Going the Distance

The first time Emily Penn crossed the Pacific Ocean on a boat, she was fresh out of college with an architecture degree, thinking she was going to be cruising straight into a picture-perfect postcard. Her mind was filled with palm trees, blue water and clear horizons. “It didn’t make any sense to me,” she says of what she actually saw. “I’d grown up thinking the Pacific was a paradise of islands and whale sharks, and all I saw were beaches covered in plastic. I decided to do something about it.”

In 2014, she co-founded eXXpedition, which organizes all-female sailing voyages to educate people about ocean plastics. Since then, eXXpedition has completed 11 voyages aboard chartered vessels, and now is preparing for its first round-the-world trip, a two-year odyssey of 30 back-to-back legs starting this October. Fourteen women at a time will board the 70-foot ketch , which the organization bought this