[fso301]

"well, you couldn't take a canoe out in the Bering Strait", and, of course, you couldn't, but you also couldn't take a leather boat, or a wooden row boat out there either!

The occational Scraling showed up on the shores of Scotland or Ireland in his Leather boat.

[muawiyah]

Columbus reported seeing some dead guys in a small boat near Iceland (where he went to pick up wool to take to Italy or Turkey to be carded or to be made into rugs).

This was not exactly "common", but it happened often enough to be recorded ~ and considering the primitiveness of life in that period, there was some level of regular traffic from East to West in the North Atlantic.

Some analysts suggest these were merely Eskimos. Still, not all these reports involve "leather boats". Bering Strait is supposed to be a tad rougher to navigate in small boats than the North Atlantic though.