During the Eco Island conference on Wednesday we were lucky enough to catch up with Dame Ellen MacArthur for a chat.
Simon, as you can see from the photo, set sail (well drifted away from the jetty slightly) with Ellen and Dan (from Island 2000) on the Island 2000 Purple Kite.
Purple Kite Background
Just a quick bit of background on the Purple Kite first – the team at Island 2000 decided that they would do their bit for sustainable transport and set about building a boat to take them across to the conference at the Cowes Yacht Haven from their offices in East Cowes.
The team were determined to build the boat without having to buy anything new. Scrap wood was taken from a skip at Vestas and after grappling around the office for any items they could use, the boat was built with the purchase of simply one bag of screws.
Pretty neat eh! Watch the video below of it’s voyage across the water.
Ellen’s podcast
Back to Ellen now, and as you will remember we found her speech on Wednesday pretty inspiring, especially the analogy of being on a boat travelling around the world to living on a island. Simon explores this with her further whilst upon the Purple Kite.
To listen to the podcast click on the play button below:
To watch the short video of the Purple Kite’s journey across the water to get to the conference, click the play button below.
[Photo reproduced courtesy of Julian Winslow]
