Word: balsa
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Peruvian sailors watching the crazy craft under construction at Callao thought the six Scandinavians must be mad. The crude raft was made of balsa logs, the longest 45 ft. long, hauled from the Ecuadorian jungles and lashed together with ropes. A crude steering oar swung astern; a big, archaic square sail drooped drunkenly from the mast, and the cabin aft was a bamboo hut thatched with banana leaves...
This seagoing eyesore had a name: Kon-Tiki, after a Peruvian chief of 500 A.D. who had hopped a balsa-log raft to escape his enemies. Kon-Tiki had a destination, too, but it was born of a hunch and a prayer. Her captain, Norwegian Scientist Thor Heyerdahl, hoped to be carried by wind and currents to Polynesia and thus help establish his thesis: that the prehistoric settlers of Polynesia sailed from Peru. Anthropologists may argue whether Skipper Heyerdahl made his point, but no one can deny that Kon-Tiki, his book about the attempt, and the September Book...
...that always keeps them on their tees. They also can get some good laughs out of the movies. For fencing isn't the brassy, horeic sport of technicolor films, and not even Peroy--an Olympic champ--would try to hold off the French Army with one saber and some balsa-weed chairs...
...Tiki was doing all right. Last week, the men on the big log raft (modeled after an ancient Peruvian balsa) sighted the first land they had seen since leaving Callao, Peru, three months and 4,100 miles ago (TIME, April 21). It was the island of Puka Puka, easternmost atoll of the Tuamotu archipelago. To the six Scandinavian scientists on the Kon-Tiki, the smudge of land was proof of their theory that ancient, pre-Inca Indians might have traveled across the Pacific from Peru to Polynesia on big, homemade rafts, carried by the south equatorial current. Sailing...
...seagoing raft Kon-Tiki, modeled after an ancient Peruvian balsa, is carrying six Scandinavian adventurer-anthropologists on a voyage of historical induction (TIME, April 21). After four days of radio silence, the raft was heard from again last week. Present position: about 1,300 miles east of the Marquesas. For a fortnight after the Kon-Tiki left Callao, Peru, the Peru current carried it northwest nearly to the equator. Then the south equatorial current and the southeast trade wind took over and pushed the raft due west across the Pacific. Drifting 40 to 50 miles...