PANGAEA - a Pan-Global Adventure for Environmental Action

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 29 Sep 2009 Right now there’s a 105’ ketch moored at the Gold Coast Marina in Hong Kong. She’s built of recycled aluminium, has a 2m shoal draft (with the keel up), landing skids that allow her to be run up on a beach, and an ice-breaker bow. She’s a purpose-built expedition yacht: not a racing sled, not a ‘superyacht’ and definitely not your run-of-the-mill grp cruiser. She’s called ‘Pangaea’, which means ‘One World’. Owner and professional adventurer Mike Horn describes her as 'a four-wheel-drive for the sea.'

It’s a very apt description, reinforced by the industrial-strength appearance of her unpainted hull, the ‘sugar scoop’ stern that leads straight into a huge workshop ‘garage’, and a few scuffs and dents ('honourable scars') that she has acquired in the last couple of years. Other non-standard features include a closed internal engine cooling system which passes the coolant through the landing skegs, a kick-up rudder, flexible super-thin solar panels built into the sails, a conference room instead of a saloon, and a whole catalogue of examples of ingenious recycling – the chart table is made of offcut wood strips stacked together as a laminate.

Horn started adventuring in military special forces, and then moved into the world of professional extreme sports. He has swum the length of the Amazon (having hiked 600km to get to the headwaters), circumnavigated the Equator by boat and on foot, walked to the North Pole in dead, dark, winter, walked to the South Pole and ‘kited’ back again, and made a complete circuit of the Arctic Circle. It was during that last expedition that he decided that he wanted to build an expedition yacht and launch a programme that would introduce young people to adventure, teach them about the beauty and fragility of our planet, and show them how to act to help preserve it. 'I had plenty of time to think it all through as I trekked around the Arctic Circle (2 years and 3 months to be exact), and the notebook is several inches thick. I decided that I wanted a boat that provided for three things: adventure and exploration – well, that’s the boat itself; learning – that’s what happens in the conference room; and acting – that’s the practical, hands-on part of our environmental programme, and the heart of the action is the ‘garage’, the workshop'.

Pangaea was built in Brazil, and then sailed to Monaco – 'that was her sea-trial,' says Horn, 'and Monaco marked the beginning of the Pangaea Expedition'. Young adults (15-20 years old) are invited to join the boat for different stages of a four-year programme that will involve 12 separate expeditions (see the website: www.mikehorn.com). Pangaea is in Hong Kong en route to Singapore and then Indonesia where the crew and her Young Explorers will carry out a programme to explore and measure the biodiversity of some of the Indonesian islands. Further legs of the project will visit India, the Himalayas, the Yellow River, Siberia, the North Pole, the Inuits of Nunavut (Canada), the Colorado River, the Amazon, and East Africa.

'There is a desperate need to educate young people about the frightening fragility of our planet,' says Horn. 'We can live and survive on such a small part of it, like skating round on a eggshell.' When he climbed Gasherbrum 1 (8,035m) in Nepal, 'from the summit I could see our mess tent, about four miles away. I could survive down there, but I couldn’t survive on the summit – there’s just not enough oxygen. It’s amazing to think that you can climb out of the survival zone in a matter of hours. The space we inhabit on the earth is so small – we really need to look after it.'

Mike Horn is sponsored by Officine Panerai, Mercedes-Benz and Geberit, and it is their support that allows the Pangaea Expedition to recruit and fund Young Explorers. Anyone interested in applying for a berth on the Pangaea should go through the website www.mikehorn.com - no previous experience of sailing required, just a sense of adventure and a large dose of unquenchable curiosity.