Some would say English eco-adventurer David de Rothschild is nuts for
trying to sail 10,000 nautical miles from San Francisco to Sydney in a catamaran
built from 12,500 recycled bottles and with a mast made from an old aluminium
irrigation pipe. De Rothschild and his five
crew will drink water recycled from their urine and eat vegetables grown
hydroponically during the three-month journey.

The trip comes at a time when the El Nino climate pattern has made weather in
the Pacific especially hostile and unpredictable. De Rothschild, a 31-year-old
descendant of England’s Rothschild banking dynasty, hopes the voyage will shine
a light on the vast amount of pollution, particularly plastic, that ends up in
oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles each
year.

No matter how good his intention, it does beg the question: is he nuts?
“Well, I am using nut glue and sugar,” de Rothschild says with a laugh, pointing
to another odd design feature of the Plastiki, an 18-metre long, 11-tonne
catamaran co-designed by Sydney-based naval architect Andy Dovell.

A newly developed organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane will help
keep the vessel together during the voyage, set to begin in the next few weeks
if de Rothschild and his team detect a favourable weather window.

“There’s definitely some nuts in this project – in the joints anyway,” he
says. “What I do think is crazy is we are dumping vast amounts of plastic in our
oceans. “I would consider that more nuts than building a boat from bottles and
trying to talk about the pollution we are putting into our oceans.”

De Rothschild, who held a news conference in San Francisco to promote his
voyage, is no stranger to tough expeditions, having crossed the Arctic and
Antarctica.

The Plastiki was built from sustainable design technologies, including a sail
made from recycled cloth and a unique recyclable plastic material made from
srPET (self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate) for the superstructure.

It also features solar panels, wind turbines, trailing sea turbines, bicycle
generators and equipment including GPS devices, satellite communication and
weather systems, electronic navigation, smartphones and computers.

De Rothschild argues that the Plastiki has advantages over traditional
catamarans. “How risky is it?” he asks. “How risky is sailing any vessel from
San Francisco to Sydney? “It just so happens that instead of having two-single
buoyancy chambers, we have created 12,500 individual buoyancy chambers.

“If you do the math, some people would say our boat is safer. “Most times
when a boat sinks it is because its carbon fibre or fibreglass shatters after
hitting a reef or sunken container and puts a hole in the single chamber and the
entire boat goes down. “If it happens to us, we would have to lose all 12,500
bottles to sink. “Now, if we did lose all 12,500 bottles, it would be an
environmental tragedy and I’d get slammed.”

An exact route is not planned, but de Rothschild has pencilled in stops in
Honolulu, Bikini Atoll, Tarawa, Port Vila, Noumea, Lord Howe Island, Coffs
Harbour and finally Sydney.

Courtesy:shiptalk.com