Showing posts with label Raft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raft. Show all posts
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Education of a Raft Wacko
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Illa-Tiki, John Haslett's first raft (top), hoisted a single squaresail on a bipod mast. It was intended for a pure downwind drift voyage from Ecuador to Hawaii. His next three rafts, all with two lateen sails on pole masts, were meant for the more rigorous maneuvering of alongshore sailing on the west coast of South and Central America. (click to enlarge) |
I've written a number of posts about modern-day raft adventurers, often referring to them as "wackos" because I find it amusing to do so. (See our previous posts on rafts.) The folks who set off to drift across oceans on (barely) floating piles of vegetable matter are a special sort of mariner: brave, tough and resourceful: without question; strongly committed to (or obsessed by) an objective: very much so in most cases; a little "different?" -- uh, yeah. (Please don't get me wrong. I use "wacko" is a purely positive sense, acknowledging something of myself in that term. If someone were to invite me to participate in a credible raft expedition, I might jump at the opportunity.)
John Haslett started out as another raft wacko. But somewhere between the construction of his first raft, Illa-Tiki, in Ecuador in 1995, and the wreck of his fourth, Endurancia, in Costa Rica in 1999, he grew into something else, as neatly described in the subtitle of his book Voyage of the Manteño: The Education of a Modern-Day Expeditioner. (The book was recently republished in Kindle format under a new title: The Lost Raft: The True Story of Madness, Mutiny, Mud, Sharks, Shipwrecks, Survival, and Extraordinary Discovery in the Wake of Kon-Tiki.) Not to say that he entirely lost the wacko attitude. But as his expeditions morphed from mere adventures into serious research efforts, Haslett's youthful dilettantism dissolved, replaced by maturity and competence as a logistician, mariner, and leader.
All of Haslett's voyages were on balsa log rafts, begun on the west coast of Central and South America. Illa-Tiki set out from Ecuador bound for Hawaii, with no real objective other than to do something Thor Heyerdahl-ish. By the time that voyage had failed, Haslett had redefined the goal of his rafting efforts, so that his second voyage, aboard the raft Manteño, was no longer just a voyage but, rather, an expedition -- a voyage with a purpose -- seeking to demonstrate that Precolumbian trade, which is believed to have occurred between Ecuador and Mexico, could have been conducted by the Manteño people of Ecuador using balsa sailing rafts of the kind reported by early European explorers, which reports are not universally accepted as accurate or credible.
Not one of Haslett's four raft voyages came close to reaching its destination, and the last one wrecked almost as soon as it began. But even in their failures, Haslett's voyages contributed something to our understanding of the rafts that the Manteño people might have used. Some of the most important of those contributions are in the negative: Haslet''s experience shows us just as much of what the rafts were not or could not do as it shows us what they might have been and might have been capable of. That's the kind of research, the kind of science, that we hear too little of, but it's every bit as important to our understanding of reality as the so-called successes.
Haslett's book is a detailed record of gruelling hard work rewarded by the "failure" of the voyages to reach their destinations. As I read Voyage of the Manteño, I looked forward to summarizing it here, for it is by far the most fascinating and best-written rafting adventure I've come across.
But I've found that this has already been done competently by others, including a nice summary of the first three voyages, and details about the construction and sailing characteristics of the rafts described in academic but very readable form by Cameron Smith, an archaeologist who accompanied Haslett on some of the voyages. There's no need to repeat these available sources, and I leave interested readers to read them for specifics on Haslett's voyages and vessels.
But I also urge them to read Haslett's book for a gripping, suitably humble, and altogether satisfying first-hand account of how, through hardship, hard work and the force of necessity, naivete can grow to maturity and seriousness of purpose.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Raft Wackos and Quackos
In 1998, adventurer Phil Buck mounted an expedition to demonstrate the feasibility of Thor Heyerdahls' theory that Easter Island was settled by people from the west coast of South America. Heyerdahl, of course, had already shown that a raft built of balsa logs could make its way across vast stretches of the Pacific, but it had yet to be demonstrated that Easter Island in particular could be reached via pre-Columbian seagoing technology.At Lake Titicaca, Buck hired a boatbuilder who had experience building reed boats, and the result was the hull of Viracocha, measuring 64 feet LOA,16 feet in beam and weighing 16 tons.This was trucked to the coast of Chile where it was completed with the addition of decking and deck house, a steering platform with twin steering oars, and a rig consisting of two bipod masts hoisting lateen sails. Buck and a crew of seven then sailed it without mishap, and with few serious difficulties, from Arica, Chile, to Easter Island. (Two ducks were also shipped as crew, but one abandoned ship mid-ocean.)
