Wednesday, May 14th – The new start delayed until Thursday morning
Getting started with the new boat dedicated to the expedition revealed a small anomaly on a propeller. The crew thus preferred to postpone the departure from Guadeloupe to tomorrow morning in order to repair the equipment. We still left the Pointe-à-Pitre’s port to sail a first time to get our hand in the new sailboat and to carry out the safety drills necessary to navigation in the ocean. We then dropped the anchor Northeast of Guadeloupe. The departure is planned for tomorrow morning.
Today we got in touch for the first time with a school, via the “Agence de l’Eau Seine Normandie”’s educational operation. The young are integrated into the expedition via ground-operations and measurement campaign along the banks of the Seine. Meetings via Skype are indeed programmed with several classes which plan to clean the banks of the Seine and will contact the crew throughout the expedition. They then report back to us telling what they found and we share our information on the collected waste. Today we chatted with 10th grade class from Châtillon-sur-Seine. The teenagers showed curiosity about our adventures of the last days and about our mission’s objectives.
They filled 7 bags with plastic waste by cleaning the banks of their city and admitted to us they were amazed by the quantity they collected. They also took ok the role of scientists for a few hours to sample the pollutant in the water, which will then be analyzed by the researchers’ team involved in the expedition. It is estimated that more than 80 % of the plastic comes from the ground. It is mainly transported by rivers and wind, before finishing at sea. We are thus all concerned by this plastic accumulation phenomenon. Every action raises awareness and the implication of the young generations is a real engine for our behavior to change.
Let us not drop the future tenants of our beautiful planet.
The 7th Continent team