Incas' oceangoing Balsa Log Raft

Knowledge we still miss

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Nearly nothing is left from the former Oceangoing Rafts

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Raft Navigation on an Ocean
There is a difference between maritime ethnology as Heyerdahl cultivated - and maritime archaeology investigations as they did at the centers in Roskilde. More or less the difference is: A): ethnology: what could they - and B): archaeology: how did they?

Heyerdahl verified that it was possible for the South Americans to reach the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
He didn't show how they could return to South America by balsa raft, and until today nobody have demonstrated that.
- and he said not a word about landfinding.

Sail ships in historical time with their compass or astrolabe have always been able to find their way back. With charts and GPS is no problem at all, so to day we can't call it a challenge in navigation to sail out and get home with any craft - neither with a raft-craft. Therefor to locate an Easter Island behind the horizon will be no technical problem - a sea-scout with GPS can do it in his dinghy.

Nevertheless now 70 years after the deed of Thor Heyerdahl, 20 replica rafts have sailed out, but no raft sailor has returned to his port of departure. Until now no raft sailor has been able to repeat the old trade route along the coast to Mexico - even if we have seen attempts. Ref: Manteño rafts
No raft-sailor has tried to follow the wake of the many rafts of the Inca Tupac Yupanki fleet to Mangareve Islands and Rapa Nui and then return to South America. And even if the Ecuadoreans do it every day in the still active raft society of Guyaquil, no actual scholar nor any official expedition has been able to beat against the wind with a Guara-steered raft.
That is the sad fact, and what we want to know about.

Of the 20 raft replicas as have sailed out 12 was lost. Of those twelve the six was lost due to attack by the clam Teredo Navalis.
A loss-rate over 60% no maritime culture will accept neither then nor now. No Inca sovereign would sail out with his army with a threat to loss 60%.

Conclusion: We miss something.

The little we can expect of documentations and writings

We in the Western World are perhaps gazing too much on own navel. The naked truth is, that we don't know much about history of those civilizations as have developed their writing system on base of sylabtic, logographic or iconic nature, as are far outside the principles in latin letters. Quipus with their colored knots on yarns even worse.
Even foreign language with letters of Gothic or Cyrillic shapes, as are very comparable with the latin alphabet, make many erudites stop up and dismiss.
The scholars act as they prefer to work within own language and own culture, and so is probably the truth.
Historical studies, research and analyses are based on

written

documentation. The task of the scholars is to extract and concentrate information from ancient documents and manuscripts - anywhere they have the intellectual and linguistic capasity at disposal. There are not many scholars as are able to cover foreign cultures on the conditions of the same cultures, therefor the task of comparative studies seems rather difficult.

Many of the great cultures of our World have had their heydays some thousands years before the western, and many of those high developed cultures from Middle East, Asia and Africa are still jealously guarding their secrets and heritage in safely closed governmental archives, in former imperial libraries or hidden in temples and religious centres - and none of these are specially accessible for western scholars.

In the western hemisphere we operate more types of characters:

Numbers written with Arabic Numerals (coming from India) consist of the signs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Numbers have the same value on different languages, even if they are pronounced with different sounds. Therefor numbers doesn't give so many cultural translation problems; they are inmediately understood, at least if the numbering system is known. But other signs too can represent a fixed value. The greek letter π for example, in the most cultures will be understood as the decimal value 3.1415

Letters, as expressed by the Latin Letters and the derived alphabet of lowercases are connected to a sound, and these sounds can be combined by their secuence to form a word in a sentence in a local language. But here the sound of a letter has to be defined by a linguistical agreement, and is therefor never the same passing to next language or dialect.
Letters change sound if used in another language; but the advantage is, that we only need a few - (25-40) - different letters to express any word in any language.

The braille system is a tactile writing system as permit blinds to read with fingers and sighted to read in darkness. The classic Braille consist of blocks of 6 imbossed points = a dot-pattern arranged in a matrix, and each block stand for a sign, and this signs (letters) have to be combined to form words in acordance with a national spelling. A matrix of 'Dot' and 'No-dot' can be combined in 64 ways, what is more than a normal western alphabet + numbers.
Technically Braille is a digital system of 6 bit per byte, why it in this computer era is transfered to a Unicode-system and getting expanded to 8 dots per cell (= 8 bit bus). The 8 bit bus give us 256 combinations to disposition. A computer can easily transfer written words into spoken words.
Nevertheless: A Braille-written message for blinds don't enter easy in a computer.

