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It takes a certain amount of cash and guts - and some might say madness - to dream like David de Rothschild, an Arctic adventurer, children's book consultant and banking-fortune heir.

It also takes unsinkable optimism - because neither construction delays nor possible disaster at sea have deterred Mr. de Rothschild from his quest to sail across the Pacific in the Plastiki: a 60-foot catamaran he is building almost entirely of plastic water bottles.

"You know what, it's a Canadian influence that created the Plastiki," he says cheerfully. "If it all goes wrong, and I do end up getting eaten by the birds, I'll blame Canada!"

Back to the Canadian connection in a moment.

Right now, the 30-year-old Brit is based on a pier in San Francisco, where construction is under way on one of the most unlikely boats the world has ever seen. Twelve thousand plastic bottles will either be bound together with mesh for the hull, or repurposed into plastic sheets and beams held together with "bio-glue" made of sugar and cashew nuts. The goal is to make the vessel 100-per-cent recyclable.

When it is finished - the plan is for this summer - Mr. de Rothschild plans to exit San Francisco Bay and sail 12,000 nautical miles to Sydney, Australia, as a documentary crew films the adventure. A significant pit stop will be at what's known as the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling soup of plastic that scientists estimate is twice the size of Texas.

Through the voyage, Mr. de Rothschild hopes to demonstrate the unlikely things we can make out of our own junk - and what happens when we toss it out.

"My role is telling a story and hopefully creating a platform for smart solutions," he says. "If we can make a boat that's fully recyclable, why can't we make other household items that are fully recyclable?"

He's been scheming since August, 2006, when he returned from a trip to the Arctic and was on the lookout or a new project for his company, Adventure Ecology, which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues.

Looking for advice, he turned to a friend he admires: Jeffrey Skoll, a Montreal-born businessman and philanthropist who was president of eBay before becoming the producer of films with social clout such as Good Night, and Good Luck and An Inconvenient Truth.

Mr. Skoll shot down Mr. de Rothschild's original musings about sailing into the Eastern Pacific Garbage patch, gathering up some junk, turning it into an art installation and making a documentary about the process.

"Where's the drama?" Mr. Skoll asked. People need a reason to keep watching, he explained, and finding plastic in a massive plastic mess is too predictable.

"I thought, 'That's a really good point,' " Mr. de Rothschild recalls. "So I went away and started talking to friends, and thinking, 'What was the greatest ocean adventure of all time?' "

"It turned out to be the Kon-Tiki," he continued, referring to the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean. So his next thought was, "Well, why don't we make the Plastiki?"

That question turned into a three-year quest. He gathered a crew of boat builders, engineers and materials experts. They set up on Pier 31 about a year ago, and began experimenting with the different forms recycled plastic can take. Much of their process has been documented on Adventure Ecology's flashy website (http://www.adventureecology.com) and on National Geographic Adventure online, where Mr. de Rothschild has a blog.

"This is a major engineering project," he said. "It's not just, let's just bundle some bottles and put them in a net."

The original plan was to set sail in March. Due to a series of problems, the launch date was first postponed until April; now it has been pushed back to the summer. Adding to the technical difficulties: The crew recently had to move the operation to a different pier because they needed more space - and the main boat designer left and went home to Australia.

"People are like, 'Why are you still here? Just get out there!' " Mr. de Rothschild joked on a recent morning, when he woke up late in his apartment, where he remains landlocked with his two dogs.

You have to expect a certain amount of trial and error when you're attempting something new, he says. He describes how the decks and cabin of the Plastiki are made of self-reinforcing PET, a woven fabric made from plastic. This durable material is also being used to build the rigid skeleton, ribs and bulkheads on the boat. But when they first started making the panels, they came out warped, not flat.

"We're like, what's going on?" he said. "We noticed that there was a differential in temperature inside the Pier at nighttime versus the day when sun was coming in." Humidity, it turns out, was the problem.

"It's things like that," he says. "It's just like ... wow! That wasn't in the manual."

Even with money disappearing by the day (he won't say how much the project has cost), Mr. de Rothschild remains upbeat.

His philosophy is simple. Every great - and important - adventure starts with a basic question: Can it be done?

In the Plastiki's case, it was, "Can we build a boat made entirely out of plastic bottles," he said.

"The moment I took that question and it went from being a dream in my head to actually activating it, a new adventure began."