David de Rothschild - Plastiki: Across the Pacific on Plastic: An Adventure to Save Our Oceans

AN EPIPHANYLETS BUILD A BOAT OUT OF PLASTIC BOTTLES AND SAIL ACROSS THE PACIFICBECOMES A MISSION, A MESSAGE, AND AN EXPEDITION.

Im only thirty seconds into a three-hour tour of duty on watch, the tiller and beanbag chair still imprinted with our co-skipper Mr. Ts warmth. Just over a week removed from a grand departure from San Francisco, and nothing yet about life at seathe constant motion, the middle-of-the-night wake ups, the tiger-in-a-cage restlessness of living on a 20-by-60-foot platform with five other peopleresembles comfortable routine.

Did that one get you? asks Mr. T with a grin. Nice! Got off just in time. His silhouette dissolves quickly into the red glow of the cabin. Alone.

Oh, yes! Wet again! I yell into the night, the sound of my voice devoured by the blackness.

Really, Dave? Really? There isnt even a breath of wind or a ripple on the ocean, and you still find a way to get wet. I guess thats the true meaning of a rogue wave. A stream of phosphorescence pulsing and swirling on the port side catches my eye and distracts me from my situation.

And what a situation! What was I thinking in wanting to sail the entire Pacific Ocean? Can I legitimately use the word thinking in conjunction with building a boat from 12,500 plastic bottles and then attempting to sail from San Francisco to Sydney?

My eyes flicker back and forth trying to find some focus in the black void. Our boat is moving along at a speed of less than 2 knots, if you can call that moving. Bobbing is more like it. This is going to be a long journey, I fear.

Hey, Mr. T! Do you think well make Sydney?

Not this year, comes the reply from out of the glowing cabin.

Im sailing the dream: The Plastiki, after two years of hard work, is our best and most sincere expression of the fresh ideas necessary to create a better future. A future that avoids the unsustainable waste and environmental damage of our current way of living. A future that sees waste as a resourcelike the 12,500 reused plastic bottles Im floating on right now.

Yet tonight I cant stop thinking Ive bitten off more than I can chew. Maybe the doubters and naysayers were right. Surely, just sailing across San Francisco Bay would have proven my point. Be careful what you wish for, I always tell others. Maybe I need to start heeding my own advice.

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD STEERS PLASTIKI THROUGH ONE OF MANY INTENSE PACIFIC DOWNPOURS.

Salt does not course through my veins. I know a jib from a mizzen, and a cleat from a winch, but the extent of my nautical experience prior to Plastiki amounted mostly to sailing Hobie Cats while on family vacations as a kid.

It wasnt salt water but ice that was the medium for my first big adventures. On ski expeditions across Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic, I logged hundreds of days and nights on frozen surfaces. While brutally cold and rife with dangers, polar environments in my estimation offer a distinct advantage over the open ocean: They tend not to pitch and roll beneath you. Theyre also impossibly pristine and beautiful and, as were discovering in a warming world, quite fragile.

Plastikis journey began years before the boat ever touched water. In June 2006, Id just returned to London from an expedition to cross over the North Pole from Russia to Canada. It had been humblingrapidly melting pack ice had ended our journey two hundred miles short of Canada. I saw how one of the earths ecosystems was changing right before my eyes. And while thousands of schoolkids around the world had joined the Top of the World journey via the Web, I wanted the expedition to do more than raise awareness. I wanted to make it personal, to make everyone feel connected to the earths fragility.

After any expedition there is some readjustment. Its an anticlimax. Youve been living closely with your teammates in some of the most extreme and inspiring natural environments and then, with the planting of a flag or the last stroke of a paddle, its over. Back in the real world, the thought kept running through my mind: Whats next? What can I do to keep the momentum going?