Other signs exist in western hemisphere alongside letters and numbers. We have drawn signs as metaphors, representing meanings more than sounds, indicating ideas, assigning instructions etc. being symbols for words and phrases, just as the writings in oldtime Mesopotamia and Egypt was expressed by hieroglyphs: pictures as represent letters/sounds/sylabs or objects/actions/ideas.
The disadvantage of that type of writing is that a written message in ordinary prose easily could need thousands of signs. Probably - I don't know for sure - the same is the case for Chinese, Korean and Japan writings - and perhaps other.
We are in the western cultures used to read and understand certain signs without greater problems - even meeting them in other linguistic areas.
Examples of more international metafors could be:   road and traffic signs, turistic pictograms, social emotions, logos and computer icons.

A warning
Take care of your use of "international" signs, they are not always international outside their local area of birth.
A story: Once in an Asian airport I watched an older gentleman with big grey beard as with a deep sigh of relief entered the door to a toilet. He was dressed in tunic and turban in acordance with his culture and exactly as the "international" door pictogram indicated:   Soon after he came out very displeased.

The sad example of Quechua language   Quechua was the Inca's language.
Quechua lost their quipu-writing and failed to adapt to their conquerors latin writing.
The Quechua language is a spoken language, they say, but they have had their "writing", as we now have lost and only find in few remaining but incomprehensible Quipus.
But any language is possible to write with latin letters, if we only define the basic sounds connected to the letters. Therefor the Quechua language as colonized by the latins is now written with latin letters based of Spanish sounds. Unfortunately each parson was concentrated to expres his Bible to his local parisioners, and therefor he took no responsability more than create a writing for their local vernacular.
And each dialect got their writing, and as defeated people the Quechuas themself were not consulted. Therfor we now have around 20 dialectal right-writings for the nation of 10 million Quechua-speaking, and that make any witten intercommunication among Quechua-speaking people difficult - and that push every dream of any Quechua-written publication out of view, leaving them non-feasible because of short volumes.
About the Quechua language = the Inca's speaking: Ref: Quechua language.

2): Things as the sailing people have to experiment and find out:

We can always discuss if the skipper is sailing his ship - or the ship is sailing with her skipper. In the Kon-tiki case of Thor Heyerdahl, there is no doubt: that was the raft which sailed with him, and therefor he landed at the island where he did, and not where he wanted. Later on he learned to master sailing.
The situation now 70 years after the Kon-tiki navigation is, that nobody has sailed out and turned back again with any Pacific raft ! Few have tried, but the most has only driven off with the wind as a balloon fly and in best of the cases sailed with broad reach - whereupon they left their raft abroad.

In spite of the many rafts and mystical vessels who have left the shore in the wake of Thor Heyerdahl's Kontiki we have got no account for the use and utility of daggerboards at Balsa rafts. We have developed the theories, but still nothing is verified of their function.Ref: Guara steering
That we of course would like to see done better - and clearly documented better.
Therefor we want to see demonstrated how to steer a raft with Guaras and without any rudder - and we want to see that the rafts really are able to sail out and come back again to same site.
For example a short trip: sail out, tack, turn around the nearest island - and come back again to same haven.

Account of some steps in the re-discovery of this strange Guara-system:

A first try to follow the wake of the old rafts and reach Mexico was done by the unfortunate Manteño expeditions as John Haslett has told in his book: "The Lost Raft".
They did a good job. They steered by guaras and that worked satisfactorily, they say, but they lost all their four rafts of other reasons - mostly because of the ship-worm Teredo Navalis.

Tangaroa was a Peruvian raft as inspired by Heyerdahl in 1965 sailed from Callao to Fakarava Island. We know that Tangaroa equipped with only 3 Guaras passed the dangerous Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia by own means. Nothing is officially published, but we have found this information on the Inetrnet:web: first Tangaroa

Tangaroa-2 was an expedition which 2006 sailed off followed by many expectations to results - perhaps due to the name Heyerdahl (Thor's grandson) was involved - and because Thor Heyerdahl was deeply respected in Peru - especially for his work with the pyramids of Tucume in North-Peru.
The raft was equipped with only Guaras and no rudder. The cruise turned out to be one sad case more, as after 10 years still not has verified any of the Guara-theories, as so many have expected. The Tangaroa-2 expedition among other had the objective: "To demonstrate the versatility of the navigation system with Guaras". If they have a result, as they say they have, at least no book is available with accounts around the navigating and beating against the wind by Guaras = daggerboards.
We have found this article on the internet of a forreign country: web: second Tangaroa
Years later the same Norwegian group started out with their Guara steered 'Expedition Kontiki2' where they lost two rafts in the middle of South Pacific. We are still waiting for tecnical evidence from both expeditions.

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Beach and de-beach
Within the advantages of balsa rafts is their low draught. But how to land those huge vessels on coast and haven is another theme around seamanship still non-explored.
In the time of the Incas were no harbours and no motorized tugboats, but nevertheless the rafts were able to land on a beach by own power - go to shore, beach and de-beach again by sail, poles, oars, paddles or by warp (hauling by an anchor).
So they did, and they did it so competently that they later were used by the Spaniards as lighters to load and unload their ships.
We have no investigations nor experiments of how they did. To day we have no knowledge of how they landed their cargo - nor how they did a dry-out of the trunks, if they needed that. We simply don't know, how to handle these big block-boats for beaching and de-beaching by own crew - on an open coast with waves and perhaps breakers. That isn't known, because the ocean going balsa rafts disappeared around hundred of years ago.

