David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiBuilding the World's Most Unlikely Boat

Text by Thayer Walker; Boat rendering and photograph courtesy of Adventure Ecology

Last October, we brought you the story of David de Rothschild, the British explorer who plans to sail 11,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles and other recyclable materials. Readers responded vigorously (read their comments).

Without stepping off of dry ground, de Rothschild and his team have already faced a host of challenges, but now comes the hard part: building, and then sailing, the Plastiki. Departure date is set for the end of April, so over the next several weeks we will take you behind the scenes where, in a vast and otherwise empty pier overlooking San Francisco Bay, one of the world’s most unlikely boats is taking shape. See a photo gallery of the Pier 31 workshop >>

The Plan 

David de Rothschild’s plan to sail across the Pacific Ocean, from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles, isn’t just an adventure. It’s a crusade. “Our philosophy of throwing everything away has to change,” says de Rothschild. “I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to help people think of waste as a resource.” 

Since 2005, de Rothschild’s has used his company Adventure Ecology to promote his expeditions and help teach school children about environmental issues like global warming. With the Plastiki, he hopes to capture a wider audience and do more than just raise awareness. “I don’t want to just highlight the problem,” de Rothschild says, “I want to find solutions.” 

The plywood model of Plastiki’s cabin sitting in San Francisco’s Pier 31 illustrates the point. On each leg of the trip, one of the six berths will be set aside for scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who will study topics like ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and marine debris and publish a paper at the end of the trip. 

De Rothschild says that the Plastiki will be 100 percent recyclable. The boat’s framework, made of self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate (PET), demonstrates how unconventional thinking can yield more ecologically sensitive alternatives. “If we have the ability to sail across the Pacific in this—and I have no doubt that we do—it could revolutionize the way people build pleasure boats,” he says. “It’s not going to show up in the America’s Cup, but our vessel could influence the whole industry. That outcome, regardless of if we make it across the Pacific, would be the success of the expedition.”

Through the Sculpt the Future Foundation, the non-profit arm of Adventure Ecology, de Rothschild is also creating the Smart Competition, which he hopes will catalyze people into action. A cash grant will be awarded in five categories—science, marketing, research, art and industrial design, and technology—for solutions that will, as de Rothschild puts it, “beat waste.” Stay tuned for more information on this.

 

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in Spring 2009 on a 11,000-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for updates.

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nvironmental science is the study of the interactions among the physical, chemical and biological components of the environment; with a focus on pollution and degradation of the environment related to human activities; and the impact on biodiversity and sustainability from local and global development.
The subdiscipline of biology that concentrates on the relationships between organisms and their environments; it is also called environmental biology. Ecology is concerned with patterns of distribution (where organisms occur) and with patterns of abundance (how many organisms occur) in space and time.

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I've always wondered, in the unlikely event of a jumbo jet having to make an emergency landing on water, would it actually float in the same way that is shown on the safety card?

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nice idea!! i will made same with my beer bottles