Post #164118 by christiki295 on Mon, Jun 6, 2005 11:17 PM

Thank you Dawn Tiki. Here is an excerpt on just that point. I had, apparently, mistakenly thought that currents prohibited the voyage.

"Some criticized the fact that the Kon-Tiki had to be towed well away from the coast before it could begin its voyage. Heyerdahl, however, was required to do so to avoid port traffic in his untested vessel. Secondly, the knowledge of how to steer the raft using the centerboards was unknown at the time thus steering the raft away from shore was a dubious process. Subsequent experiments demonstrated the magnificent versatility of these centerboards and other raft voyagers after Kon-Tiki would be able to maneuver directly from their departure points using this method." http://www.plu.edu/~ryandp/AIP.html

However, this Island Heritage essay suggets otherwise:

"While there are prevailing western winds and currents part of the year, they are just as strong eastward the rest of the year. And the strong ocean currents off the Peruvian coast actually make it virtually impossible for anything but a powered vessel to escape into the south Pacific (in the absence of motorized capabilities, rafts are caught in the Humboldt coastal currents that carry them northward to Central America rather than westward into the south Pacific; rarely emphasized by Heyerdahl is the fact that his own Kon-Tiki expedition raft had to be towed 50 nautical miles out to sea by a tug boat before beginning his long and courageous journey)." http://islandheritage.org/heyerdahl.html