August 7

On the 7th in 1947 -Thor Heyerdahl and crew, on board a 40 foot balsa wood raft named Kon Tiki, were roughly tossed on a reef near Raroia one of the Tuamotu Islands. Eventually that day Heyerdahl, his crew and the Kon Tiki made it safely to the beach bringing to a successful close a 101 day, 4375-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean. For this trip Heyerdahl used a raft, which was a faithful copy of an ancient Peruvian boat. The only nod to the 20th century was a radio. I suppose technically speaking this thing was a boat but considering the size of the Pacific Ocean it was a very small boat. It was roughly 45 feet long and maybe 18 feet wide. It had an open cabin on the deck and below decks was an ocean for crying out loud. The darn thing had negligible freeboard. The Kon Tiki’s voyage was sort of like taking a big surfboard from California to Hawaii, something that I am sure someone in Southern California has probably considered doing, but that’s Southern California so it doesn’t really count. As is evident from Heyerdahl’s picture which I have borrowed from The Kon-Tiki Museum (http://www.kon-tiki.no/) he was not only a brilliant anthropologist but was also way ahead of the fashion curve when undertaking this voyage.