| They're big. A balsa raft is an immense
sailing barge, measuring sometimes as much as 60 feet in length
and weighing 35,000 pounds. |
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| The base is
comprised of nine balsa logs. Most of our logs have come from the
Ecuadorian Forestry Service's experimental forest, near Quevedo,
Ecuador. Balsa trees are exceedingly abundant in tropical South and
Central America. They grow in bunches, or 'stands', in any well-lit,
open space. And they grow incredibly fast. From a seed that is only a
few millimeters in size, they can expand to a 40-foot, 8000-pound mass
in just 48 months. It is not uncommon for a balsa tree to grow to 90
feet in just seven years, and a three foot- thick balsa tree may be only
twelve years old. |  |
| We use
only the original materials: balsa, bamboo, and thousands of feet of
hemp rope. No plastic or metal is used anywhere on the vessel. We've
built four rafts in all, and, generally speaking, construction takes
about three months. It is slow, primitive
labor. 'We awakened at dawn
and then for hour after hour we pulled on the lines, straining until our
forearms ached, pulling as a group, sometimes as many five or six of us
standing in a column--squeezing one lashing at a time--struggling and
grunting against the 'tick tick tick tick' of the stretching
rope, pulling, tightening, and then re-tightening again the thousands of
feet of rope. Nothing was ever done by one person. Whenever we did
something, anything, we worked like a mule
team.' |  |
| The superstructure is
made of hundreds of bamboo canes. 'Had you seen the raft from a distance
that morning you would have seen a bulky wooden barge with a little
bamboo house on its back. You would have had no trouble determining that
the craft was built in the tropics. Its superstructure was strictly
bamboo architecture, made from scores of neatly cut bamboo poles and
bushy palm fronds in typical cabaña
style.' |  |
| We carried our drinking
water in storage barrels. Our diet consisted mainly of fish and rice. We
sometimes carried as much as 400 pounds of rice onboard, as well as
hundreds of pounds of potatoes, beans, and carrots. We also carried
stalks of bananas, and bags of coconuts. We cooked our meals using a
crude propane stove, but the ancient Manteño cooked over stone
fireplaces, which they installed in the decks of their rafts. Over the
years we found that this was a very convenient method, and plan to
experiment with it on the next expedition. |  Photo courtesy of Chris Buntenbah |
| The sails, as in Manteño times, are made from hundreds of square feet of cotton, sewn together in panels and bordered by a heavy manila rope. They are lashed to bamboo yards, which are connected to the hardwood masts, allowing us to sail very effectively. The first Spaniards to observe these vessels were impressed by the Manteño sails.
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| All the rafts we've built
have used 'the guara system'. This is the original steering method used
by the ancient Manteño. It is a matrix of long boards, pushed down
through the logs and into the water, and you can think of it as a
primitive autopilot: If you deploy these boards in a particular pattern,
the raft will steer on a particular course, sometimes for miles at a
time. If you then raise one of these guaras a few feet - changing the
pattern - the raft will turn and sail on a new course, again, sometimes
for miles at a time without any
adjustment. |  |
| For an interesting look at the first Spanish eye-witness descriptions of the
ancient rafts, check out Dr. Cameron M. Smith's powerpoint presentation for the Society for the History of Discoveries.
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