On the surface, it’s a hell of an idea.
Unfortunately, that surface is the Pacific Ocean, and beneath it lies miles and miles of silent, black, swirling water, churning with both massive, forceful waves and curious sea beasts who are slowly realizing they missed lunch. And the Plastiki is six people on top of 12,000 recycled bottles, just trying to make a point.
Yes. It’s really come to this.
The Plastiki is the child of David de Rothschild and his latest foray into the world of saving the environment with lots of time and money. On his 60-foot catamaran built solely from recycled materials, his mission is to get the craft from San Francisco to Sydney, with a quick stop in the Pacific Garbage Patch to take samples.
Is he a hero? A phony? A materialistic attention whore? A rare breed of both insanely rich and extremely helpful aristocrat?
It’s hard to criticize a man who is going out of his way to make the expedition as sustainable as possible. Not only is the Plastiki itself made of recycled goods, but they will depend on jibs and a biodiesel motor to move and a human feces-powered garden to grow organic food.
de Rothschild has been called everything from an “eco-warrior” by The Guardian, to “… the latest trustafarian to hop on the green train,” by Amy Westervelt of The Faster Times. Regardless of labels, he is motoring full speed ahead toward hopping on his baby and sailing the biggest ocean on the planet, all to show the world that plastic is here to stay, so we’d better learn to adapt.
“There’s no such thing as ‘away’,” de Rothschild explained in an interview on the idea of “throwing something away.” Another perfect sound byte for the cause.
But there are three months and 11,000 miles between de Rothschild and his goal, not to mention there’s not even a launch date yet. At least he can depend on his years and years of nautical knowledge and experience to anchor the trip. Actually, de Rothschild himself has described his sailing skills as “novice,” which does not bode well, considering that Plastiki skipper Jo Royle stresses self-sufficiency while at sea. Still, de Rothschild claims he is “happy on a boat.” Which doesn’t really seem relevant when you’re on a 60- foot raft made of trash and staring at an oncoming squall that won’t stop eating the rest of the sky.
And for some reason, he is still spouting the utmost confidence, bordering on obnoxious.
“I’d give myself a 100% chance of making it. But obviously there’s always a percentage that’s out of our control.”
“You got that right,” the Pacific Ocean replied.
Here’s the thing. When he’s talking about surviving the voyage, without a doubt, he says “I’d give myself.” When he’s talking about problems arising, they’re suddenly “… out of our control.” Furthermore, does he think if just one of the crew comes back, it will be him? Is he admitting that if he has to, he is prepared to kill everyone else on board for the sake of self-preservation?
From an outsider standpoint, you might say that bringing up such a question is both wildly offensive and… well, let’s just start with that.
First of all, the crew has to chart a course following downwinds, so they’ll be able to keep moving. The top speed of the craft is 10 knots, which, if you’re not a sailor (like me), is basically throwing the car in neutral on a street that’s slightly less than level. There’s a biodiesel motor in case they need an extra boost, which the skipper says is “useless.” Every bit of the craft’s mobility (and its entire construction, for that matter) is made from sustainable products, which, while inspiring, does not mean it’s a very fast ship.
There will be no way to maneuver effectively without wind, and should the need to quickly get out of something’s way arise… well… they can’t. But they’ll be in the middle of the ocean, where “getting out of the way” isn’t a priority too often, except for a couple of really huge, deadly exceptions dotting the course of man’s history on the open seas.
If the Plastiki could be powered and manned by generating capital and environmental witticisms, then I’d cast de Rothschild, and then maybe Al Gore, even though he doesn’t have an accent so charming that one would think every time his name is used it should be followed by the phrase “… and his merry band.”
But de Rothschild pushes on, fueled by the bodies of a million dead sea birds and the ghost of Thor Heyerdahl, the man who sailed from South America to the Tuamotu Islands on a handcrafted raft called the Kon-Tiki in 1947, and a personal hero of de Rothschild’s.
From what I have gathered, de Rothschild’s got an image of himself saving the world amidst thunderous applause. He wants so desperately to be seen as more than he is, but unlike most of us, who squirrel away our insecurities and doubts behind a healthy layer of involuntary ticks or bedwetting, David’s got the money, the mic, and the mug to navigate his persona through an ocean of curious inquiries.
But outside of carefully threaded metaphors, he isn’t quite seaworthy.
The guy is no stranger to maintaining an image; a casual glance at any of the photos from one of his many, many flirtations with press coverage can tell you this. He’s standing with one leg propped up on a crane in mid-air. Laying on a pile of thousands of plastic bottles. Looking pensively at a Plastiki model with the San Francisco skyline behind him. He looks like Gaius Baltar, and with the accent, he sounds like him, too. Are we in danger of de Rothschild betraying all of humanity to the Cylons? I don’t know. But it would depend a lot on their ideas about sustainability.
He certainly seems ready to put on a show; to be followed by camera crews, to talk over Jo Royle, who might have some important nautical things to say, but who needs that when you’re “… happy on a boat”?
So maybe there’s a certain amount of risk involved, but it’s for a global cause. The idea is that they are doing something that’s never been done before in the name of changing the status quo, to illustrate that trash is only trash because we call it trash… and giving it that label doesn’t mean it’s going to go away.
Herein lies the problem, though. It has absolutely been done before.
“The Junk Raft,” created by the Algatia Marine Research Foundation and manned by oceanographers Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal, was created from 15,000 recycled plastic bottles and sailed to the Pacific Garbage Patch where it performed tests in 2008.
If you’re unfamiliar with the JUNK raft’s story, it has a much more visceral, Lord of the Flies taste to it than the squeaky clean Plastiki saga. Upon the discovery that they were traveling much, much slower than they believed, Eriksen and Paschal went half-rations until coming in contact with a woman who decided to cross the Pacific alone in a rowboat named Roz Savage.
She didn’t have any water (thanks to her malfunctioning water makers), and they needed food outside of fish and peanut butter, so, after sailing gradually toward each other like “garden snails about to mate,” according to Savage, there was a quick harpooning of a nearby mahi mahi, and the three of them ate and exchanged goods before splitting up again, 600 miles from Hawaii.
Not only that, but the wildlife in the area became so accustomed to the JUNK raft being there that they actually caught a fish they had watched develop since birth five weeks earlier. And then, when they were about to eat it, they discovered the stomach was full of confetti, at which point, I would have just eaten my crewmate.
The part of the Plastiki’s journey which de Rothschild explains as “… a percentage that’s out of our control,” is exactly the percentage a “novice,” albeit handsome, sailor would not be prepared for.
The Plastiki makes for a good story, as countless newspapers and blogs have picked up on it and been swept up in the purity of de Rothschild’s actions, and how nice it is to see a painfully wealthy twenty-something take action with his fortunes that goes beyond exotic travel, club hopping, and hunting people for sport (I’m assuming that happens somewhere).
He’s a visionary and a rebel and at least he’s actually doing something, even if it means taking his last nap under several miles of sea water.
But that’s not the plan. The plan is to sail, to test, to repair; to learn from a massive, buoyant, irreversible error, slowly, yet relentlessly, assembling itself in the middle of the ocean. The plan is to stay afloat.
And on the surface, it’s a hell of an idea.
Photo taken from Flickr by the following people:
Davidg
Mayorgavinnewsome
Dirtymouse
Cesarharada.com
Tidewater Muse
Dawn D
David Stifry
Ekornblut
