The sail of the century

Published on Thursday 25 April 2002 01:00

It was an epic voyage in a sinking reed boat manned by a crew of near rookies. Destination? Easter Island. And somehow, finds Jennifer Veitch, they got there

AS the impact of crashing waves catapulted him from his bunk, the horrifying images of death that had haunted Nick Thorpe’s sleep came crowding back into his mind.

What if he was thrown overboard in the dark and no one could save him? Would he die a slow, tortuous death caused by thirst and exhaustion, or would the sharks that had been stalking the boat for weeks feast on him first?

And, come to think of it, just exactly why had he agreed to join seven inexperienced men - and two pet ducks - on a gradually-sinking boat made out of reeds for a 2500-mile voyage across the Pacific?

Even the world-famous adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, who died last week, hadn’t reached Easter Island from Chile in his now legendary reed raft the Kon-Tiki.

So how could they hope to make it?

But as their boat, the Viracocha, was buffeted into the eye of a force seven storm, Nick had little time to consider his folly. All hands were on the tiny deck in the inky blackness trying to steer the boat away from the dangers of a nearby reef.

Incredibly, the crew and the boat survived the storm. But now back on dry land and at home in Edinburgh, Nick reveals that actually wasn’t the scariest moment.

"We almost got run over by a freighter one night because we couldn’t make them listen to us on the radio," says the 32-year-old writer and journalist.

"Because we were made of grass, we didn’t really have a radar profile. If they had gone through us they probably wouldn’t even had noticed."

Luckily for Nick, after a frantic struggle, the crew managed to make radio contact with the freighter. "They passed us at about 100 metres and you just saw this wall of metal going past.

"That was probably one of the closest times to dying that we came."

Even with a suntan and a pirate’s silver ring in his ear, Nick doesn’t come across as the sort of chap willing to risk his life in the spirit of adventure on the high seas. He’s the first to admit that his involvement in the voyage - organised by the American adventurer Phil Buck to prove Heyerdahl’s theory that reed boats could have been used to colonise Easter Island from South America - came about by accident. He was on a travel writing commission, planning to backpack up the Americas to Alaska, but so far had only got as far as Bolivia. He was on a bus when he overheard a backpacker boasting that he was going to sail across the Pacific on a traditional South American boat made out of reeds.

His journalistic curiousity aroused, Nick and wife Ali went to investigate and fell in love with the Viracocha.

"I was originally just going to do a story about the boat," he explains. "It wasn’t until I got there that I realised there was a space going."

While Nick had messed about in boats on family holidays and even joined the crew of the Tall Ships for an assignment for this very newspaper, he was far from an expert sailor. So he knew the trip wouldn’t be easy.

"It was a leap of faith, but for some reason I just found the idea amazingly attractive. There’s a sense in which life is quite kind of safe and everything is kind of airbagged. It just appealed to me as a way of getting back to simple nature and away from all the demands of normal life."

He had already taken a big step away from normality after leaving The Scotsman in 1999 to travel in South America with Ali, who encouraged him to join the crew. But he hadn’t expected the experience would completely change his life.

Once on board the Viracocha, the hardest things were dealing with his constant worrying, and putting up with the foibles of the crew.

"I spent the first few weeks just imagining all these myriad ways of dying. Falling off was the main one. We didn’t know how to turn the boat around, as we discovered when we tried to do a man overboard drill.

"I was this kind of neurotic Woody Allen figure, which I didn’t really like being, always saying ‘what if?’

"Often the scary stuff was what you feared, not actually what happened. My nightmare was falling overboard and not being found. It was the idea of those miles and miles of ocean around you and beneath you. You would have hours or potentially days to think about the fact that you are going to die, bobbing up and down, thinking ‘any minute now, I could get eaten from below’."

As they got further into the six-week voyage, Nick began to relax a bit more as the crew had to learn to rely on each other.

"If you are on a boat for six weeks with seven guys, you have to let your guard down and you have to trust them. You have to talk to them. In terms of male friendship, it was a really good experience."

One of the things which bonded the crew was the companionship of their pet ducks, Pedro and Pablo - named after Fred and Barney in the Spanish version of the Flintstones - and given to them by the captain Phil’s mother-in-law.

Sadly flightless, Pedro went overboard and was lost at sea, but Pablo made it to Easter Island with the crew in April 2000 and became a minor celebrity. Pablo is also celebrated in the title of Nick’s first book, "Eight Men and a Duck", which recounts their improbable voyage.

If it had taken much longer, they might not have made it. As reed boats gradually absorb water, the boat was almost a couple of feet lower by the time it reached land, although amazingly it was still intact.

"There was a Spanish guy who had sailed in two boats much bigger than ours and both of them had fallen apart," says Nick.

"We knew this, so the main fear was that the waves would break it apart. He had been able to sail on with only half a ship, which kind of convinced me that we would be all right.

"It wouldn’t have made it much further, but it held out really well, considering the qualifications of the crew."

His expedition, he says, at least proved the possibility of contact with Easter Island.

"If eight complete no-hopers like us could get it across then surely pre-Inca civilisations could have managed it," laughs Nick. "The crew might have been a bunch of nutters, but the boat was absolutely top-notch."