Titicaca!!!

Ummmmm......if you really want to know if prehistoric people could have made this boat, maybe you shouldn't mount the mast with a five-ton crane that's usually deploying drilling equipment or heavy-duty sediment vibracoring equipment....

Today, Aqua Survey is helping the German experimental arcaeologist Dominique Gorelitz and his crew prepare the Abora III to leave New York Harbor and sail to the Azores near the African coast and then on to Spain. The vessel was built entirely from reeds taken from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia by Aymara Indians in their traditional design.

Several weeks ago, Abora III and its crew arrived at Liberty Harbor Marina in Jersey City, NJ, the homeport for our 70-foot lift-boat, the R/V Robert E. Hayes. One of their first major tasks was to build and mount the mast for the Abora III. Using our five-ton crane aboard the R/V Hayes we were able to lend a hand. Our lift-boat's crane is usually put to work deploying drilling equipment or heavy-duty sediment vibracoring equipment.

So why the commotion? "There is growing evidence that before Columbus or the Vikings made their maiden voyages to the New World, people were regularly crossing the Atlantic to trade goods." How were Stone Age peoples able to make such transatlantic business trips and can a modern crew recreate this voyage using a boat constructed from a prehistoric design?

As my co-worker wisely put it: "People can't even make it from Cuba to Florida in boats like that..."