Kon Tiki is more than a surf break in Peru

Today's NY Times has a nice long story on surfing in Peru by Julia Chaplin. One of the breaks she writes about is named Kon Tiki, "which offers untamed waves so massive that it takes a strong arm even to paddle out to it." Read Julia's fine article if you want to know about surfing in Peru (the surfing is great). The rest of this blog is about the raft and expedition that the break Kon Tiki is named after. In 1947 the Norwegian writer and explorer Thor Heyerdahl set out to prove that the islands of the South Pacific were settled by people from South America. Heyerdahl believed that prior to the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors, groups of people from South America set out on huge balsa log rafts and sailed 4,000 miles across the Pacific to Polynesia. His belief was founded on the similarity of statues he saw on Easter Island, on the names South Pacific Islanders used for their gods and other observations. Kon-Tiki is an old name for the sun god. Heyerdahl said he would prove that ancient peoples had sailed rafts to Polynesia by doing it himself, starting from Peru and using the same materials that would have been available circa 1450 AD. He named his raft and expedition Kon-Tiki

The main body of the Kon-Tiki was made from nine balsa tree trunks up to 45 feet long and 2 feet in diameter. The logs were lashed together with hemp ropes. Cross-pieces of balsa logs 18' long and 1' in diameter were lashed crosswise to give lateral support. Pine splashboards were added to the bow, and pine boards were wedged between the balsa logs and used as centerboards. The main mast was an A-frame made of heavy mangrove wood that stood 29 feet high. There was a bamboo cabin with a roof of thatched banana leaves. The rudder was a 19' steering oar and the main sail was a 15' X 18' rectangle made of cotton. No metal was used in construction.

All of the experienced mariners who saw the raft predicted that it would break apart and that Heyerdahl and his crew of 5 would die. In the event, the men sailed Kon Tiki for 101 days across 4,300 miles of open ocean and made a "successful" landfall (in that they all survived being thrown with the raft onto a shallow reef by overhead waves) at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands. The raft was salvaged and is now on display in the Kon-Tiki museum in Oslo.

Once you get into the voyage itself Heyerdahl's book, Kon-Tiki, is a great read. One of the interesting points he makes is that the deck of the raft was just barely above the water's surface so that he and the crew regularly viewed fish swimming above them as they dipped below the swells.

In 1970 Heyerdahl embarked on another expedition. This one set out to prove that the ancient Egyptians could have crossed the Atlantic in boats made from papyrus reeds. Read more about Thor Heyerdahl and the Ra Expeditions

Did Heyerdahl's voyage succeeed at proving his theory about who settled the South Pacific? No. But this does not diminish the accomplishment of his voyage. Here's the Wikipedia entry on Kon Tiki

In 2006 Olav Heyerdahl re-enacted ihis grandfather's voyage from Peru to the South Pacific on a balsa raft named Tangaroa.

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