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To: yankeedame

Drinking water - haven’t some shipwrecked people survived a long time on the flesh of fish? And nets full of green coconuts might come in handy. Anyway, if you could sail 100 miles a day (and it’s possible to sail 200) you could cross 2000 miles of ocean in three weeks. The Polynesians had some massive canoes, room for lots of coconuts. Finding the dots in the ocean is a whole other problem.

See the book The Last Navigator for some info on how the Polynesians did it.

Mrs VS


20 posted on 06/04/2007 6:39:55 PM PDT by VeritatisSplendor
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To: VeritatisSplendor
See In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s the story that inspired Melville’s Moby Dick. Twenty sailors were shipwrecked in the Pacific by a whale and 93 days later only eight were alive. Still, that’s a long time under these circumstances. And considering that they’d not planned for anything, that’s an amazing testament to what can be done, especially if you don't mind what (or who) you eat.
21 posted on 06/04/2007 6:48:51 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Al Qaeda knows Iraq's strategic value, yet the Democrats work day and night for our defeat there.)
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To: VeritatisSplendor; Coyoteman

The Chumash plank canoe, or tomolo, held up to a dozen people — and may hold a clue to pre-Columbian contact between Polynesia and the New World. (Photo courtesy Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.)

"Scholars swim in choppy waters Did Polynesians visit Southern California many centuries ago? The evidence — some fishhooks, a boat design, and a few words in common — is limited. But to some those clues are tantalizing, even persuasive."

23 posted on 06/04/2007 6:50:06 PM PDT by blam
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To: VeritatisSplendor

More info on the Hokuleia experiment.
http://www.k12.hi.us/~waianaeh/PolyVoyage/ealahoku/hokuleia/hokuleia.htm


41 posted on 06/04/2007 7:49:09 PM PDT by enots
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