How to handle and hoist a sail
How to handle heavy sails without sheaves nor blocks in top of mast?
Of course we ponder over if the South Americans really were without sheaves and blocks. We simply puzzle what they had in top of mast with only little friction to turn around a halyard for hoisting a sail so huge as the chroniclers tell about. We have no idea of their rigging. But otherwise we neither know when, we in our own culture placed a sheave in the top of a mast.
As pointed out, we know that the Incas not used wheels then (but now they do). Why, we understand very well when we have been on their steep mountain roads, impossible for any cart - but had they sheaves, blocks and tackles for their ropes, before the Spaniards taught them? How did they hoist their heavy sail without sheaves? That is still not known and difficult to imagine. Perhaps a couple of hands more to haul the braided halyard through a wooden eye - or over a fork as proposed here: Ref: mast top
Test and investigation of such a point could simply be by a demonstration of practical trials.

Supply for long raids on sea
What provisions of food and drink is too today needed to bring with for a 2 month cruise. In some way we too like to understand in what a grade an original sailing raft was self supplying under, lets say 2 month fishing on the ocean. Can a crew live of what they catch? Ref: Spilbergen in Payta
From my boy-scout time I know for each crew to calculate 1 kilo of food and some liters of water a day, so were they really bringing fresh water and life stock to eat and drink for two months - or could they live of what they caught. Tupac Yupanki was more months on the sea with some thousands of men, and he needs to have had a solution of that logistic problem.
Such information and experience we would like to get from the active raft sailors - simply to be able to understand better, what they could then in the past culture. Whereas we are not really interested in some miles or some months more or less to some fantastic destinations. Those records should be given over to the 'Guiness book of records' for the beer-drinking people.

Theoretically there is a difference in result between the methods of building. < >Ref: joining trunks
A): Building on slip-way, laying up the trunks on an even plane give a smooth underside, but the price could be cuts in trunks to make a junction with next layer of crossbeams -
B): Building floating in water or laying the trunks on an adjustable support - can give a smooth topside together with the opportunity to get a profiled underneath as for example a fat trunk for keel - and too a chance to make the junctions with the overlaying crossbeams without serious cuts nor wounds in the surface.

Cuts in the buoyancy-trunks open up wounds for easy penetration of water = quicker water-logging, but we have neither any investigation of the working life before water logging of the natural balsa trunks - nor nothing about how to dry them out in between their crossings. No investigation of a possible protection of trunks against water-logging (tar, oil, grease) - or even worse: an attack of the ship worm Ref: Teredo Navalis.

The question arises if the Inca-rafts were build on the beach - or in the water?
And here we too would like some response from experienced raft-builders.

There have to be something to learn in Ecuador, where they still are employing Balsa rafts for minor purpose.

Guaras versus rudder

Guara slots
Sailors and shipwrights must know it. We have seen different technical solutions for Guara holders but of course we would like an evaluation from the sailors about the NEED for special HOLDERS for Guaras.
What did the ancestors? Did the Incas at all use holders for Guaras/daggerboards? or could they plunge them in between the balsa trunks without sophisticated guiding arrangement - just where they needed them.

Guaras is a steering system! A classic shaped raft hull as have straight sidelines, don't need more keel to sail along - but need Guaras for steering. Ref: hull shape
Thor Heyerdahl provided his Kontiki with Guaras; mostly because the Incas had used such vertical boards on their rafts, but too he wanted some keel on his flat-bottomed raft. He employed a steering oar as rudder. He rediscovered something in the moment he hauled up a Guara for reparation, and saw that the raft changed course, but still in many years the rafts sailed out with a rudder or steering oar - just for security - and we have still not got any documentation for reliable maneuvering with Guaras alone.

Fixation slot or not fixation for plunge-in Guaras /daggerboards
A not easy question in our technical world of today is, if we should make some well shaped fixations to plunge in the Guaras - or we should just plunge them in between the trunks as they do in Ecuador. The latest raft sailors have made special fixation slots.

It is a notable fact, that none of the Guara-fixation-rafts is reporting about any ability to do more than running for the wind and in best cases with broad reach. That we understand in the An-tiki case, where none of the brave men had any sail experience. Therefor they couldn't do nothing else than follow the trade wind over the Atlantic Ocean - just like a balloon does. That should be OK for non-experienced, but just in these first month of 2016 the Kontiki2 rafts are repeating the same experience, what is a little strange, because the crew in several years have had the old Tangaroa2 raft sailing in Norway - but without to learn how to tack against the wind, as they can in Ecuador?
An excuse probably is, that they can't plunge Guaras in here they need and their slots are not placed in right place. We have looked out for experience here, but found nothing.

