Matt Rutherford’s New Challenge

Two years ago Annapolis-based sailor Matt Rutherford, then 31, made headlines when he successfully completed the first-ever singlehanded circumnavigation of the Americas. Tomorrow, if a few last-minute technical challenges can be mastered, he and his partner, Nicole Trenholm, will embark from Oakland on a new mission: sailing nonstop to Fukuoka, Japan.

Ironically, in addition to Rutherford’s physical endurance and mental toughness, one of the things that made his around-the-Americas effort possible in a vintage 27-ft Albin Vega fiberglass sloop was the fact that Arctic ice had diminished so radically in the Northwest Passage during the summer of 2011 that virtually every vessel that attempted that fabled transit got through. 

His lap around the Americas made Rutherford acutely aware of the current threats to ocean ecosystems. As he said recently, "The ocean is a vast and wild place, but unfortunately it’s not pristine. Human impacts can be seen even thousands of miles from shore."

During the 7,000-mile passage to Japan Rutherford and Trenholm, who is a NOAA researcher, will drag a high-speed trawl net from their brand-new, customized Schock Harbor 29 sailboat Sakura in order to sample the distribution of plastic in previously unexplored areas of the North Pacific Gyre. Captured debris will be cataloged along the way, and will be analyzed — after their arrival approximately 80 days from now — by both American and Japanese scientists.

We hope to bring you more on this ambitious project here and in the pages of Latitude 38. In the meantime, you can follow his transponder track at the nonprofit Ocean Research Project’s website.