Kon-Tiki

[Aground]

An account of a trip across the pacific with nothing more that a raft consisting of 9 logs, a bamboo hut and a sail. In the late 40's Thor Heyerdahl set out across the pacific with a team of six men to prove that the South Sea Islands were settled from people of Peru. A great read i would highly recommend.

[Paul L]

Here's the ugly reef on Raroia in the Tuamotus that they ended the cruise

[minaret]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHfOPk767Y

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Aground

An account of a trip across the pacific with nothing more that a raft consisting of 9 logs, a bamboo hut and a sail. In the late 40's Thor Heyerdahl set out across the pacific with a team of six men to prove that the South Sea Islands were settled from people of Peru. A great read i would highly recommend.

They have since proven that he was wrong in that assumption ............

[Aground]

Originally Posted by thomm225

They have since proven that he was wrong in that assumption ............

That is how i found the book, but it still made for an exciting expedition.

[Aground]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Here's the ugly reef on Raroia in the Tuamotus that they ended the cruise

That's outstanding. Thanks.

[Diesel Bill]

Originally Posted by Aground

An account of a trip across the pacific with nothing more that a raft consisting of 9 logs, a bamboo hut and a sail. In the late 40's Thor Heyerdahl set out across the pacific with a team of six men to prove that the South Sea Islands were settled from people of Peru. A great read i would highly recommend.

I read this some time back in the 1970s. One more thing that lit my fire to go to sea.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Diesel Bill

I read this some time back in the 1970s. One more thing that lit my fire to go to sea.

Me as well, and about the same time too, I was a teenager.
Book was good, but the original movie was better than the new one to me. Original movie I guess was more of a Documentary than a movie.
His expedition I believe rekindled the thirst for such expeditions and adventures that hadn't happened since the beginning of WWII. It was the first real expedition after the war, I think.

[denverd0n]

Originally Posted by Aground

Thor Heyerdahl set out across the pacific with a team of six men to prove that the South Sea Islands were settled from people of Peru.

Not actually to prove that they WERE, but to prove that they COULD have been. He did prove that they COULD have been. Of course, as mentioned already, more recently discovered evidence indicates that they almost certainly were not.

Regardless, outstanding book that I read decades ago as a kid.

[double u]

Originally Posted by Diesel Bill

I read this some time back in the 1970s. One more thing that lit my fire to go to sea.

same here
Thor Heyerdal: a legend in his lifetime if ever there was one!

[GILow]

An excellent book that I read when I was very young. I tend to blame it for most of the boating afflictions I have suffered since, including rafting the length of the Murray River in a raft that looked very similar.

[minaret]

Let us not forget that several members of the expedition were resistance fighters of the highest order.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i98FFB3b_W8

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Haugland


I've read many of their personal accounts and I can assure you their time on the raft was an absolute vacation for them. They spent a great deal of time surviving in Norways roughest terrain while being hunted by the Gestapo, before finally destroying the Nazis only source of nuclear heavy water for atomic bomb research.

[gjordan]

Having read much of the Kon Tiki expedition in National Geographic , he was a Hero to me. After being in the Marquesas and reading his earlier book called Fatu Hiva, and sailing the same waters and hiking some of the same trails that the book described, I decided that his writings should be taken with a grain of salt (or maybe a bucket of salt). His death defying hike between the two villages turned out to be a pleasant 3 or 4 hour hike and the locals said that the young men do it in two hours to go see girl friends in the other village. I later got to know a fellow at the Tahiti Yacht club that had been on the raft trip from Polynesia back to South America and he agreed that Heyerdahl told pretty tall tales. It was a disappointment to have a Hero fall off of the pedestal. Grant

[double u]

still: a BIG man! let's not piss at the feet of a monument so much taller than we are...

[minaret]

Let us not also forget all of his other batsh*t crazy expeditions:


Rapa Nui
Ra Expedition (I and II)
Tigris
Maldives
Azerbaijan


In all of which places he made voyages or archeological (of a sort) explorations to further theories of early voyages by primitive cultures. Ra in particular was just as crazy as Kon Tiki, taking an Egyptian papyrus reed boat across the Atlantic to prove South America was visited by early Africans.