Kon-Tiki
There were not many fixed marks out here at sea. Waves and fish, sun and stars, came and went. There was not supposed to be land of any sort in the 4,300 sea miles that separated the South Sea islands from Peru. We were therefore greatly surprised when we approached 100° west and discovered that a reef was marked on the Pacific chart right ahead of us on the course we were following. It was marked as a small circle, and, as the chart had been issued the same year, we looked up the reference in Sailing Directions for South America. We read that “breakers were reported in 1906 and again in 1926 to exist about 600 miles southwestward of Galapagos Islands, in latitude 6° 42′ S., longitude 99° 43′ W. In 1927 a steamer passed one mile westward of this position but saw no indication of breakers, and in 1934 another passed one mile southward and saw no evidence of breakers. The motor vessel ‘Cowrie,’ in 1935, obtained no bottom at 160 fathoms in this position.”
According to the chart the place was clearly still regarded as a doubtful one for shipping, but, as a deep-draught vessel runs a greater risk by going too near a shoal than we should with a raft, we decided to steer straight for the point marked on the chart and see what we found. The reef was marked a little farther north than the point we seemed to be making for, so we laid the steering oar over to starboard and trimmed the square sail so that the bow pointed roughly north and we took sea and wind from the starboard side. Now it came about that a little more Pacific splashed into our sleeping bags than we were accustomed to, especially as at the same time the weather began to freshen considerably. But we saw to our satisfaction that the Kon-Tiki could be maneuvered surely and steadily at a surprisingly wide angle into the wind, so long as the wind was still on our quarter. Otherwise the sail swung round, and we had the same mad circus business to get the raft under control again.
For two days and nights we drove the raft north-northwest. The seas ran high and became incalculable as the trade wind began to fluctuate between southeast and east, but we were lifted up and down over all the waves that rushed against us. We had a constant lookout at the masthead, and when we rode over the ridges the horizon widened considerably. The crests of the seas reached six feet above the level of the roof of the bamboo cabin, and, if two vigorous seas rushed together, they rose still higher in combat and flung up a hissing watery tower which might burst down in unexpected directions. When night came, we barricaded the doorway with provision boxes, but it was a wet night’s rest. We had hardly fallen asleep when the first crash on the bamboo wall came, and, while a thousand jets of water sprayed in like a fountain through the bamboo wickerwork, a foaming torrent rushed in over the provisions and on to us.
Hold on, Haugland! If the intervals between the waves were too short, water often came on board from astern, and the helmsman had a hard job to prevent himself from being washed overboard.
When we were halfway across, we were about 2,000 sea miles from land both ahead and astern. We felt we were living in a strange world—“east of the sun and west of the moon.”
Provisions were stored between the logs and the bamboo deck. Our Peruvian parrot always came fluttering along when we opened a box of food.
The whale shark which paid us a visit. It is the world’s biggest fish and can be as much as 60 feet long. Its body is covered with white spots, and its jaws are nearly 5 feet wide.
The dorsal fin projected menacingly from the water when the monster approached the raft.
Whales often visited us, and the raft seemed pretty small alongside them. Sometimes they followed us for hours before they disappeared.
The raft would certainly have come off badly in a collision with a whale. But however deliberately the whales seemed to come rushing straight toward the raft, they always dived under it at the last moment.
“Ring up the plumber,” I heard a sleepy voice remark, as we hunched ourselves up to give the water room to run out through the floor. The plumber did not come, and we had a lot of bathwater in our beds that night. A big dolphin actually came on board unintentionally in Herman’s watch.
Next day the seas were less confused, as the trade wind had decided that it would now blow for a time from due east. We relieved one another at the masthead, for now we might expect to reach the point we were making for late in the afternoon. We noticed more life than usual in the sea that day. Perhaps it was only because we kept a better lookout than usual.
During the forenoon we saw a big swordfish approaching the raft close to the surface. The two sharp pointed fins which stuck up out of the water were six feet apart, and the sword looked almost as long as the body. The swordfish swept in a curve close by the man at the helm and disappeared behind the wave crests. When we were having a rather wet and salty midday meal, the carapace, head, and sprawling fins of a large sea turtle were lifted up by a hissing sea right in front of our noses. When that wave gave place to two others, the turtle was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. This time too we saw the gleaming whitish-green of dolphins’ bellies tumbling about in the water below the armored reptile. The area was unusually rich in tiny flying fish an inch long, which sailed along in big shoals and often came on board. We also noted single skuas and were regularly visited by frigate birds, with forked tails like giant swallows, which cruised over the raft. Frigate birds are usually regarded as a sign that land is near, and the optimism on board increased.
“Perhaps there is a reef or a sandbank there all the same,” some of us thought. And the most optimistic said: “Suppose we find a little green grassy island—one can never know since so few people have been here before. Then we’ll have discovered a new land—Kon—Tiki Island!”
