Junk's maiden voyage tomorrow!

(Reposted from Junk Raft.)

For those of who you have been following the construction of "Junk", the raft built of 15,000 bottles to sail to Hawaii:

This coming Sunday, at noon, Junk will set forth on her first test sail before the big June 1st departure.

Junk is part 2 of our "Message in a Bottle" campaign, to draw public attention to the increasing ecological nightmare of plastic debris fouling our oceans. I won't be on this leg of the journey (I'll be blogging from land....) but will ride from Vancouver to Mexico with with Marcus next fall, giving presentations and passing out gyre samples to everyone we meet.

For Sunday's test run, Captain Charles Moore and a crew from Algalita will tow Junk with the ORV Alguita out to Catalina, where Joel and Marcus will have a chance to see how she handles wind and waves.


Hard to believe that what looked like this just a month ago:























Came to look like this a week ago,




















......and by Sunday will be a complete boat, with masts, sail, and two sailors with some serious cojones.


We'll return to the Aquarium marina Monday around noon. After Monday, Joel and Marcus should have a much better idea of any final tweaking that needs to be done, and an inkling of what they have in store for them......