Three months in a raft

While on vacation I had a chance to read Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft. If you grew up on PBS as I did, you've heard the story: in 1947 five Norwegians and a Swede built a balsa-wood raft in Peru and sailed west in order to support Heyerdahl's theory that the islands of Polynesia were populated from South America. They sailed for 101 days, finally reaching Raroia in French Polynesia.

The book was published a year later. It's a distinctive piece of work, written by Heyerdahl himself. The book is at its best when describing the obstacles overcome by the expedition: obtaining supplies from the US Army Quartermaster Corps, looking for balsa-wood logs in Equador, braving a storm at sea, and finally surviving the disastrous landfall on Raroia, which wrecked the raft on a coral reef. It becomes very clear that the author was either very well connected or very persuasive, since he managed wrangle the assistance of lofty figures most people would never even get to meet: a high official in the Army, the "balsa king of Equador", and the president of Peru.

The voyage could also very easily have ended badly. A worse storm might have toppled the raft. Slightly different construction techniques could have caused the raft to break apart. And the expedition did not have much margin for error: the raft was alone in the ocean far from shipping lanes, weeks from any possibility of rescue.

Passing years have not been kind to the science Heyerdahl and his crew crossed the Pacific to prove. It is clear now that Polynesia was settled from the west, not the east. But then, this is not a book that should be read for its science, but rather as a tale of great adventure long ago.

Recommended.