Sailing For Cause: Marine 'Odd-Ventures'

John Laumer
Business / Corporate Responsibility
April 13, 2009

Ice cream stick replica of Viking ship. Image credit:RedOrbit Sail-World.com recently profiled several transoceanic sailing adventures, designed to draw attention to important causes, including the ocean environment. Use of recycled materials in boat design is a popular theme. I was particularly fond of the ice-cream-sticks-glued-together Viking ship replica (pictured); but, the plastic-bottle catamaran "Plastiki" - named for the legendary Kontiki - also is pretty cool (pictured below).Last year TreeHugger Mike covered several marine odd-ventures, including The Suntory Mermaid II: A Wave-Powered Boat. The most recent of the Mermaid series was included in the Sail-World article.

But one of the oddest of the odd-venturing sail boat designs has got to be the Plastiki:

David de Rothschild, a sometime polar explorer and all-round adventurer, and one of the Rothschild banking family, is in good company as an environmentalist who makes his point dramatically with his latest sailing project.
With the help of a group of like-minded young men and women, he is constructing one of the most unusual sailing craft ever seen - a 60 ft catamaran called Plastiki made entirely of used plastic bottles. When it is finished, next month sometime, he plans to sail it across the Pacific.