From Raft to Raft

by Bengt Danielsson

  Michel gave a brief account of the preparations which had just begun in earnest. Eric had already completed a sketch showing the structure of the raft in detail. The naval commandant in French Polynesia had kindly allotted space for her construction in the little naval dockyard at Papeete and promised all possible help. Friendly Tahitians had cut 800 thick bamboos. But Eric’s labour force was still quite inadequate, for it consisted at present only of Michel, a common friend named Francis Cowan, who was also to take part in the voyage, and a few Tahitians whose duties and ideas were still rather vague. If they did their work well they would certainly be taken on for the voyage, Michel added. It was easy to understand what he was driving at. Instead of asking me straight out if I would like to take part in the expedition, he said goodbye immediately afterwards and sauntered down to the harbour, where his vessel was waiting.

  Michel’s tactics were clever. If he had tried to persuade me to go with him, I should have resisted him instinctively and found a number of weighty reasons for remaining on Makatea, where I had at last both economic security and a good chance of promotion. But now, shrewdly enough, he had merely dropped a hint and set my imagination working. Evidently he knew better than myself how powerful an ex-sailor’s longing for the sea can be. Almost against my will my thoughts began more and more often to dwell on the wonderful adventures in which Michel was to participate, but not I. At last I capitulated and accepted the seductive offer which, in fact, no one had yet made to me.

  When I arrived at Papeete at the beginning of June 1956, I found Michel and Francis busily engaged in binding bamboos as thick as a man’s arm into huge bundles. When Eric turned up a little later to see how the work was going, he did not seem in the least surprised at my presence and only gave me an encouraging pat on the back. Evidently Michel had assured him a long time before that he could count on me. At any rate Eric’s behaviour seemed to indicate that I was accepted as a member of the expedition and I set to work with vigour. As soon as we completed a bundle of bamboos we placed it in a huge wooden frame, 45 feet long and 6 feet wide. Upon this huge floating body a raised deck with two masts and a cabin were to rest. Thus the construction could hardly have been simpler in principle, but it was not long before we were tired to death of sitting astride bamboos in the oppressive tropical heat and binding, pulling and making knots.

  When the secretary of the expedition, Carlos Garcia-Palacios, who was also Chilean Consul in French Polynesia, appeared with a square-built little Chilean who, he declared, was willing to help us, we therefore accepted the offer with delight. In reply to our inquisitive questions Carlos told us that Juanito Bugueno, as his countryman was called, was a ship’s engineer by trade, and had arrived ten months before on board a Chilean yacht. During his stay in Tahiti the owner of the yacht had received an advantageous offer from a business firm in Papeete and sold her. Instead of returning home to Chile at once, as the rest of the crew had done, Juanito had spent his passage money on a long series of wonderful parties with his newly acquired Tahitian girl friends. But nothing lasts for ever, and least of all money in Tahiti. Consequently poor Juanito soon had neither money nor girl friends. For the last few months he had been working in the consuls garden, an arrangement of which both parties were now tired. Juanito could not speak a word of French, but we showed with eloquent gestures what we expected of him. Smiling cheerfully, as if we had done him a favour, he immediately sat down astride a few bamboos and began to bind them together with such speed and skill that it almost looked as if he had done nothing else all his life.

  We were all soon happily agreed that (i) Juanito was worth good recompense for his work (2) that the best recompense we could give him was to let him join our expedition.

  We spoke to Eric about it, and as another man who had been thought of as a participator had just refused, he agreed at once to enrol Juanito. Perhaps, Eric added, we should have a use for his skill as a mechanic right away, as we were going to take a complete radio outfit with us, with a petrol engine and everything. Juanito laughed as usual, without understanding a word. I do not know exactly when he realized that he had risen in rank and had been appointed a member of the expedition, but at any rate he never made any attempt to avoid the dubious honour. The chief reason for that, as we discovered later, was certainly that the authorities had refused to prolong his permis de sejour.

  We got through our work so well that we were able to launch the raft as early as the beginning of September. We named her at her launching Tahiti Nui, which means ‘great Tahiti’ and is the natives’ ancient and proud name for their island. The raft attracted an attention which was well justified, not only by reason of her appearance but also because she rode the water with the utmost grace and ease. One of the most sceptical visitors to the yard during her building was Thor Heyerdahl, who was paying only a short visit to Papeete on his way home from his archaeological excavations on Easter Island. He shook his head seriously and solemnly declared that he would never dare to entrust his life to such a fantastic craft. But, when one came to think of it, Thor Heyerdahl was not a sailor at all, and so my faith in Eric remained unshaken. It was further strengthened during the most successful trial trip which we made at the beginning of October. Like all my comrades on the expedition—Eric, Michel, Francis and Juanito—I looked forward with the greatest confidence to the voyage of over 5000 miles which lay before us.

  Eric had estimated that the voyage would take between three and four months, but to be on the safe side we had stowed away on board enough flour, rice, biscuits, preserves and other food-stuffs for five months. Despite this many of our friends in Tahiti evidently feared for our well-being, for they came on board at the last moment with beer bottles, hams and parcels of food of every conceivable kind. A few kind people even had the ingenious idea of giving us a dozen live fowls, a live sow and a particularly durable iron ration in the shape of 200 coconuts, whose holes were carefully stopped with breadfruit resin in the Tahitian style. We were also provided with three kittens as mascots.

