Rafting adventure from Boston to Egypt
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Continuing the work of his childhood idol, Kon Tiki adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, Phil Buck and a small crew plan to sail a reed vessel from Boston starting in May 2010 and arriving in Egypt in November 2010.
Next year’s 7,000-mile trip across the sometimes rough waters of the North Atlantic will retrace a trade route that might have existed many years before the time of the Vikings — before Christopher Columbus.
The 2010 expedition will follow the Gulf Stream across the Atlantic, and then cross the Mediterranean Sea on its way to Egypt.
Trips in reed boats have to match, as closely as possible, the amount of time the reed boat has before it sinks from absorbing too much sea water. In the meantime, Buck says, it is a safe and buoyant boat, as any seawater that washes over it drains through it between the reeds instead of staying aboard.
Buck got to meet his own childhood idol, Thor Heyerdahl, in 2000 after Buck’s first Easter Island expedition, when the famed Norwegian adventurer was 86. At age 11, Buck read Heyerdahl’s “The Kon-Tiki Expedition” describing a historic 1947 Pacific Ocean voyage on a raft made from balsa logs.
Heyerdahl wanted to show ancient South American societies had the boat building expertise to reach and settle Polynesia. Heyerdahl’s book set Buck’s own dreams of adventure in motion, and he hasn’t looked back since.
The adventures of Buck’s reed boats are recounted in the books “Sea Drift: Rafting adventures in the wake of Kon Tiki” and “Eight Men on a Duck.”
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