http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/04/BA421BS5M9.DTL

A strange looking vessel took a leisurely sail on San Francisco Bay on Wednesday - a shakedown voyage for a plastic, fantastic adventure that should finally start next month.
Images
David de Rothschild (second from left) trims the sails on...The Plastiki moves across San Francisco Bay on a test run...Ashley Biggins enjoys a sandwich in the turtle-shaped cab... View More Images

The boat is the 60-foot-long catamaran Plastiki, which David de Rothschild, the 31-year-old scion of the British banking family, plans to sail across the Pacific to Australia, beginning in the first days of March.

What makes the Plastiki unique is that the boat's twin hulls are made of 12,500 plastic bottles that once held soft drinks or spring water. The bottles are filled with dry ice, which of course is a gas.

Except for the boat's two masts, the twin hulls, a small outboard motor for emergencies, and a few odds and ends like the galley stove, the Plastiki is made of a hard, tough, self-reinforcing plastic material called PET.

"It is totally unique," said Andy Fox, a builder of sustainable boats who lives in the western edge of England and was along for the ride Tuesday. "There is nothing like it in the world."
Not a sailing beauty

To tell the truth, the Plastiki is no beauty. The boat is a translucent off-white color, rigged as a ketch with a tall mainmast and a shorter mast aft. Both are metal, gleaming in the sun. The 12,500 bottles that make up the twin hulls give the vessel an odd look, like a kid's science project.

There is a low cabin, rounded like the back of a turtle. Inside are four bunks for eight crew members, a small galley and an area for an array of electronics the boat will carry. There will be plenty of electronics; one of the expedition sponsors is Hewlett-Packard. There is a tiny head, as the seagoing toilet is called. This will be an adventure in tight quarters.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

"I'm very excited," said Jo Royle, a 30-year-old Englishwoman who is the Plastiki's skipper. "I think it's really come together."

Behind the adventure is a dead serious message: de Rothschild wants to draw attention to a world of plastic waste. Only a fraction of the world's plastic bottles are recycled, he says. The rest end up in landfills or out in the ocean. He figures the way to get the recycling message across is a plastic sailing adventure - a message in a bottle.
Built in a pier shed

Something like the Plastiki has been in the back of de Rothschild's mind for years, and it began to take shape last winter in a disused pier shed on San Francisco's northern waterfront.

After months of collecting empty soda bottles, sawing, cutting and hammering the twin hulls together, and fitting the masts, the Plastiki went into the water for the first time on Dec. 16.

The boat was towed to Sausalito and the sails were rigged in early January, and the Plastiki has been out in the bay for occasional trial runs while the eight-member crew worked to become familiar with the boat.

How much did it cost? "More than I'd like and less than it could be," de Rothschild said.

The biggest surprise? "How much we have to learn," he said.

It was hard to tell how well the boat sailed during Wednesday's voyage - there was only a whisper of wind and the bay was as flat as a sheet of plastic.
More shakedown cruises

There is still a lot of fitting out to do, and several more shakedown cruises. If all goes well, the Plastiki - named for Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon-Tiki raft - will sail out the Golden Gate in about a month.

"It depends on a window of good weather," de Rothschild said. "The hardest thing is to get clear of the coast."

The plan is to sail south to about the latitude of Mexico then west into the central Pacific, with landfall at one of the Line Islands, a group of atolls south of Hawaii. The biggest of these small islands is Kiritimati, which used to be called Christmas Island.

After that, de Rothschild hopes to work his way west and south, toward Australia.


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