimenting with polymers, a Southern California scientist named Marcus Eriksen built a 30-foot catamaran from 15,000 plastic bottles, a deck of lashed-together sailboat masts and a cabin from an old Cessna. With crewmember Joel Paschal, Eriksen sailed the vessel, known as the Junk Raft, from Long Beach, California to Hawai’i in the summer of 2008.
The Junk Raft
Like Plastiki’s voyage, the Junk Raft’s crossing was meant to call attention to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. One of the key sponsors of the Junk Raft’s voyage was the Algalita Foundation, set up by Captain Charles Moore, who first crossed the GPGP during a voyage in 1997. Here’s the record of the Junk Raft’s voyage through the Garbage Patch in 2008.
The Plastiki will sail further than the Junk Raft — all the way to Sydney. Albeit slowly; the average cruising speed of the Plastiki is only 3.5 knots — equivalent to a brisk walking pace. The vessel and her crew of six is entering the tropics now and will make for the Line Islands, a chain of low coral atolls straddling the Equator. If all goes well, the catamaran will enter Sydney harbor in June. Meanwhile you can follow the voyage on the Plastiki’s website.
