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British adventurer David de Rothschild poses near the Plastiki vessel - Source: Reuters -
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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.
