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vitel alsar : la balsa, 1973

Vitel Alsar : La Balsa, 1973.

Extracts and photographs from
Alsar, Vitel, with Enrique Hank Lopez :
La Balsa to Australia
- The Longest Raft Vovage in History
Book Club Associates, Sydney, 1973.

Introduction

Page 39

Perhaps the raft's most advantageous feature was its set of guaras.
These were nine vertical keel boards, or center-boards, about an inch and a half thick, two feet wide, and six to eight feet long.
They were made of a soft, pliant wood called figueroa, which grows plentifully in Ecuador; we had learned about it from the Ecuadorian fishermen, who use it themselves to steer their flat-bottomed balsa rafts along the rivers and coastal waters much as their ancient predecessors did.
They showed us how the guaras should be used on La Balsa.
By raising or lowering them only a few inches, we ought to keep our otherwise clumsy raft on a steady course - a nautical miracle!

Supplementing this practical knowledge with the written records of the ancient Huancavilca navigational techniques, we carefully worked out the best possible locations of the guaras- three in a V-shaped formation near the bow, two under the cabin, and four in a straight line aft the cabin.
Situated between the logs, they protruded under the raft like multiple fins.
Thus, if we wanted to steer the raft from left to right, we would slide the starboard guaras zeeper into the water, while pulling the portside guaras out of the water - or vice versa.
The most important were the guaras at the corners of the stern.
These would have to be shifted to compensate for winds blowing from an angle.
Although basically simple, mastery of the technique is crucial to the successful steering of such a raft.
Heyerdahl had known about the function of guaras but, perhaps because he could not read the Cervantesesque Spanish in which the Huancavilca accounts were written, he had not been able to make proper use of them.

Page 160
Plate 7

Vital works a guara to change course through rough seas.


Alsar, Vitel, with Enrique Hank Lopez : La Balsa to Australia - The Longest Raft Vovage in History Book Club Associates, Sydney, 1973.