Sailing on Rubbish: The Extraordinary Voyage of Samuel McLennan and Project Interrupt
There is a vessel somewhere along the Australian coast that shouldn't exist. She is made of discarded fish farm floats, tangled rope, abandoned buoys, and whatever else the ocean has swallowed and spat back onto Tasmanian shores. Her name is Heart, and she is sailing from Hobart to Sydney — proof that from wreckage, something remarkable can be built.
This is the story of Project Interrupt.
From Darkness to the Deep Blue
In 2018, Samuel McLennan found himself at rock bottom. Despite a lifetime of diverse skills and achievements — spanning maritime work, aquaculture, education, construction, IT and even military experience — he was homeless, adrift, and questioning his place in the world. Rather than retreat further, Samuel chose to sit with the uncertainty and look for meaning in it.
Four years passed. Every path forward seemed to collapse beneath him. But slowly, something began to take shape — both in his mind and with his hands. He began walking the beaches and waterways of southern Tasmania, collecting the marine debris that littered the coastline. What started as an act of quiet resistance became an act of creation.
Piece by piece, float by float, Samuel hand-built a sailing vessel entirely from marine rubbish. He named her Heart.
What Heart Is Made Of
Heart is not a metaphor — she is a literal construction of cast-off materials: fish farm debris, discarded floats, ropes, netting, and other waste salvaged from Tasmania's waterways and coastline. Samuel spent two years in collection and construction, drawing on his maritime background and the guidance of experienced advisor David Hildred — a retired engineer who previously helped design and sail the rubbish raft Antiki across the Atlantic Ocean.
The vessel is deliberately unconventional. She looks, as one journalist put it, like something a castaway might fashion — and that is precisely the point. Heart is a floating statement about what we discard, and what we choose not to see.
That she is seaworthy at all is remarkable. That Samuel has sailed her across Bass Strait — one of the most notoriously treacherous stretches of water in the world — is extraordinary.
all images : stu gibson
The Voyage
Project Interrupt's maiden voyage charts a course from Hobart, Tasmania, to Sydney, NSW — a journey of roughly 1,200 kilometres through some of Australia's most challenging coastal waters.
Samuel set sail in 2024, and the journey has been every bit as unpredictable as the vessel beneath him. He has weathered unexpected storms, sheltered from gale-force westerly winds on Flinders Island, and navigated the wild crossing of Bass Strait. He has stopped at Wilsons Promontory and made his way slowly up the Victorian coast, connecting with communities at every port of call.
Along the way, he has attracted the attention of major media outlets — the Guardian, ABC News, SBS, and Channel 7 have all covered his journey. The coverage has been widespread not just because the voyage is daring, but because the message is impossible to ignore when it's floating right in front of you.
Why He's Doing It
Project Interrupt is built on a simple but profound belief: that the state of our environment mirrors the state of our society. Collapsing ecosystems, rising rates of mental and physical illness, a growing distrust in institutions — Samuel sees these not as separate crises, but as symptoms of the same disconnection.
"Rubbish doesn't naturally grow in the environment — it comes from people," the project's philosophy states. Someone, somewhere, made a choice to look away. Project Interrupt is Samuel's invitation — sometimes confronting, always earnest — to stop looking away.
His goals are threefold: to prevent waste from entering the environment and remove what's already there; to develop leaders committed to building healthier people and healthier places; and to lift society from the bottom up, with particular focus on those who are struggling or marginalised. It's no coincidence that Samuel himself knows what it means to fall through the cracks. His personal story gives these goals a weight that no policy document could carry.
He describes his vision as creating "Healthy People and a Healthy Planet" — and he argues that if a man can build a sailing vessel from rubbish and sail it from Hobart to Sydney, then the things we say are impossible are simply things we haven't chosen to do yet.
Community at the Heart of It
The voyage is not a solo performance. It is an invitation.
At each stop along the coastline, Samuel seeks out local communities, schools, environmental groups, and individuals willing to engage. He speaks, he listens, and he encourages people to take responsibility for the world they are part of — not through guilt, but through possibility.
The project has gathered a dedicated team around it: a cinematographer capturing the journey for documentary purposes, community and events coordinators, a coach, advisors, and an Aboriginal advisor and designer in Takira Simon Brown, a Niyanta of Chief Mannalargenna, whose cultural connection to Country brings vital depth and grounding to the project's values.
Supporters range from the City of Hobart and Rotary to environmental organisations like Take 3 and Keep Tassie Wild, to local Tasmanian businesses who believe in what Samuel is trying to do.
A Signal Worth Hearing
There is something quietly radical about a man sailing rubbish up a coastline and asking people to pay attention.
Samuel McLennan is not waiting for governments to act, or corporations to change, or systems to fix themselves. He built his signal from what others threw away, and he is sailing it into every harbour he can reach. Heart is not just a boat — she is the argument, made physical and seaworthy and impossible to miss.
Project Interrupt asks something of all of us: to look at the waste we create, the environments we ignore, and the people we overlook — and to choose, even slightly differently, from this moment on.
Slight changes, Samuel believes, can make a big difference.
Heart is sailing proof of it.
Follow Samuel's journey and support Project Interrupt at projectinterrupt.com
FAZE SURFBOARDS :: Aquiva Collective.
in 2023 right before samual left hobart aboard heart, we dropped off a special gift. A 6’6 single fin, hand shaped and finished at the glasslab.
the board was designed and shaped by finnian at faze/aquiva and was donated to project interrupt for an up-coming give away. This give away will begin once Sam is closer to his destination, sydney.
