( CNN ) -- Having lived and breathed Plastiki for the last two and a half years , I finally stepped aboard her for the final leg to Australia . My first day was thankfully uneventful ; some steering , a game of Bananagrams , plenty of dozing and just a little hide and seek with some nausea . But at sea it is the night that ushers in the sublime ; a sky ablaze with burning bright stars , twenty or more tumbling gracefully into oblivion . A small slither of a smiley moon , barely concealing the bright promise that lies beneath . A huge billowing turret of a cloud , host to a lightning show so brilliant that it casts momentary shadows across deck . What is ridiculous is that any of this ever happened at all . This boat ; conceived , designed and built out of plastic bottles , which has sailed over 4000 miles to be here today beneath this unbelievable sky . `` It 's a boat , made from plastic bottles , '' David de Rothschild said to me in December 2007 . `` We 've got this amazing sustainability architect , Michael Pawlyn , on board . He 's done some dope drawings and we 're interviewing for a naval engineer . The plan is to sail through this thing called the Great Eastern Garbage patch , doing science along the way and inspiring people to look at Waste as a Resource . We 'll build it in San Fran , set sail in December ( 2008 ) and arrive into Sydney March 09 . '' I 'm paraphrasing massively , but you get the gist . `` Cool , '' was what I remember thinking . I was working for a firm building emergency bridges in Africa and was ready for something different . This seemed different and I was in . The early days of the project revolved around meetings , phone calls and a staggering inbox of emails . We were rich in big ideas and exceptional consultants but poor in concrete ideas and real boating knowledge . The brief was very strict and has always remained so ; the bottles must be the primary element of the boat ideally performing both structure and flotation . We were to use no glues , minimal fixings , minimal new components or materials . In addition it was to sustainably support a crew of six using innovative `` off grid '' life support systems . It was a hugely creative period with amazing sausage-type bottle structures and invertebrate raft ideas all on the table . The wackier most bottle-centric minimal structure designs were favored . We had a major coup early on which was the `` gassing '' of the bottles . Of great concern was stabilizing the bottles into mini structures themselves . The obvious solution seemed to be pressurizing them , but how ? We variously talked about fitting bicycle valves to the caps and pumping them up , building a hyperbaric chamber to fill the bottles under pressure and finally liquid nitrogen . Knowing very little about liquid nitrogen I set off happily to BOC Gases intent on gettin ' me some . The guy looked at me like I was crazy , which was something I was to get used to over the next few years . `` Er , I do n't think so , '' he said . Not such a good idea . `` Dry ice on the other hand , '' he said grinning sheepishly , `` would be an excellent alternative . '' And before I knew it he was shoveling crystalline , smoky powder into an Evian bottle . `` Watch this , '' he said , screwing on the cap and ejecting it into the empty parking lot . It was a Saturday morning deep in the bowels of Covent Garden Market in London , but the bang when the bottle spectacularly exploded I thought was sure to bring SWAT troops parachuting down on us . Not wishing to stick around to find out I bought all the dry ice he had and made my exit . I could hear a faint call after me : `` Make sure you keep a window open in the car ... '' `` Kaboom , '' I thought as I careered out of there , windows down in the freezing February air . I was in search of somewhere quiet and secluded to do some experimenting of my own . So despite this early success with the bottles we were still a very `` un-boaty '' collection of boat designers . We were in for a rude awakening ... . Andy Dovell , of Dovell Naval Architects based in Sydney came highly recommended and joined us in London in early March 2008 . He came complete with a first draft design -- of a boat . `` It 's a bit boat-like , '' we conferred out of earshot . `` Too much structure , '' was another comment . `` But a good starting point nevertheless , '' someone else chimed in . What Andy knew and we did n't was that boats typically look like boats and require structure . So began the taming of the shrew .
Plastiki expedition co-ordinator Matthew Grey recalls early days of the project . Joined the Plastiki as a crew member in Australia on years heading for Samoa . Finding ways to make a boat from plastic bottles took early days of trial and error .