From noon onward Erik was more and more diligent in climbing up on the kitchen box and standing blinking through the sextant. At 6:20 P.M. he reported our position as latitude 6° 42′ south by longitude 99° 42′ west. We were I sea mile due east of the reef on the chart. The bamboo yard was lowered and the sail rolled up on deck. The wind was due east and would take us slowly right to the place. When the sun went down swiftly into the sea, the full moon in turn shone out in all its brilliance and lit up the surface of the sea, which undulated in black and silver from horizon to horizon. Visibility from the masthead was good. We saw breaking seas everywhere in long rows, but no regular surf which would indicate a reef or shoal. No one would turn in; all stood looking out eagerly, and two or three men were aloft at once.
As we drifted in over the center of the marked area, we sounded all the time. All the lead sinkers we had on board were fastened to the end of a fifty-four-thread silk rope more than 500 fathoms long, and, even if the rope hung rather aslant on account of the raft’s leeway, at any rate the lead hung at a depth of some 400 fathoms. There was no bottom east of the place, or in the middle of it, or west of it. We took one last look over the surface of the sea, and, when we had assured ourselves that we could safely call the area surveyed and free from shallows of any kind, we set sail and laid the oar over in its usual place, so that wind and sea were again on our port quarter.
And so we went on with the raft on her natural free course. The waves came and went as before between the open logs aft. We could now sleep and eat dry, even if the heaving seas round us took charge in earnest and raged for several days while the trade wind vacillated from east to southeast.
On this little sailing trip up to the spurious reef we had learned quite a lot about the effectiveness of the centerboards as a keel, and when, later in the voyage, Herman and Knut dived under the raft together and salved the fifth centerboard, we learned still more about these curious pieces of board, something which no one has understood since the Indians themselves gave up this forgotten sport. That the board did the work of a keel and allowed the raft to move at an angle to the wind—that was plain sailing. But when the old Spaniards declared that the Indians to a large extent “steered” their balsa rafts on the sea with “certain centerboards which they pushed down into the chinks between the timbers,” this sounded incomprehensible both to us and to all who had concerned th
emselves with the problem. As the centerboard was simply held tight in a narrow chink, it could not be turned sideways and serve as a helm.
We discovered the secret in the following manner: The wind was steady and the sea had gone down again, so that the Kon-Tiki had kept a steady course for a couple of days without our touching the lashed steering oar. We pushed the recovered centerboard down into a chink aft, and in a moment the Kon-Tiki altered course several degrees from west toward northwest and proceeded steadily and quietly on her new course. If we pulled this centerboard up again, the raft swung back on to her previous course. But if we pulled it only halfway up, the raft swung only halfway back on her old course. By simply raising and lowering the centerboards we could effect changes of course and keep to them without touching the steering oar.
This was the Incas’ ingenious system. They had worked out a simple system of balances by which pressure of the wind on the sail made the mast the fixed point. The two arms were respectively the raft forward of and the raft aft of the mast. If the aggregate centerboard surface aft was heavier, the bow swung freely round with the wind; but if the centerboard surface forward was heavier, the stern swung round with the wind. The centerboards which are nearest the mast have, of course, the least effect on account of the relation between arm and power. If the wind was due astern, the centerboards ceased to be effective, and then it was impossible to keep the raft steady without continually working the steering oar. If the raft lay thus at full length, she was a little too long to ride the seas freely. As the cabin door and the place where we had meals were on the starboard side, we always took the seas on board on our port quarter.
We could certainly have continued our voyage by making the steersman stand and pull a centerboard up and down in a chink instead of hauling sidewise on the ropes of the steering oar, but we had now grown so accustomed to the steering oar that we just set a general course with the centerboards and preferred to steer with the oar.
The next great stage on our voyage was as invisible to the eye as the shoal which existed only on the map. It was the forty-fifth day at sea; we had advanced from the 78th degree of longitude to the 108th and were exactly halfway to the first islands ahead. There were over 2,000 sea miles between us and South America to the east, and it was the same distance on to Polynesia in the west. The nearest land in any direction was the Galapagos Islands to east-northeast and Easter Island due south, both more than 500 sea miles away on the boundless ocean. We had not seen a ship, and we never did see one, because we were off the routes of all ordinary shipping traffic in the Pacific.
But we did not really feel these enormous distances, for the horizon glided along with us unnoticed as we moved and our own floating world remained always the same—a circle flung up to the vault of the sky with the raft itself as center, while the same stars rolled on over us night after night.
6
ACROSS THE PACIFIC
A Queer Craft — Out in the Dinghy —
Unhindered Progress — Absence of Sea Signs —
At Sea in a Bamboo Hut —
On the Longitude of Easter Island -
The Mystery of Easter Island —
The Stone Giants — Red-Stone Wigs —
The "Long-Ears” — Tiki Builds a Bridge —
Suggestive Place Names —
Catching Sharks with Our Hands —
The Parrot —
LI 2 B Calling-Sailing by the Stars —
Three Seas—A Storm —
Blood Bath in the Sea, Blood Bath on Board —
Man Overboard - Another Storm —
The Kon-Tiki Becomes Rickety —
Messengers from Polynesia
Across the Pacific
WHEN THE SEA WAS NOT TOO ROUGH, WE WERE OFTEN out in the little rubber dinghy taking photographs. I shall not forget the first time the sea was so calm that two men felt like putting the balloon-like little thing into the water and going for a row. They had hardly got clear of the raft when they dropped the little oars and sat roaring with laughter. And, as the swell lifted them away and they disappeared and reappeared among the seas, they laughed so loud every time they caught a glimpse of us that their voices rang out over the desolate Pacific. We looked around us with mixed feelings and saw nothing comic but our own hirsute faces; but as the two in the dinghy should be accustomed to those by now, we began to have a lurking suspicion that they had suddenly gone mad. Sunstroke, perhaps. The two fellows could hardly scramble back on board the Kon-Tiki for sheer laughter and, gasping, with tears in their eyes they begged us just to go and see for ourselves.
