Viracocha Expedition

Which of us wasn’t inspired, as a child, by tales of sailing – whether Swallows and Amazons, Hornblower (ok I admit probably a bit of a minority choice nowadays) or indeed, Thor Heyerdahl with his Kontiki balsa-wood raft. Our preferences nowadays might veer more towards a Saga cruise, but the romance of the sea stays with us.

Our speaker Rod McCurdy had the chance to live the dream – although he did fill us in on the nightmarish moments too! He was part of a group of nine explorers who decided to test the traditional boat-making skills of the indigenous people who live round (and on) Lake Titicata in South America. This is the highest navigable lake in the world. It hosts large amounts of fast-growing very strong reeds, which have to be cut regularly so that the lake doesn’t get choked. For countless generations, the local inhabitants have used the reeds to make rafts. The hypothesis was that they could sail for long distances on these craft. The original aim of the project was to sail from the coast of Chile to Sydney in Australia. However, this meant not just drifting with the prevailing currents (particularly the Humboldt current) but crossing some of them – which meant that they needed some kind of forward impulse other than just the current. And so sails would be required. Unfortunately the ancestral knowledge of how to make and use sails on these boats had been lost and the local villagers were as interested as anyone else to see how the boat would behave – would she cross continents or would she fall apart?

They almost never found out. The much-trumpeted launch, years in the making and some weeks behind schedule, was nearly a complete disaster. The crew and support team had everything worked out – the boat would be launched down rollers and if that did not provide enough forward momentum to get beyond the breakers, she would be towed by a tug out into open water. So far so good, except that someone had not completed day 2 of their knot-tying course. The rope to the tugboat came undone, and the poor boat swung sideways to be buffeted broadside by huge waves which broke over her. Rod was very modest about the fact that it was he who leapt into the water James Bond like, to swim with the rope between his teeth out to the tug to attempt to save the day. What they did learn from this rocky start to the expedition was that the boat was remarkably resilient. She was constantly in need of repair, but that stopped everyone from getting bored! The other thing they learnt was that if anything could go wrong, it would. Except that the boat was remarkably buoyant - once the crew were convinced of that, the storms were a lot less scary.

They were still alarming though. As was the fact that it took them several weeks to work out how to steer and use the sails to best advantage. Fortunately they had an experienced and very strong oarsman in the crew, who could get them out of trouble by force of muscle when necessary! The first leg of the voyage to Easter Island which was supposed to take 35 days actually took 75. As well as the problems of sailing and steering, they somehow missed the trade winds which would have helped them make much faster progress. Living conditions were very cramped! They ran low on food and became very skilled at fishing – often (but not reliably enough) finding delicious mahémahé. Fortunately these fish were very curious which was sometimes their undoing. Even more alarming, they ran out of propane gas which was what they used for cooking – one of the crew had been assiduously boiling up specimens for his zoologist mother. He had a small kerosene stove but that took so long to get going it was time for the meal after next by the time it was ready to function. And then they ran out of kerosene too. So they ended up hacking off less critical (and less damp) bits of the boat to burn – on a grass boat, this could have been serious – for cooking fuel.

When they reached Easter Island and made the democratic decision not to attempt to go any further, they had to suffer the final indignity of being fumigated before they were allowed ashore. However, Rod reckoned it was worth it for the cheeseburgers they were given for their first meal on dry land. As an expedition, Rod thought it had had significant success, demonstrating that a vessel of antiquity could propel itself to the remotest part of Polynesia. Although it did not reach the adventurous goal of Australia, it had at least got them as far as Easter Island without the sponsors pulling the plug. As a learning experience, it was invaluable and something that none of the participants will ever forget.

The film to this spellbinding talk is on YouTube. Just copy and paste this link into your browser:

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=573098824&sxsrf=AM9HkKmKUt1MRqJf-ItZb0XE3iaLQziz1A:1697178333794&q=viracocha+ii&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj579L9sfKBAxWcQUEAHTzHB1EQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=1024&bih=488&dpr=1.56#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:820628ea,vid:jIIthLQ1Rmk,st:0