Boat made from recycled bottles crosses Pacific
The crew of the Plastiki, a 60ft catamaran which weathered fierce storms during its 8,000 nautical miles at sea, left San Francisco on March 20, stopping at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa.
“This is the hardest part of the journey so far – getting it in,” expedition leader David de Rothschild yelled from the boat as the crew struggled to manoeuvre the difficult-to- steer vessel into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum.
A crowd of about 100 erupted into cheers after the Plastiki finally docked.
De Rothschild – a descendant of the British banking family – exchanged high fives and hugs with his crew, pumping his fists into the air in victory.
“It has been an extraordinary adventure,” he said.
The 31-year-old said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a UN report in 2006 which said that pollution – and particularly plastic waste – was seriously threatening the world’s oceans.
He decided that a good way to prove that rubbish can be effectively recycled was to use some of it to build a boat.
The Plastiki – named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl – is fully recyclable and gets its power from solar panels and windmills.
The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, held together with an organic glue made from sugar cane and cashews, but includes other materials. The mast, for instance, is recycled aluminium irrigation pipe.
“The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph,” said Jeffrey Bleich, the US Ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team after they docked.
During their 128-day journey, the six-member crew lived in a cabin of just 6m by 4.5m, took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden.
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