Two of us jumped down into the dancing rubber dinghy and were caught by a sea which lifted us clear. Immediately we sat down with a bump and roared with laughter. We had to scramble back on the raft as quickly as possible and calm the last two who had not been out yet, for they thought we had all gone stark staring mad.
It was ourselves and our proud vessel which made such a completely hopeless, lunatic impression on us the first time we saw the whole thing at a distance. We had never before had an outside view of ourselves in the open sea. The logs of timber disappeared behind the smallest waves, and, when we saw anything at all, it was the low cabin with the wide doorway and the bristly roof of leaves that bobbed up from among the seas. The raft looked exactly like an old Norwegian hayloft lying helpless, drifting about in the open sea—a warped hayloft full of sunburned bearded ruffians. If anyone had come paddling after us at sea in a bathtub, we should have felt the same spontaneous urge to laughter. Even an ordinary swell rolled halfway up the cabin wall and looked as if it would pour in unhindered through the wide open door in which the bearded fellows lay gaping. But then the crazy craft came up to the surface again, and the vagabonds lay there as dry, shaggy, and intact as before. If a higher sea came racing by, cabin and sail and the whole mast might disappear behind the mountain of water, but just as certainly the cabin with its vagabonds would be there again next moment. The situation looked bad, and we could not realize that things had gone so well on board the zany craft.
Next time we rowed out to have a good laugh at ourselves we nearly had a disaster. The wind and sea were higher than we supposed, and the Kon-Tiki was cleaving a path for herself over the swell much more quickly than we realized. We in the dinghy had to row for our lives out in the open sea in an attempt to regain the unmanageable raft, which could not stop and wait and could not possibly turn around and come back. Even when the boys on board the Kon-Tiki got the sail down, the wind got such a grip on the bamboo cabin that the raft drifted away to westward as fast as we could splash after her in the dancing rubber dinghy with its tiny toy oars. There was only one thought in the head of every man—we must not be separated. Those were horrible minutes we spent out on the sea before we got hold of the runaway raft and crawled on board to the others, home again.
From that day it was strictly forbidden to go out in the rubber dinghy without having a long line made fast to the bow, so that those who remained on board could haul the dinghy in if necessary. We never went far away from the raft, thereafter, except when the wind was light and the Pacific curving itself in a gentle swell. But we had these conditions when the raft was halfway to Polynesia and the ocean, all dominating, arched itself round the globe toward every point of the compass. Then we could safely leave the Kon-Tiki and row away into the blue space between sky and sea.
When we saw the silhouette of our craft grow smaller and smaller in the distance, and the big sail at last shrunken to a vague black square on the horizon, a sensation of loneliness sometimes crept over us. The sea curved away under us as blue upon blue as the sky above, and where they met all the blue flowed together and became one. It almost seemed as if we were suspended in space. All our world was empty and blue; there was no fixed point in it but the tropical sun, golden and warm, which burned our necks. Then the distant sail of the lonely raft drew us to it like a magnetic point on the horizon. We rowed back and crept on board with a feeling that we had come h
ome again to our own world—on board and yet on firm, safe ground. And inside the bamboo cabin we found shade and the scent of bamboos and withered palm leaves. The sunny blue purity outside was now served to us in a suitably large dose through the open cabin wall. So we were accustomed to it and so it was good for a time, till the great clear blue tempted us out again.
It was most remarkable what a psychological effect the shaky bamboo cabin had on our minds. It measured eight by fourteen feet, and to diminish the pressure of wind and sea it was built low so that we could not stand upright under the ridge of the roof. Walls and roof were made of strong bamboo canes, lashed together and guyed, and covered with a tough wickerwork of split bamboos. The green and yellow bars, with fringes of foliage hanging down from the roof, were restful to the eye as a white cabin wall never could have been, and, despite the fact that the bamboo wall on the starboard side was open for one third of its length and roof and walls let in sun and moon, this primitive lair gave us a greater feeling of security than white-painted bulkheads and closed portholes would have given in the same circumstances.
We tried to find an explanation for this curious fact and came to the following conclusion. Our consciousness was totally unaccustomed to associating a palm-covered bamboo dwelling with sea travel. There was no natural harmony between the great rolling ocean and the drafty palm hut which was floating about among the seas. Therefore, either the hut would seem entirely out of place in among the waves, or the waves would seem entirely out of place round the hut wall. So long as we kept on board, the bamboo hut and its jungle scent were plain reality, and the tossing seas seemed rather visionary. But from the rubber boat, waves and hut exchanged roles.