At fifth sailing day Maserati has already covered 1.816 miles on 5.334

by Imagina on 16 May 2015 Having cast off from San Francisco last Sunday in an attempt to set a new record on the San Francisco-Shanghai Tea Clipper trade route, Giovanni Soldini and the crew of Maserati have already put 1,816 nautical miles in their wake of the total 5,334 straight-line route (in 1853, the clipper Swordfish completed 7,315 actual miles).

The Italian VOR 70 has thus far enjoyed good weather conditions but the crew are currently carefully monitoring the future movements of two typhoons on their route.

Also, however, Maserati’s pace has been slowed somewhat by plastic debris floating around the infamous “Plastic Garbage Patch”, a huge accumulation of rubbish between the 135º and the 155ºmeridian West and the 35º and 42º parallel North, in the Pacific Ocean. The patch is estimated to cover between 700,000 km² and 10 million km².

Giovanni Soldini writes:

“We are maintaining very nice speeds on our route. But one big issue is turning out to be the astonishing quantity of plastic items adrift in the sea. We are seeing a lot of buoys, bits of rope and line, cellophane, car tyres, bits of netting, huge black plastic balls - a myriad of different plastic stuff weathered by sun and sea and now accompanying us around the high pressure area. Unfortunately, the infamous Plastic Garbage Patch is a few hundred miles to the north of our position, but clearly its edges are pretty blurred and there is rubbish drifting across a good section of the sea. Last night, it took us a good couple of hours to free up the port rudder from a floating plastic line. We’re still keeping a very close eye ahead to try to avoid the many, many bits of trash we’re encountering.

“Witnessing such a devastating spectacle gives you a very sad feeling of powerlessness and resignation. We have just come from the golden triangle of human intelligence, Silicon Valley, where huge capital is held in the hands of the very few that everyday dream up and invent our future. Hundreds of whales swim up through the current along the California coast every year to feed in the North Pacific and at first glance it feels like the world, this world, is really thinking about a sustainable future. But just a thousand miles off there coast, there is a very different vista and the destruction is laid bare before our eyes in all its vile crudity.

Is this the true face of progress? Is this what awaits us? Seas filled with plastic, dead and poisoned fish and birds? Perhaps instead of focusing solely on our technological future, we need to invest our resources in defending the planet’s resources from ourselves.”