50 days around Australia with a message: Eliminate plastic bags!

8:25 PM Fri 12 Mar 2010 GMT

'This turtle dying from ingesting plastic bags - Save our Seas - SOS' Save Our Seas - Ocean Racing

There's always another record to break, and Save Our Seas wants to make the world plastic-free.

Put these two facts together, and you have a winning project. Ian Thomson, Save Our Seas member sailor from the Whitsundays in Queensland, will set off in late April to break the world record for sailing non stop solo unassisted around Australia. The campaign is to raise awareness for the damage that plastic bags are doing to our environment.

The current record for non stop solo unassisted around Australia is held by another Australian, sailor David Beard who set a time of 68 days 8 hours and 30 minutes.

Ian plans to smash that record by completing the journey in less than 50 days. The vessel he will be using is a much faster vessel and hence it is not out of reach.

His attempt start in the Whitsundays, from the Whitsunday Sailing Club, as the rules have been changed to allow sailors to stay inside the Barrier Reef. Then he will head past Thursday Island at the tip of Cape York, Melville Island off Darwin, North West Cape in the Kimberleys, Cape Leeuwin Australia's most south westerley point, South East Cape at the base of Tasmania, past Sydney Harbour, past Cape Byron, the most easterly point and then home to the Whitsundays. He is planning to depart in late April/early May.

Some facts about plastic:
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* Just in Australia, with a population of only 22 million, people use 6 billion plastic bags a year of which 3.6 billion are plastic shopping bags.

* 100,000 marine creatures a year in the world die from plastic entanglement - and these are the ones found.

* A plastic bag can kill numerous animals as they take so long to decompose, any animal that dies from the bag will decompose and the bag will be released and another animal could eat it.

* The floods in Bangladesh in 1988 and 1998 were more severe because plastic bags clogged drains.? The government has now banned plastic bags.

* In Ireland they put a 15c plastic bag tax and reduced their usage by 90% in one year.

* If each Australian used 1 less plastic bag each week that would be 253 million bags less a year.

All cruising sailors confirm that the number one man made things that sailors see when they are travelling the world's oceans is plastic bags - even in uninhabited wildernesses, the beaches and reefs are becoming fouled with polystyrene and plastic bags of all sizes.

The main issue of this campaign is to reduce the number of plastic bags used by Australians and Ian states that he hopes one day Australia will be a plastic bag free country.

After the sail around Australia, Ian plans to campaign local, state and federal governments to introduce a plastic bag tax like the one placed in Ireland that resulted in a 90% reduction in use. Until then he encourages people to reduce, reuse and recycle their plastic bags so they don't clog up the environment.

The route of Ian Thompson's 50 days around Australia to Save Our Seas - SOS - Save Our Seas - Ocean Racing

Solo sailing has become a high news point recently with the exploits of Abbie Sunderland and Jessica Watson sailing around the world attempting to become the youngest to do so.

However the World Speed Sailing Record Council will not ratify her attempt as they discourage the 'youngest' title. However Ian is out to set an official world record and should he succeed will be become the first official person to have completed the journey solo. The current record is in the Guinness Book of Records and was never ratified by the WSSRC.

The highlight of the campaign will be the Live Video Streaming coming from onboard providing website visitors and news broadcasts the ability to see what is happening live at certain times of the day.

This footage is being provided by, Streaming Video Systems. This system was used on the Volvo 60 Merit in the recent Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and provided viewers an insight as to life on an ocean racing machines.

In addition Sail-world.com will be covering the entire journey with daily updates.