Escaping the many broken Guaras we have heard about

Guara of type 'long and slim' versus 'short and broad' should give the same "Guara-effect".
The classic shape of Guaras - as is known from Grave gifts" was long and slim. As wood grows on threes, it is natural to think, that the dimentions and shape mostly was given by the seize of trees to disposition, where they probably only used the heartwood and discarded the sapwood.

Today we are not dependant of the size of a local grown tree to make Guaras, and we can chose double breadth and half height for the underwater part of our Guaras - or we can create a linked triangular system shaped as a leeboard.

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Missing confidence on old time technology: Do as you feel, the end "justifice the means"

3): Things as we hope the scholars can find out
by archaeological finds, dig-ups or by comparing science.

Old anchors don't disappear so easy, they ware probably of stones, 'as our millstones' as the Spaniards wrote, so we expect one day that some will show up.
The archeological part is still missing, as the historical part - furthermore very few archeologists and historians know anything about the art to sail a vessel with sail.
The sailing societies created their civilization and lore on base of local material and common craft. Therefor it is important to define which materials was present and used in this maritime society - historical recognized or at least as accepted - but too which work-technologies was at disposition then.
Archaeological finds we don't expect much. Wood is very perishable, but can survive in protected areas, as the models of Guara have done in the graves.
Here we have more expectations to a comparative archaeological science, where we can study and compare same technology in different relations and finds. For example choice, handling and use of plant-fibers for threads, yarn, rope and textiles. Tools for carpentry and wood laboring in those old cultures - perhaps followed up by practical and experimental tests and trials.
To get this understanding, we of course have to study ropes on still maintained suspension bridges and textile technology, weaving and looms from other areas. Ref: bridge ropes

Woodwright tools and working with tools - but which tools
We don't know much about their working tools and their technology (how to use these tools) with materials of then - we want to see trees cut down, wood worked, sails woven and sewn with technology of that time.
Of course we to day will cut a balsa trees with a chain saw, as every modern man will do. But we know that saw cut trunks they didn't employ - they hadn't any saw for their prehistoric vessels. Probably the old Incas hewed threes with an axe of some type, but which one we don't know, because we have no knowledge if the Incas for that type of task had other tools than some of hardwood or stone (as their weapons ware of stones) - but nothing is proved.
There must be something to learn from those Museums as show working exhibitions from that time. They at least have had some material in own hands, as not only are documents.

Shipwright technology in the level of what they dominated then.
That is a technical area as isn't very well studied. All the museums we have seen demonstrating living conditions in the past, they use ropewalks and weave technology coming up centuries later. Anacronism isn't honest.
We would like to see something repeated about their original rigging using braided or twined ropes in long length - and made without use of any ropewalk.

Ropes
No evidence of the ropes, fibers for ropes and use of ropes employed by the balsa rafts: Twisted, plaited or what?? And done how? By rope walks or in hands? We have an old report from Pascual de Andagoya: that "the inhabitants have a manufactory where they make cordage of a sort of Henequen" - but what is that telling us today?
But as said, we know something around ropes used for Inca bridges, and there a profesional study perhaps could bring more facts. Ref: bridges

Sails - and cloth for sails?
Sketches of balsas rafts we have several. The Spaniards made more descriptions and drawings. In general they are shown with a single square or trapezoid sail, and never topsail nor staysail, but sometimes however with a little foresail, where the tiny foremast perhaps was more used to fasten a bowline for the main square-sail. But even with these old sketches, we are missing details as for example how their sails were manufactured - or the mounting and fitting. Could they produce canvas in continuos /endless length or did they produce sheets sewn together?

Mast
An A-mast seems a common equipment for rafts. We don't know of which wood, probably a local grown tree. An A-mast means a mast without need for shrouds. By the European vessels it is the stays and shrouds more than the mast as take the wind forces.
But even if the most common mast tree in Norway is Fir and Pine, we have no reason to assume that the Incas have imported any Pinewood - neither from Oregon. And as told: Eucalyptus, as today is very loved in South America, was still kept within Australia, until it came as an insect-resistant wood for ties to the railways.