Heyerdahl's theories concerning the settlement of the Pacific by people from South America are controversial and are generally dismissed by scientists. Nevertheless,
8 Men and a Duck : An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island
, by Nick Thorpe, is one of the better first-person accounts of modern raft voyaging. Thorpe met Buck by happenstance while Viracocha was still under construction in Bolivia. A reporter for a Scottish newspaper, Thorpe was really on the lookout for a personal adventure, and he joined Buck's project as crew first, and only secondarily to document it as a journalist. Thorpe's narrative is unassuming and mildly comic in tone, and his concern is far more with the personalities and interactions of the crew during the six-week voyage under crowded and uncomfortable conditions than with the technical aspects of seafaring.
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| All illustrations from Eight Men and a Duck. (Click any image to enlarge) |
In the end of Thorpe's narrative, however, he describes a meeting between himself, Buck, and Heyerdahl, some time after Viracocha's voyage. In it, Buck was able to persuade Heyerdahl of the validity of his project, gaining his approval and thus helping Buck to justify his otherwise almost entirely successful project in his own eyes.
The first third of the book describes the expedition's planning and the boat's construction and launching as a narrative, while an appendix gives a good amount of detail about the boat's design and construction. As shown below, Viracocha consisted of two main hulls of tortora reeds bound closely around a central pontoon known as the corazon ("heart"). The main bundles were somewhat blunt-ended, but to these were added extensions of more bundled reeds that tapered to points. In the front, the two end-bundles merged into a single, upturned pointed bow, while in the rear, the two end bundles remained separate, curving up into a bifurcated stern. Both centerboards and leeboards ("guaras") controlled leeway, and steering was by way of a pair of steering oars with their huge blades placed entirely abaft the shafts. These, according to Thorpe, was physically challenging to manage. They obviously would have been handier had they been "balanced," -- i.e., had part of their blades ahead of the shaft.
Monday, August 22, 2016
Why Service Your Life Raft
Life rafts come in a variety of brands, sizes, person capacities, and have a variety of equipment package options. Every life raft is inflated the same way via CO2 cylinder but that is pretty much the only thing that is exactly the same. Life rafts are meant to be opened and serviced, some manufactures say every year and some manufactures have vacuum bag sealed life rafts that are every three years.
What happens when a life raft is serviced?
The life raft is open and the dates of all the internal equipment are determined so the service technician will know what needs to be replaced. The date of the last CO2 cylinder refill is determined and if it has been five years then the life raft is gas inflated, tested and the cylinder gets refilled. The technician will also air and pressure test the life raft for defects and leaks.
All of these processes help ensure your life raft has a longer life and the best chance of working the way it is supposed to when you need it.
What are some things I can expect at each service?
If you have a life raft with one year service intervals the first 2 services will be pretty basic and include replacing of repair cement (glue) and batteries for the flash light as well as the set of spares.
There will be a charge for the service currently ours is $400.00 but they vary by station. You may also have charges for manufactures certificates, gaskets, seals, bursting straps called commonly bands (only on container style life rafts).
Three year service interval life rafts and the third service on a one year life raft will incur charges for all of the one year items in addition to replacing all of the flares in the raft. Also a three year service interval life raft will be in a vacuum bag that must be replaced at this service, the bags typically cost around $150.00 and up but vary with manufacture and the size of the life raft.
What happens if I skip a service or two?
Typically the rafts will be fine if they have been stowed properly and not submersed in water, however sometimes natural conditions and water can make the life of a life raft shorted especially when it has not been opened and allowed to breathe, dry and be cleaned if needed.
Also not servicing a raft at the manufactures intervals will void the manufactures warranty of the life raft.
The worst thing we see in waiting to service is the cost becomes high because you have so many things to replace at one time. You will incur however many years of charges on one bill and this often makes customers feel like it is not worth it for a service, even if the raft is in very good condition.
Like anything you purchase there are care instructions and not following them can result in costly repairs and frustrations. Why would you risk your life saving equipment failing when you need it.
Should you have questions or concerns about your life raft and servicing the life raft please contact us.
To avoid extra high services bills, maintain the warranty of the life raft and ensure the equipment is working properly servicing is key!
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