Sailboat plies 6,000 km of water to unite Asia

By Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI (Reuters Life!) - It's like climbing Mount Everest in the tropics, a risky adventure where the peaks are white foam-crested waves of the Pacific Ocean.

A tiny, specially made sailboat is roughing it over 6,000 kilometers of ocean from Indonesia to Japan this summer, piloted by a crew risking their safety to remind people along the way that they all share an increasingly polluted ocean.

Six sailors from Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan and Britain set off on May 10 for a trip they hope will put them in Nagoya by mid-July, after stopping in the Philippines and Taiwan. It includes extended stops along the way to educate curious seaside locals who know little about the condition of the ocean.

The team shares stories and photos of how the Pacific Ocean binds them together, said Chen Chin-kuo, chairman of the Civilization Explorer Association, a private cultural preservation group in Taiwan.

"Wherever you live, there are islands, but because of economics, religion, ideology and political factors, people can't get from country to country," said Chen, a sailor who tried a similar trip from Asia to South America in 2005.

"For Taiwan, the ocean is a stranger, and it's strange for some in the Philippines."

MESSAGES AND BOTTLES

The association organized a photo forum in Hualien, east Taiwan, and a children's art contest in the northern port city of Keelung, where the boat arrived in June. They've stopped in Manila for a talk on pan-Asian cultural ties, and they hope to make it for an ocean festival in Japan.

One message they hope to make clear is that Asian-Pacific countries share an ocean current that can transmit pollution from one country to another.

Bottles from Taiwan have floated to the Philippines, while chemical pollution on the island's developed west coast has threatened shellfish. A north-south current off Taiwan's east coast runs from the Philippines to Japan.

"The Taiwanese aren't too aware, because they figure whatever filth is in the rivers, it gets flushed out periodically by the typhoons," said Linda Arrigo, an American-born international affairs officer with the Green Party of Taiwan.

Oceans later wash the same filth up on beaches, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away, she said.

But it hasn't all been smooth sailing -- the crew was detained for 10 hours by the Philippine coast guard as suspected terrorists. The boat stayed in Taiwan longer than expected because of stormy seas, Chen said. And the whole expedition is running out of money.

The crew however is determined to sail on.

"It was a positive reception everywhere, even in Manila where we didn't contact the local media," said British-born sailor Andy Limond, 27, an anthropologist based in Japan.