Welcome To The Team | Emily Penn

It's been challenging for sure! Lockdown kicked in when we were two weeks from land, researching plastic pollution in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so it was a bit of a race to make it into Tahiti to navigate closed borders in time for the last flight home. Since getting back there have been lots of logistics to reorganise as we've had to put a 12 month pause on eXXpedition Round The World and resume the circumnavigation next year.

But we've been making the most of unexpected time on land. In June we launched the SHiFT Platform - a digital tool to help people navigate the hundreds of solutions to tackle ocean plastic pollution - which has been really exciting!

This is definitely the longest time I've been in the UK for over a decade! I'm very used to life at sea and travelling to events for speeches, working with companies and governments, in between.

Life at home in our London flat is a real contrast. During the first month my house plant obsession got pretty out of control. But since restrictions have eased, my husband Tom and I have kept sane by heading down to the south coast for sailing trips in the family Cornish Shrimper. We get out on the water for a day in Chichester Harbour, find a remote patch of sand to haul up on, and enjoy being connected to the elements. The weather's been so glorious it's felt like the Caribbean!

There's a lot of uncertainty at the moment about global travel and social distancing, so we don't know for sure when we will get back out to Tahiti to continue on the next 18 months of voyages to complete the project. Hopefully it will be April 2021. You can still apply to join one of the later legs to sail and research plastic pollution in the Indian Ocean, Atlantic and Arctic. All the details are on our website here. In the meantime there is plenty of impact to be made!

The more time I spend at sea, the more I realise the solutions start on land. Throughout the Autumn and Winter we will be building on the launch of SHiFT for a Year of Virtual Impact, maximising the potential of our amazing global network of ambassadors and scaling up the opportunities to create change. Tackling plastic pollution begins on our doorstep - rethinking our use of single use plastic, innovating new products and creating new systems - so there's lots to be getting on with.

Absolutely. I've been using the SHiFT Method for years on board expeditions and in workshops with businesses, but only now have we been able to do this at scale by taking it online. The feedback has been incredible! And we're so excited to have so many amazing solutions featured, including Finisterre's wetsuit recycling initiative. The platform itself celebrates that while there is no silver bullet solution to solving the plastics issue, there are in fact hundreds of things we can do.

Sometimes it's hard to know where to start so SHiFT helps navigate this process to quickly turn interest into action. We hope the platform will grow and grow. There is even a feature that allows you to submit your own solution, so it's becoming an incredibly powerful crowdsourced tool - it's so inspiring to keep coming across more ways people are tackling the issue.

Definitely getting out into nature is key. And that's been the hardest thing about lockdown in London, although it's amazing how many secret spots we've found along the Thames that feel surprisingly wild and remote for a big city.

Immersing myself in the natural world continually inspires me - watching the way light bounces off the water, surrounded by a mesmerising pink sky, the feel of salty spray on my skin. I love to get my sketchbook out to capture these moments as it immerses me further. I think a lot of my drive to get up everyday to keep bashing on comes from a deep passion for the ocean, so that connection has to be stoked!