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An interesting remark around reed-rafts from Lake Titicaca:

The technology applied for the ropemaking for totora-rafts is mentioned on a later page. Ref: totora art

4): Lost themes without expectation for recover:

Navigation over an ocean
But how did the inca-seamen find their way over the enormous ocean to its distant islands - sometimes filled with dense fog along the Humbolt Current, that is difficult to say - but they did. They did it so reliable and competent, that they were able to sail out with their later sovereign ruler - Inca Tupac Yupanqui and his army - and they could return him to his future realm.
How the Inca Tupac Yupanqui could steep down from his mountains and trust on a navigation with a full flotilla to some very distant islands in the Pacific, that is too a very interesting theme to ponder over. In some way he must have got experienced sailors as captains and pilots.
But who was his navigators? - and from where did they come? We can only guess. One guess could be an interchange with the sailing communities from some Polynesian islands - but such a theory seems nearly impossible to get verified.
In this relation we would have liked to know by which means of technology this past cultures made navigation, made crossings of the wide ocean, hit their desired destination among the scattered islands and were able to find and find again the same islands.

This seems as a MAGIC sense for non-instrumental ocean-navigation = for landfinding.

The time when such technology was possible has passed. Now we only can admit, that we have lost any ability to activate such mystical power - and too lost the lore connected. That was changed with the upcoming nautical instruments in such a grade, that we today firmly can declare, that we don't expect anybody being able to navigate without instruments as compass and GPS - maximum we kan keep a course relative to the actual wind, hoping that the wind will remain steady.
We must accept it as lost - and let the question stay as an unresolved riddle : "how did they?".

A ruddersteered boat without hand on tiller will tumble around, that we know of bitter experience - but a Guara-steered raft not!
All the Guara-raft work as a wind-vane - and with the same guaras plunged down, the raft keep a steady pointing sailing over the ocean - in relation to wind - and that is at least a help for navigation.

Logistic Lore
Furthermore the logistical part. How did the Incas organize a fleet, sailing out with a host of twenty thousand men - what means a flotilla of 1000 balsa rafts - or perhaps less, if the numbers have grown each time the story was told.
María Rostworowski says: 1000 men on 50 balsas of which the bigger were made of 13 logs, had two huts and two masts.

How they organized those far away sailings as that of Inca Tupac Yupanki: one year away from home, that we only will be able to understand, when we understand their organizations. But that information we only have very scarce from their conquerors, and exactly the conquerors we can't trust as an objective source. The Incas was technological subdued - not organizational, and even if Maria Rostrorowsky had done a huge investigation job, the descriptions we have, are all from the "winners" of the war, and not a single word from the Incas themselves.

The Teredo Navalis menace
And all our post-Heyerdahl raft sailings have taught us that we have to keep attention to how they could keep their rafts floating in sufficient months to make their voyage untouched by Teredo Navalis, the shipworm.
The Teredo Navalis is a pesky and greedy animal as have eaten up several vessels. Twelve of the twenty rafts as after WW2 sailed out on the Pacific Ocean were lost - and at least 6, but perhaps more, was sunken by Teredo Navalis.

2 months at sea means, that the natives had been able to dominate the Teredo Navalis danger.
The raid of Tupac Yupanki 550 years ago was a one year voyage, and no sovereign will do such a sea-voyage, if there were more than a normal danger.
What we really want is to clear up what the South Americans did - or could have done against this evil infestation.

Until we know better, then the balsa raft sailors have to do as John Haslett, our probably most experienced Teredo Navalis fighter says. Ref: his book: The lost raft - ISBN 9780692545263.

We really don't trust of all the strage legends that trunks has to be of female gender and cut down by native farmers in full moonlight. Such tall stories exist only because we don't know better.

The Tupac Inca Yupanki expedition

undertaken around year 1465

 

The legends are prehistoric - as the sagas are - because according to the Institute of Historical-Maritime Studies of Peru, this crossing occurred around 1465, at a time 2-3 generations before the historical time, and the 'historical time' arrived with the Spaniards, as came with their paper, books, feather pen, ink, Latin letters and writing.
Francisco Pizarro landed in Perú 1532 - what means 67 years after the raid and 40 years after the death of Tupac Inca Yupanki.

Not because there was no writing before the invasion. There were the Quipus, who were the bearers of messages, that the Inca Empire used.   Writing!   because we are convinced, that no empire can exist, if it not is possible to send a message across the empire - and read it without mistakes.
The Quipus were carriers of messages, made as coloured knots on fiber strings, that nobody today can decipher nor 'decrypt' (to use a modern expression of our digital time). The Catholic church has burned and destroyed all the Quipus found - as satanic. There have survived around 800 Quipus around in some museums and collections in the world - and nobody today can decipher them.

There are no doubt among the scholars, that the expedition realy has taken place.
The Spaniards have arrived 60-70 years after the Inca expedition to these western islands - and chroniclers simultaneous in both north and in south of the inca impire have listened and collected reports of this same great trip of Tupac Yupanki. Oral stories, narrations, traditions and in the best cases interviews with men of high age, who personally have experienced the voyage.
The stories about the Inca Empire were collected by chroniclers like Juan de Betanzos († 1576), Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa († 1592), Miguel Cabello Valboa († 1608), Martín de Murúa († 1617).

