After being blown off course in a violent storm at sea, Sam discovers belatedly that Chuck, the man he hired to sail him around the world, is not only an incompetent sailor but a con artist as well. Now marooned somewhere in the midst of the vast Pacific Trash Vortex, an estimated 270,000 square miles of floating debris, the men cope to survive. They display contrasting reactions to their predicament, veering from the comedic to the absurd to the macabre. Ultimately they expose the exploitive and destructive nature of the creature called man, and the hubris of the human race.