Guardian.co.uk | David de Rothschild is about to sail a 60ft plastic catamaran, kept afloat with 12,500 empty bottles, across the Pacific

David de Rothschild on the Plastiki, in San Francisco. The 60ft catamaran is made of recyclable plastic. Photograph: Barry J Holmes

An unlikely heir to his banking family fortune – he is the son of Sir Evelyn – de Rothschild appears at first sight to be in the great British tradition of Ripping Yarns adventurers (with a slacker twist): vaguely distracted, carefully dishevelled, unflappably amused. Past expeditions have taken him to both Poles on foot and deep into various jungles, but he resists the idea of himself as part of the "only just survived" school of exploration.

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