Men who had analysed the chronicles:
The material from the chroniclers had been studied by several scholars, and among those the peruvian historian Jose Antonio del Busto Duthurburu († 2006).
[ Ref: ISBN 84-8389-586-2 = 'Tupac Yupanki, Descubridor de Oceanía' ]
And too the still living Peruvian historian Federico Kauffmann Doig: web: Kauffmann
But too strangers as the famous Sir Clements Markham of England († 1916) as has edited and translated the text used by the Project Gutenberg eBook: 'History of the Incas, by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa'. web: gutenberg.org - search: antarqui
Thor Heyerdahl and Herman Buse de Guerra too have done their part.

Ninachumpe and Auachumpi is still not located among the hundreds of Pacific islands.
Where Markham point at the Galapagos Islands as the islands where the fleet landed [look his note 104 down under] - Del Busto compaire two options: Galapagos versus Mangareva + Easter Island - and then point at Margareva + Easter Island as the most probable.
Against the Galapagos theory: There are found no evidence of permanent settlements on Galapagos from before the Spanish arrival - and there too is a lack of fresh water on the islands as make visit difficult.
Both Heyerdahl and Del Busto point at Mangareva and Rapa Nui and prove their theory by the 'fotprint' the incas left on the islands. Local names as well as the archaeological ruin of Vinapú at Rapa Nui - but too they point at local Mangareva sagas, telling about the visit of a great king Tupa comming from east.
Nevertheless the identity of these islands is still an enigma. I personally can accept, that the islands Ninachumbe and Auachumbi today are, what we know as Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Mangareva Island in French Polynesia - (sometimes spelled a little different in other sources: Nina Chumpi and Hahua Chumpi)

My concerns and interests touches the logistic task of the general and crown prince = the future Tupac Inca Yupanki.
Del Busto reduces the Tupac expedition to 2,000 men sailing out on 150 rafts - sailing around 14,000 km in three steps: Manta >> Mangareva >> Rapa Nui >> and back.   6,500 + 3,000 + 4,500 kilometers - probably for a time around 1 year.
From the post-Heyerdahl rafts we know the crossing speed: between 65 km up to 100 km per day. That gives the longest crossing, about 100 days offshore from Ecuador to Mangareva - because it is the slowest raft that decides the speed of the convoy. 7 months in total at sea. That is a trip without access to outside resources and without contact with land - but with the option of fishing for extra food. With hook, net or spear - as they liked.

That were the conditions, which the later Inca together with its captains has needed to foresee, when making their plans.
But on the other hand, a military officer is educated to solve tactical and logistical problems, even at sea, so of course they planned for success.

First concern:   Duration of the life of a raft.
Teredo Navalis is a mollusk as eats wood. At least 6 of the 20 rafts as sailed out on the Pacific in the wake of Heyerdahl have been sunken by Teredo Navalis, and many more were seriously attacked and prevented from returning from their journey. Today we protect wooden boats with tar and pitch, but we either know, what they had in the time of the incas. We realize that the South Americans must have had some protection for wooden boats, because they sailed their balsa rafts each day, but what is forgotten ? We too know, that no no sovereign can permit himself to navigate the sea under the condition of a guaranteed destruction.
Conclusion-1:   The ancient navigators must have known something as could protect from Teredo Navalis - but what is today a lost knowledge.

Second Concern:   Lack of men trained as sailors
The Incas were of a people living in the mountains far away from the sea - and totally without naval experience. Nevertheless, I think it is possible to train soldiers to handle a sail vessel under the command of a more experienced sea captain.
Therefore while the ordinary army of 20,000 soldiers were cutting raft-trees (Ochroma Piramidale), transporting the logs to the coast and building the many rafts. While women spun cotton, weaved and sew 150 sails of 20 square metres each and others extracted fibres from the Penca agave, spun yarn and braided kilometres of ropes (twisted rope didn't exist in Inca land) - in that time elapse, the Inca could organize a sailor school for basic sail instruction.
Conclusion-2:   Tupac Yupanki had time to organize a sailor school for his men. Yupanki had the sea-men of the maritime society of Manta as instructures and had their rafts to disposition for training, and he had therefore been able to organize a basic sail boat instruction for own men.

The free interpretation
Observation about A):   The text indicate, that those navigators were not from South America, they originated from Oceania, and in Oceania there are no balsa trees. That means that the denotation "Balsa" is false, they must have arrived with other types of sailboats, type multihull as they use on the islands, but the word "balsa = raft" was probably the only denomination for a vessel in the common Quechua-vocabulary with the Spanish chroniclers.
The types we know today of Polynesian vessels are catamarans, double canoes, sailing canoes or eventually praos or drua - all much faster than a raft, but with less cargo-carrying capacity. Estimated speed 5-10 times a raft, and much more nimble.
The arrival of such a multihull could be able to call attention from the Inca general - whereas an ordinary balsa raft among many, would barely be noticed.