  When we left Papeete on November 8, 1956, our raft as seen from outside looked more like a Noah’s ark than anything (this impression was strengthened by her having been decorated with flowers and leaves from stem to stem by a party of Tahitian women), while the interior of the cabin most suggested a well-assorted grocer’s shop during the annual stocktaking. But we did not care in the least what the raft looked like, nor did we worry at all about the fearful disorder which prevailed everywhere. On the other hand, we did begin to feel acutely uneasy at our raft having become several tons heavier as the result of this unanticipated generosity. The observations of two days and nights convinced us that we must either throw some of the cargo overboard or put back to Tahiti and increase the raft’s buoyancy by filling up the empty space between the floats and the deck with bamboos. Eric was reluctant to part with valuable provisions and therefore decided to put back. It was pretty clear that an about turn so soon after the start would give rise to many malicious rumours and jests, and I admired him for his contemptuous indifference to this unpleasant prospect.

  As we had difficulty in tacking against the wind in spite of our centreboards, we took out our wireless transmitter and asked the naval commandant at Papeete to send out the gunboat (which had towed us out of Papeete harbour) to fetch us in again. She arrived twelve hours later and mercifully took us to a remote creek on the south coast of Tahiti, where we quickly collected several hundred bamboos and bound them fast below decks. This did the trick. Much relieved at not having to get rid of any provisions—which in the long run we might be very glad to have—we resumed our southward course as soon as the gunboat had towed us outside the coral reef.

  Between Tahiti and the westerly winds at a latitude of 40° south, which sailors aptly call the ‘roaring forties’ on account of their violence, easterly winds of varying strength prevail for the most part. We were therefore prepared for the first part of the voyage, till we got down to 400 south, being the most difficult. But to o
ur great satisfaction we almost immediately found a strong following wind which lasted for a whole week. It was replaced by a north-easterly wind, which certainly made us lose some degrees of longitude, but on the other hand it helped us to put several degrees of latitude behind us, which was the most important thing. Unfortunately our good luck came to an end when we were on a level with the Austral Islands, and for many days, to our disgust, we drifted slowly but surely backwards in the neighbourhood of Raivavae, the island on which Eric had lived for the past two years as land surveyor. When the unwelcome contrary wind ceased we were due north of the island after having described an almost perfect semi-circle round its eastern half. We therefore completed the circle by steering down along the west coast of the island as soon as the weather allowed it, and several times caught sight of the high cliffs. Eric’s eyes remained fixed on the island which had been his last home till it disappeared into the sea, and his face wore an unusually gentle expression.

  Next day we were participants in a new and much more amusing farewell. The Government schooner Tamara, which happened to be on a tour of inspection in the Austral group, came in sight. We were not altogether unprepared for this, as we had been in wireless contact with her earlier. The captain informed us with a serious countenance that he had orders from the governor to tow us back to Tahiti at once if we expressed the slightest wish for him to do so. We thanked him cordially for his kind offer and explained that the only thing we wanted was a little more water, wine and cigarettes, as we were not quite sure that our supply of these vital necessities would last all the way to Chile. The obliging captain complied with our request at once, after which he blew a long farewell on his siren and slowly withdrew, while his Tahitian sailors solemnly waved us goodbye, evidently convinced that they would never see us again. A few days later we crossed the latitude of the last and southernmost of the Austral Islands, Rapa. The whole of French Polynesia, with all its lovely islands and familiar waters, now lay behind us. Before us stretched the cold grey sea, empty and desolate, all the way to South America, 5000 miles farther east.

  As early as the beginning of January 1957, i.e., only seven weeks after we left Tahiti, we encountered steady westerly winds at 330 south. This was a good deal farther north of what we had reckoned upon, but of course we were glad of it and set our course direct for South America. Our comfortable, seldom interrupted progress with a following wind, in more or less the same latitude, continued for nearly two months, the weather was good and the temperature kept between 68° and 770 Fahrenheit. (It was, of course, full summer in the southern hemisphere at this time.) The raft almost steered herself with the help of the centreboards and was highly satisfactory in safety and comfort. Watches, changes of sail, wireless contacts and cooking were easily done, and we had more time off than ever before either ashore or at sea.

  Eric spent all his free time in reading his oceanographical and anthropological books and in making notes for the treatise on Polynesian navigation which he had long been planning to write. As usual he lived in another world, took all annoyances with Olympian calm and for long periods seemed so occupied with his own thoughts that he did not even notice what was going on round about him.

  Francis’s chief interest was fishing, and he could sit on deck for hours with his Tahitian fishing spear in his hand, on the look out for dolphins and tunny. Despite this his catches were very meagre, but this was only because there were so few fish in those latitudes, for Francis had been born and brought up in Tahiti and was at least as skilful a fisherman as the natives.

