Three Unconventional Travelers are Approaching Hawaii

August 18th, 2008

As you read this, three hardy people are sailing to Hawaii from California in very unlikely craft … for a cause.

To call attention to plastic marine debris, two men are aboard a sail-powered junk.  No, not a junk such as the Chinese sailing vessels you’ve seen depicted in Hong Kong Harbor.  It’s a boat made of … well, junk; 15,000 plastic bottles and other refuse held together by discarded fishing nets used to support a scuttled Cessna fuselage, appropriately named the “Junk.”

The other boat – a 24-footer named the “Brocade” is being ROWED by a woman for the same purpose as she attempts to become to first woman to row solo across the Pacific.  The three sailors, Joel Paschal, Marcus Eriksen and Roz Savage, met last week aboard the Junk, some 600 miles northwest of the islands.  Paschal and Erikson departed from Long Beach; Savage from San Francisco.

The focus of their efforts is to raise awareness of an area of plastic debris in the ocean called the North Pacific Gyre, a clockwise-rotating mass of water roughly twice the size of the U.S., where currents and winds slow down.  It’s referred to as “a toilet bowl that never flushes."  According to Savage, the ultimate purpose of the effort is to see greater personal responsibility for limited one-time use of plastics and a more responsible policy for limiting single-use disposables.

The Junk is expected to reach the Ala Wai Boat Harbor in Waikiki on August 27.  Savage and the Brocade are expected in Waikiki a couple of days later.

Posted by Jim Winpenny

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