Observation about B):   The text seems today ironical. The chroniclers mix in some supernatural abilities as has nothing to do with the real case: "- a great necromancer and could even fly through the air -"   But the text was written in the time of witch-hunts, as a part of religious conviction.
As we to day don't believe in witchcraft, a 'down-to-earth' explication is, that Tupac Yupanki had a highly trusted adviser and researcher, Antarqui, as he send off to verify the existence of those islands. And the adviser 'flow' = sailed of with the same vessels from the islands of course - and he came back again and gave the wanted information to Tupac Yupanki, as thereafter took the decision to start his expedition.   We expect, that a speedy catamaran can do that crossing out and back again in one month.

Note, that mentioning "gold" and "skin and jaw bone of a horse" we understand as a way for a native storyteller to call attention form a Spanish chronicler. Gold wasn't of same importance for the Incas as for the Spaniards (and specially Sarmiento was renown for his Gold-thirst) - and horses didn't exist before brought by the conquerors.

Ocean navigation far out of sight of land - is difficult without instruments.
One thing is to handle a vessel, and that the Manta people did to perfection, daily ocupied as fishermen and sailing cargo up and down the coast from Chile to Mexico. They allways knew, that their land was there somewhere out to east.
Another thing is to find the way to a specific island far behind the horizon in the middle of an ocean. Sailing 2-3 months without sight of the mainland is possible, we know, but not every man going out on sea in a boat can find the island he aim - and never has visited before.

To form a navigator or ocean pilot before instrumental time, is probably an education, that needs years of training under the supervision of very experienced instructors.
I doubt very much, that there were enough experienced navigators available at the South American coast to navigate 150 rafts out and find a specific island in the ocean.
150 experienced sailors as captains and mates was perhaps possible - but not as ocean navigators, not as pilots.
Note, that we are talking of a fleet of same size or bigger, than the Spanish Armada more than 100 years later.

A navigational key point
The above 'free interpretation' indicate, that there was established a contact between the Incas and the the islanders; and this contact could have permitted transfer of island navigators, as knew the position of their own island in the sea.
I therefore suppose that Antarqui have brought a team of island navigators back to Manta, to make the expedition possible - and I too suppose, that those navigators have been distributed among the rafts. Without their support I see the expedition as very difficult and chancy.

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The shepherd tactic
We know from Vital Alsar with his 'The Three Rafts' expedition to Australia 1973 Ref: Las 3 Balsas - that it is possible to navigate in convoy - at least keep a smaller group together - even over long distance.
150 rafts are many to keep together, and therefore a solution could be to handle the fleet like a flock of sheep or cattles, and in same way as a herdsman uses speedy shep dogs to keep the pack together. The inca on the ocean could have used speedy patrol boats to keep the convoy together, eventually to find lost rafts and send them back to the group - but that too give an option to maintain communication with each of the rafts in the fleet during the 100 days cruise - sending messages, bringing special support etc.

A friendly relation to the icelanders too gave this option.   If Tupac Yupanki were aware of this problem, he could have asked the islanders for help. Ask them to bring their fast boats, to keep the his fleet together. That may have been done.

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Facts about sailing in convoy:   A whole pack (convoy) does not move faster than the slowest individual. (~ 65 km per day)
The horizon seen from deck height of a raft (2 meters) is only about 5 km away, and with hard wind during a long night a raft easily can vanish under the horizon - lost for the convoy.   The war experience (WW2) many years later verified, that a convoy very easy may be spreed over a huge area beyond the horizon, if some speedier man-of-war doesn't pick up and keep together.

Translation Note:   Our task is to understand, what this message from the past is telling us, and that is a process called a 'free interpretation'.
Of course words and expresions are torsioned since 1465, first told more or less voluntary in Quechua language 70 years after the great raft raid - told to a self-taught forreign Spanish chronicler (a perceived enemy?), who have learned himself to understand the indigenous vernacular of Quechua. He collected stories, translated and wrote a book in oldtimer-Spanish - and half a millenium later those words were translated /transcribed to a more modern version of Spanish language or by an englishman to an English 'document' as we read today. web: gutenberg.org - search: antarqui
Living with and daily speaking more languages, we know that translations can't be done word by word - we have to interpret: understand and then express the meaning of the message. Free interpretation !
And these translation problems were probably the reason, why so few poems and songs has been transfered from Quechua by the chroniclers.

