After sailing more than 8,000 nautical miles and spending 128 days crossing the Pacific, the world’s largest ocean, in a boat made of 12,500 plastic PET bottles, the Plastiki expedition and her crew have safely and successfully reached their planned destination of Sydney to cheers of welcome and support.

Plastiki in Sydney Harbour

Arriving at Sydney Heads at 11.10am local time with a 12knot south south easterly breeze, the Plastiki triumphantly sailed into Sydney Harbour to cheers of welcome and support from a small spectator flotilla… The historic expedition was completed in four legs : San Francisco – Kiribati – Western Samoa – New Caledonia before reaching the Australian Coast (Mooloolaba) on Monday 19 July and continuing on to Sydney.

“It’s an incredible feeling to finally arrive in Sydney. We had great faith in the design and construction of Plastiki and while many people doubted we’d make it, we have proved that a boat made from plastic bottles can stand up to the harsh conditions of the Pacific.” expedition leader, David de Rothschild said.

De Rothschild, 31 from the United Kingdom, paid tribute to his fellow adventurers, Jo Royle (Skipper), David Thomson (Co-Skipper), Graham Hill (Founder of Treehugger.com), Olav Heyerdahl, Matthew Grey, Luca Babini (Photographer), Vern Moen (Myoo Media Film maker), Max Jourdan and Singeli Agnew (National Geographic Film makers) for their skill and commitment during the voyage.

“Jo and the rest of the crew did a remarkable job sailing the Plastiki safely across the Pacific and it is due to their collective efforts that we’ve been able to raise global awareness of the issue of plastic waste in the world’s oceans.

If there’s waste, it’s badly designed in the first place, and we need to start taking a serious look at the way we produce and design every product we use in our lives,” De Rothschild said.

Over four months ago on March 20, 2010, under the watchful eye of a global audience, an inspiring yet experimental and innovative one-of-a-kind catamaran set sail under the shadow of San Francisco’s world famous Golden Gate Bridge. Carrying a crew of six intrepid explorers, the Plastiki set out on an epic and demanding mission described by the San Francisco chronicle as the “adventure of the century”.

The pursuit of this audacious and unrivalled ocean expedition: to alert the world to the shocking and unnecessary effects of single use plastics on the health of our oceans and its inhabitants. According to Expedition Leader and founder of Adventure Ecology, David de Rothschild, this is a complex, challenging and now hugely catastrophic issue that scientists estimate is causing devastation on an unprecedented scale – every year at least one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die when they become entangled or ingest plastic pollution.

David de Rothschild and the crew of the Plastiki have been on a mission to not only beat waste but to create a global message of hope by spotlighting some of the real world solutions. After braving the full extremes of the Pacific Ocean one of the largest and most challenging oceans in the world, the crew have fulfilled their ambitious quest to effect a “global message in a bottle”, while setting a new precedent within the sailing and adventure community.

“To achieve this lessening of humanity’s increasingly destructive stranglehold on our natural environments is going to require a radical shift in the current system and the stories that we tell ourselves and each other. No longer is it acceptable to continue just articulating our Planet 1.0 failures, we must now show leadership and vision to support the stories, individuals and initiatives that help us to dream bigger, undertake more compelling adventures and fundamentally inspire, motivate and innovate solutions. Our failure to achieve such an outcome will undoubtedly leave humanity’s ability to live on this planet, as we know it, in the balance. The time to give ourselves a chance of survival is truly upon us,” David de Rothschild said.

THE PLASTIKI STORY:

Tens of millions of people are now aware of the Plastiki and her message. Since launch over 90 media interviews have been conducted from the vessel, resulting in more than 300 print articles, 200 radio and TV broadcasts, including the Oprah Winfrey Show. There are over 800,000 search terms relating to Plastiki and 52,200 related images on Google.

CONGRATULATIONS FROM GREENNOVATE TEAM

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