Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993 TAG: 9305090093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HONG KONG LENGTH: Medium
Severin and a five-man crew plan to set out from Hong Kong Thursday, a day chosen for expected favorable winds and currents and because Chinese calendars say it should be auspicious.
They plan short stops for repairs and supplies in Taiwan and Japan, and then expect a voyage of up to seven months across 6,500 miles of open sea on the 60-foot raft. They hope to end up in California.
Severin, a British citizen who lives in Ireland, has traveled since 1961, with outings ranging from exploring the Mississippi by canoe to galloping across Outer Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan.
Now Severin wants to test a belief that a Chinese navigator, Xiu Fu, may have crossed to America in the third century B.C., 17 centuries before Christopher Columbus in 1492. Xiu went in search of immortality drugs for the emperor.
Severin's raft was hand-built in five months by fishermen on the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, the last place in the world where the three-masted, cotton-sail, bamboo rafts still are made and sailed.
In the past, such rafts also were used in Taiwan and Ecuador in Latin America - a fact Severin said added weight to the idea that the Chinese took the technology across the Pacific.
Made from 220 giant bamboo logs lashed tightly with rattan, the raft sinks so the deck is awash with water, making it stable in heavy weather but uncomfortable.
The crew, including friends, a doctor and a Vietnamese sailor to repair the raft, sleep in cabins "hardly bigger than dog kennels," Severin said. The cabins have rounded thatched roofs and look like two scoops of ice cream on the banana-shaped raft.
Apart from muesli and nutty candy bars, the crew will have rice, dried fruit and other foods that Xiu would have eaten, cooked on a small paraffin stove. Severin also has a bag of treats saved for his 54th birthday in September, which he expects to celebrate somewhere in the Pacific.
One crew member, a fisherman from the Faroe Islands off the coast of Scotland, also knows how to catch and cook sea gulls.
Aside from the danger of storms, Severin said the raft's maximum speed of 3 knots means a risk of being run down by modern craft.
"We are going to be a bit like pedestrians crossing a superhighway," he said.
The raft is equipped with a solar-powered satellite transmitter and the crew will check in daily, allowing the coast guard to track its progress.
"If we don't report, I hope people will take notice," Severin said.
by CNB