Travel Reference
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interested in going to places like Hawaii, or the Bahamas, or anywhere. But the Garbage
Patch, inherent to its formation, is in the middle of the biggest nowhere on the planet.
The Gyre had seen several expeditions from researchers and activists the previous sum-
mer, in 2009, so I took to the phones, beginning a campaign of sustained pestering that I
hoped would be my ticket onto one of this year's voyages. And that's how I met Project
Kaisei.
I found the Kaisei docked in Point Richmond, across the bay from San Francisco. A steel-
hulled, square-rigged, 150-foot-long brigantine, it was a striking sight. Think metal pirate
ship and you will have the image. The ship is the namesake and floating linchpin of Project
Kaisei, a nonprofit venture dedicated, as its motto reads, to “Capturing the plastic vortex.”
I had somehow convinced Mary Crowley, one of its founders, to let me come along on a
three-week voyage to that plastic vortex, a thousand miles away, but I had my doubts about
capturing it.
Especially if we never left. We had spent more than a week without a clear sense of
when we might set out to sea. A departure day would be announced, only to dawn with the
new radar unit still absent, or with provisions yet to be delivered, or with a cook not yet
hired, and we would not sail.
In the meantime, a subset of the crew would show up each day to help clean the boat,
patch its rust holes, touch up the blue paint on the hull, or install an extra life raft, and I
had time to develop my mixed feelings about the Kaisei. From the moment I first stepped
aboard, I had tasted that flavor of excitement that has a note of terror. She had two great
masts, the forward one boasting four spars: the yards, from which majestic square sails
would drape, sails that belonged in a biography of Lord Nelson. Dozen upon dozen of
cables and ropes— lines, we learned, not ropes but lines —led from wooden pins on the
deck to points above; this set of lines to pull a sail down, that to pull it up; lines to orient
the yards to starboard or to port; lines to raise and lower the spar of the gaff sail; lines to
raise and lower sets of pulleys that were connected to still further lines.
Was I going to be asked to climb those masts, to edge out along those yards, ap-
proximately a thousand feet up? Like most sensible people, I don't really have a fear of
heights—only a fear of falling to my death. Which is not a fear at all, but a sensible atti-
tude. On the other hand, what is the point of being on a tall ship if you don't experience the
tallness? I knew that when asked to go aloft, I would overcome or at least bypass my fear
and force myself to do it. And so what I really feared was that I wasn't afraid enough.
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