  When our wireless operator Michel had sent his daily weather reports to Tahiti he often amused himself by picking up wireless fans all the world over, and several of these lived as far off as Syria and Norway. Or he produced the underwater gun which his Chinese judo pupils had given him before we left Tahiti, and jumped into the sea to fish, but was no more successful than Francis.

  I myself took lessons in navigation from Eric and constructed a model canoe which I hoped would some day be the prototype for a full scale vessel of the kind. For many years I had dreamed of making long voyages in the Polynesian archipelago in an outrigger canoe.

  Juanito, who was our cook, spent all his off-time learning a French dictionary by heart. His first attempt at reading a French book, however, was a complete fiasco, because he chose a thriller full of criminal’s slang, which of course he could not find in his dictionary. After that he preferred to let us teach him and quickly learned an incredible number of everyday words and phrases—most of which were likewise not in his dictionary.

  I must apologize for having forgotten a few of the members of the expedition who had unlimited time off from our sailing to our arrival—the sow and the cats. We had soon decided to spare the sow, which Juanito had christened Chanchita, till we had grown tired of roast chicken. It was, therefore, more than a month before we began to cast longing eyes on Chanchita. At that time a fine cock still survived, and in our dilemma we decided to draw lots as to which of the two should be the first victim. Chanchita won and so obtained another week’s grace. Just as we were preparing to slaughter her on the following Sunday, Michel for once happened to catch a dolphin, so of course we gorged ourselves on grilled fillets of fish instead of roast pork. Exactly a week later, when slaughter day had come round again, Michel, incredible as it may sound, caught another dolphin.

  This event looked like a sign from the hand of fate that we were to let Chanchita live. We and particularly Juanito had by this time become very fond of her, and therefore decided to treat her in future as a member of the expedition. Instead of having to live on leavings, as before, she now, in her new capacity of a full-blown member of the expedition, had her own helping at every meal. It was, for that matter, in our own interest to see that Chanchita was well fed, for as soon as she was hungry she always showed her dissatisfaction in the same unpleasant way—by grubbing up the deck and eating the packets of bamboos on which we floated.

  One of the three cats which we had on board as mascots died while we were still cruising round the Austral Islands. The two that remained fell into the sea time after time, and each time we saved them only at the last moment and with the greatest difficulty. At last they got their sea legs and a sailor’s life semed to suit them as well as the rest of us.

  As if Chanchita and the cats had not been enough, we discovered one day another party of most unexpected stowaways—a school of lagoon fish. We had no difficulty in identifying the fish, as long as a man’s finger, which are called nanue in Tahitian and live only in and around the blocks of coral in shallow lagoons in the South Sea islands. They had evidently taken our raft for a block of coral just before we left our last harbour on the southern side of Tahiti, and had not discovered the mistake until it was too late. We often put on our masks and put our heads down into the water along the edge of the raft to see if the nanue fish were still hanging on, and each time they approached in close formation wagging their tails cheerfully. If a shark or other predatory fish came gliding by they immediately disappeared into the chinks between the bamboos, where they were in perfect safety. Presumably there were enough seaweed and small marine creatures on the underside of the raft for them to be in no danger of starvation, but to be on the safe side we now and then threw scraps of food to them.

  On Saturday, February 23, 1957, we passed the 117th degree of longitude and so had reached exactly halfway. As we had left Papeete on November 8,1956, this meant that the first half of the voyage had taken almost exactly three and a half months. This was certainly much longer than Eric had calculated, but on the other hand all the indications were that we should be able to cover the remaining 2500 miles in a considerably shorter time. In the last fortnight we had been doing about fifty miles a day, and normally the winds ought to increase in strength as the southern winter came nearer. We decided to celebrate the event with a particularly grand Sunday dinner, but immediately afterwards the wind freshened so much that during the next twenty-four hours we had little tim
e to do other than attend to the sails and steer. We took this with complete equanimity, especially seeing that when we took the altitude of the sun at the time for the planned Sunday dinner it appeared that we had done no less than seventy miles in the last twenty-four hours. Still, as the hours passed we began to wish that our speed was not quite so great, for the raft creaked ominously in her joints and, although the sails were reefed, the masts quivered like tightly drawn piano strings. Still more disturbing was a queer thumping noise under the floor of the cabin. And suddenly we saw a bamboo emerge astern and sail away in our wake. But the sea was so disturbed and stormy that we could do nothing about the matter for the moment.

  The wind did not drop till next day, and then it dropped so quickly that there was soon a dead calm. We jumped overboard at once and closely examined the raft below the water-line. We found to our relief that we had lost only a few of the extra bamboos which we had stuffed into the empty space below decks when we last called at Tahiti. All the rest of the bamboos and lashings seemed to be undamaged. We wedged the clattering bamboos fast, climbed on board again and sat down to wait for a wind. It was not long before the heavy rolling swell began to be rippled by gusts of wind. It was soon blowing a steady forty miles an hour—from the wrong quarter. We tried to tack against the wind, which was due east, but but soon found that by doing so we only drifted more quickly westward. We therefore struck sail altogether and threw out a drogue made of a log of wood and a piece of canvas. This gave us some help.

  Plan of bamboo raft TAHITI NUI I