Completes Atlantic Gyre Expedition by Andy Schell
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here was no entourage leading him I asked Matt if he had always in. No fireboats spraying geysers. looked at that trip as simply part of No reporters on the dock. Matt the puzzle, a way to make a name Rutherford returned to Annapolis from for himself so he could go on and do the sea yet again—this time after only 80 bigger and better things. “Kind of,” he days—and this time, there was no fanfare. said. “Too many sailors who do great Since I first met him, Matt has voyages lose the momentum they get become one of my best friends and one telling sea stories in the bar. I didn’t of my favorite subjects for SpinSheet. want to be that guy.” His escapades have been both entertaining and inspiring, and now, for the first time, he hopes they’ll become educational. The creation of the Ocean Research Project (ORP), Matt’s new nonprofit, is for him, the apex of his sailing accomplishments. It stemmed from his innate desire to personally ##ORP partners depart out of Port Annapolis for their effect change in first expedition on Ault. Photo by Maria Karlsson the world. He traveled for much of his 20s, and after his first single-handThe America’s voyage in the books, ed trans-Atlantic, he wound up in the Matt solidified his ideas, and turned Gambia, a small nation on the west coast his focus again towards the sea. “I have of Africa that owes its existence to a river had such a deep connection with the of the same name. “I wanted to start a ocean,” he says. “It made sense to do a program that would send school supplies sailing-related project.” there,” Matt says. Matt has always been a loner. Most But he put that on hold and instead of his travels and all of his epic sailing started planning for his record-breaking voyages were solo. Starting and runSolo the America’s voyage. Lest we ning a successful nonprofit, a business forget, that voyage took him through really, is decidedly different, if not arthe fabled Northwest Passage, south guably more difficult, than what he has through the Pacific and around legendary already accomplished. He was going Cape Horn, an epic voyage of 309 days, to need help. Enter Nicole Trenholm, alone in a 27-foot Albin Vega called St. the lead scientist for the Ocean ReBrendan. search Project. She’s the brains behind Follow us!
the research they conducted on their first expedition. Without her, Matt is just a sailor. After a fortuitous meeting at one of his talks at the Tred Avon YC, Matt and Nicole connected and compared their respective goals. Nicole eventually left her job with NOAA, where she’d worked on research vessels in the Chesapeake Bay and Bering Sea. The pair set out from Port Annapolis Marina on the ORP’s 42-foot Colvin schooner Ault, bound for the eastern Atlantic between Bermuda and the Azores. Nicole organized four major scientific projects and secured tens of thousands of dollars of equipment from NOAA and others, the main objective being to study the density of plastic waste collecting in the North Atlantic gyre, the poor-man’s Pacific Garbage Patch. “We were out at sea, at one point, for 73 days without stepping foot on land,” Matt says. Specifically, the research required that they tow what’s called a manta net, which collects tiny plastic particles that they bottled and tagged. This was round-the-clock work, hauling and lowering, in addition to taking hourly weather readings as a “vessel of opportunity” for NOAA and tracking tagged wildlife with special receiving equipment. SpinSheet October 2013 89