A lot of bottle: Recycled boat crosses ocean

The Plastiki  - a 60ft catamaran - arrived in Sydney Harbour with its six-member crew four months after setting out from San Francisco. The crew, who had to cope with fierce storms during their 8,000 nautical miles at sea, as well as 70mph winds and temperatures of up to 38C, had difficulty mooring the boat.

"This is the hardest part of the journey so far - getting it in!" expedition leader David de Rothschild joked from the boat as the crew struggled to manoeuvre it into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum.

"It has been an extraordinary adventure," he said.

The trip was undertaken as a way of publicising the perils of plastic waste. De Rothschild, 31, a member of the banking family, said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a UN report in 2006 that said pollution - and particularly plastic waste - was seriously threatening the world's oceans.

He decided that building a boat was one way to show how rubbish could be effectively reused. The result was the Plastiki - named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl - a fully recyclable boat that gets its power from solar panels and windmills.

During the journey, the six-member crew lived in a cabin of just 20ft by 15ft, took salt water showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, with the occasional vegetable thrown in from a small onboard garden.

"The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph," said Jeffrey Bleich, the US Ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team on dry land.

Skipper Jo Royle had the particular challenge of being the only woman on board.

"I'm definitely looking forward to a glass of wine and a giggle with my girlfriends," she said on her arrival.

Vern Moen, the Plastiki's filmmaker, missed the birth of his first child - though he managed to watch the delivery on a grainy Skype connection. He met his son for the first time after docking in Sydney.

"It was very, very surreal to show up on a dock and it's like: 'Here's your kid," he said with a laugh.

Although the team had originally hoped to recycle the Plastiki, de Rothschild said they are now thinking of keeping it intact, and using it as a way of enlightening people to the power of recycling.

"There were many times when people looked at us and said, 'you're crazy,"' he said.

"I think it drove us on to say, 'Anything's possible'."


/Sky News/