A reed boat on Lake Titicaca
© AFP/File Gonazlo Espinoza WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Abora III and its mostly German, 12-strong crew cast their fates to the winds when they set off on Wednesday from New York on a six to nine-week voyage to the distant shores of southern Spain.
The team is led by Dominique Goerlitz, a botanist and experimental archeologist, who first became fascinated more than a decade ago with pre-historic cave drawings of reed boats, some of which dated back 15,000 years.
His mission is to prove the experts wrong, by overturning current thinking that thanks to the prevailing winds and currents Stone Age man would have been capable of sailing towards America, but not back again.
In 1970 Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, proved one way was possible, when he crossed the Atlantic to reach America in his boat Ra II. He was pushed by the prevailing trade winds and the powerful Equatorial current.
But Goerlitz and his crew have a harder challenge, and will have to tack against the strong Atlantic winds on the northerly route to reach their destination: first the Portuguese islands of the Azores and then onto Cadiz in Spain.
"I hope to collect the ultimate evidence that advanced navigation took place during pre-historic times," says Goerlitz.
Abora III, which has been built by Bolivian Aymaran Indians on Lake Titicaca where Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki project was also born, measures no more than 12 meters (36 feet) long and is just four meters (12-feet) wide.
There is no engine. The twin-hulled square rigger is fitted with an 11-meter high mast and a 60 square-meter linen sail to catch the capricious winds. Fourteen keelboards will help navigate and steer the boat against the winds.
"The boat is lashed tightly together. It can't break in half, and it can't capsize," says Goerlitz of the design, based on his painstaking observation of cave drawings in Spain and France, and akin to the vessels built by the ancient Egyptians.
But the expedition still faces considerable dangers.
"The biggest worry is the modern shipping traffic," says logistics manager and business consultant Michael Gruenert. "Today's container ships are huge, and they just won't see us on their radar."
The project, which also includes an engineer, a carpenter and two students, has been five years in the making and cost some 750,000 euros (more than a million dollars), much of which has come from the participants' own pockets or been raised on loans.
"We want to provide the experts with our data, and say to them 'that's how it was,'" says Gruenert. "Long before the Vikings and Columbus there was trans-Atlantic trade."
As Wednesday's launch approaches, the team admits to increasing nerves, especially with so much at stake.
"We are working through the night, we're stressed and working all hours," said Michael Polzin, a retired sailing instructor, who will be the ship's mechanic.
"But this is an adventure I wouldn't have missed for anything."
©AFP