In Heyerdahl’s Wake- Across Atlantic in Reed Boat

by Worldhum.com/Sail-World on 8 Jul 2007 Like his idol and role model, Kon-Tiki captain and author Thor Heyerdahl, Dominique Görlitz says he’s going to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a primitive craft in an effort to prove prehistoric peoples could have made the journey.

This summer, he and his 11-member crew will attempt to go from west to east, from New York to Portugal via the Azores aboard the Abora III

'Thor Heyerdahl only sailed from East to West, with the wind at his back,' Görlitz told Spiegel’s Stephan Orth. 'You could toss a refrigerator into the water in Morocco and it would eventually end up in America.' It’s quite a challenge, then, but Görlitz is prepared. Sort of. He doesn’t have a sailing license.

However, members of his five-nation crew, many of whom were recruited through 'ads in magazines, on the Internet and on television,' according to Orth, seem to be experienced. They’ll all sail aboard the Abora III, a 12-ton, 12.5-meter reed boat built by the Aymara tribe in Bolivia, which still uses reed boats today.

Why does Görlitz want to make the trip? The former physical education and biology teacher believes 'traces of tobacco plants and cocaine were found in Egypt, in the tombs of Ramses II and Tutankhamun,' and this trip could prove that trans-Atlantic trade could have occurred 14,000 years ago.

The reed boat hull was constructed in Bolivia, by the Aymara's and flown by air to New Jersey. There the deck cabins, where the crew will live for three months, were built and added.

The reconstruction of the boat has been made possible thanks to the 15 years that Görlitz has spent studying rock carvings found in Upper Egypt, where he came to the conclusion that the lateral lines on the boats were really oars that would allow them to sail even when the winds were not favourable.

They will be bobbing like a cork up the Gulf stream, but they do have a few pieces, which were not available to the earlier sailors. They have solar panels providing some electricity, a GPS to a satellite telephone for emergencies and a computer with which to update the onboard journal of the 'Abora III', named after a Canary god.

The Abora III expedition aims to set out on July 11th.