Sailing the seas of plastic
Map of David de Rothschild’s planned Pacific trip by Emily Cooper for National Geographic Adventure.
When I wrote some practical advice for traveling to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre, I thought it was the most far fetched of the disaster destinations I explored. It was certainly the most far flung, as you have to motor a boat for a week just to get there. And it’s the most boring. There’s little life and almost no wind out there. And no, there aren’t mountains of trash to climb around on. Just the open ocean.
Well, according to this National Geographic Adventure article by Paul Kvinta, David de Rothschild will be making the trip in a catamaran custom-built to float on pontoons of plastic water bottles. Since the boat will have no rudder, he’ll steer using jib sails, and I wonder how that will work with the whole no wind thing. After he hits the floating plastic graveyard he’ll move on to Bikini Atoll to check out the former nuclear test site, then he’ll stop at the island of Tuvalu, which risks getting swamped as sea levels rise in response to global warming. The trip will take four months, and you can follow its progress here.
When I talked to Beverly Parsons, a San Diego charter broker who has been in the industry for almost 40 years, about hiring of boat to visit the Eastern Garbage Patch, she thought it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “It would take a really seaworthy person to go there,” she said. “The only kind of people who do that are real adventurers.” In that case, nice job, Kvinta and Adventure, and good luck, de Rothschild.
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