Page 238 - The Secret Museum

On board Kon-Tiki remained only the expedition members, which are:

Thor Heyerdahl, leader
Herman Watzinger, technical leader, 2nd command
Erik Bryn Hesselberg, navigator
Knut Magne Haugland, radio operator
Torstein Raaby, radio operator
Bengt Emmerik Danielsson, Steward

As a ships-pet a green parrot was presented to the crew at the time of
departure.

The first day and night passed without incident: ‘Quiet night, passed light
starboard at 01.30.’ For the next hundred days Heyerdahl jotted down the things that
happened to them. I turned the pages and read what he had got up to. It sounds like
they had a wonderful time.

As they moved into the Humboldt Current, they found it was teeming with life.
They had visits from whales – once, they counted 120 splashing around the raft at the
same time. One day, they were followed by a whale-shark.

On 24 July 1947, the crew saw a double rainbow, ‘enormous shoals of dolphins
swam around,’ and they were all happy onboard. ‘We are all able to enjoy a

marvellous sun-set or a huge sea, and jokes are never wanting.’

On another day, they nearly had company when some natives on the island of
Angatau paddled out in canoes to get a good look at them, but the Kon-Tiki swished
past the island, so the Scandinavians didn’t have time to get too acquainted with the
locals.

Heyerdahl explained that they spent most of their time in the bamboo hut they had
built on their raft. When I looked inside it at the museum, I thought how cosy it
looked, their little cabin, with the small beds inside.

The trip was mostly free from danger, although Heyerdahl does describe two
storms with 9-metre waves. The well-designed raft surfed the perilous waves.

Heyerdahl drew only one picture in the logbook. He wrote how, on Norwegian
National Day, 17 May, in the very early morning, a huge fish, 94 centimetres long,

leapt out of the ocean and on to the raft, waking everyone up. ‘Bengt woke up too, sat
up in his sleeping-bag and said quietly: “Nå sådana fiskar fines inte! (No, such fishes
do not exist),” whereupon he fell asleep again.’ Herman ‘grasped firm around the
belly of the twisting [fish], it vomited, and out came another fish, 8 inches long with
big eyes and built much like a flying fish’. The fish that jumped onto the raft was a
snake mackerel, and this was the first time any human had ever seen one. So
Heyerdahl drew the fish as a souvenir of the day it leapt aboard to say hello. As day

dawned, the crew raised the Norwegian flag, and that night they ‘celebrated with
toasting and singing on edge of raft while great waves chased by us in the dark’. They
nearly lost their compass.