CITE from the Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the Incas, by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa,
Edited and Translated by Sir Clements Markham 1907

Marching and conquering on the coast of Manta, and the island of Puna, and Tumbez, there arrived at Tumbez some merchants who had come by sea from the west, navigating in balsas with sails. They gave information of the land whence they came, which consisted of some islands called Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, where there were many people and much gold. Tupac Inca was a man of lofty and ambitious ideas, and was not satisfied with the regions he had already conquered. So he determined to challenge a happy fortune, and see if it would favour him by sea. Yet he did not lightly believe the navigating merchants, for such men, being great talkers, ought not to be credited too readily. In order to obtain fuller information, and as it was not a business of which news could easily be got, he called a man, who accompanied him in his conquests, named Antarqui who, they all declare, was a great necromancer and could even fly through the air. Tupac Inca asked him whether what the merchant mariners said was true. Antarqui answered, after having thought the matter well out, that what they said was true, and that he would go there first. They say that he accomplished this by his arts, traversed the route, saw the islands, their people and riches, and, returning, gave certain information of all to Tupac Inca.

The Inca, having this certainty, determined to go there. He caused an immense number of balsas to be constructed, in which he embarked more than 20,000 chosen men; taking with him as captains Huaman Achachi, Cunti Yupanqui, Quihual Tupac (all Hanan-cuzcos), Yancan Mayta, Quisu Mayta, Cachimapaca Macus Yupanqui, Llimpita Usca Mayta (Hurin-cuzcos); his brother Tilca Yupanqui being general of the whole fleet. Apu Yupanqui was left in command of the army which remained on land.

Tupac Inca navigated and sailed on until he discovered the islands of Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, and returned, bringing back with him black people, gold, a chair of brass, and a skin and jaw bone of a horse. These trophies were preserved in the fortress of Cuzco until the Spaniards came. An Inca now living had charge of this skin and jaw bone of a horse. He gave this account, and the rest who were present corroborated it. His name is Urco Huaranca. I am particular about this because to those who know anything of the Indies it will appear a strange thing and difficult to believe. The duration of this expedition undertaken by Tupac Inca was nine months, others say a year, and, as he was so long absent, every one believed he was dead. But to deceive them and make them think that news of Tupac Inca had come, Apu Yupanqui, his general of the land army, made rejoicings. This was afterwards commented upon to his disadvantage, and it was said that he rejoiced because he was pleased that Tupac Inca Yupanqui did not appear. It cost him his life.

[ a Gamboa digression:
These are the islands which I discovered in the South Sea on the 30th of November, 1567, 200 and more leagues to the westward, being the great discovery of which I gave notice to the Licentiate Governor Castro. But Alvaro de Mendaña, General of the Fleet, did not wish to occupy them. ]

[Note 104: This story of the navigation of Tupac Inca to the islands of Ninachumbi and Avachumbi or Hahua chumpi is told by Balboa as well as by Sarmiento. They were no doubt two of the Galapagos Islands. Nina Chumpi means fire island, and Hahua Chumpi outer island. See my introduction to the Voyages of Sarmiento, p. xiii; and Las Islas de Galapagos by Marco Jimenes de la Espada.]

5): Teredo Navalis - the Ship-worm danger

The greatest menace against ocean sailing rafts is the Ship-Worm - Teredo Navalis. That is a clam as has sunken thousands of ships.

In post Heyerdahl time around 20 rafts have tried to pass the Pacific Ocean. Only 8 have done it, and 12 were shipwrecked. Of these the half went down due to the Ship Worm Teredo Navalis as simply have eaten up the trunks from inside under the sailing, whereupon the trunks had lost their buoyancy - and sunken ! An unknown number of those rafts, as had arrived to their destination or where they ended, were so hard attacked, that they wouldn't have been able to take the return trip. None of the 20 experimental rafts has returned to their port of departure.

Of cause we are aware, that the softer the wood is (e.g. balsa, pine rather than oak and Guayacan), the quicker the advance of Teredo Navalis will go on. That means that they, the South-Americans, even before arrival of the Europeans must have been able to handle, protect and sail their rafts under more safe conditions. Better seaman-ship, better Teredo Navalis protection etc and that is exactly there, on the unknown and uncertain points, we need to concentrate our archaeological investigations and experiments.
What did the Incas?

Ship Worm attack is nothing new.
In historical time the chroniclers tell, that men as Christopher Colombus and Francis Drake had to combat hard against this plague.
On his fourth voyage to his India year 1502 Columbus came to a disastrous end, when all his ships sank due to damage from Ship Worms, and he was forced by these small clams to land on Jamaica, where he and his crews were marooned for a year before being rescued.
From a letter describing his voyage, the ships were: "… rotten, worm-eaten … more riddled with holes than a honeycomb. With three pumps, pots and kettles, and with all hands working, they could not keep down the water which came into the ship, and there was no other remedy for the havoc which the worm had wrought… from Columbus letter: "my ship was sinking under me…"web: Columbus
And Francis Drake too had to land on the Californian coast to do a fundamental repair on his ship, the Golden Hind, which had been damaged by shipworms.

Of cause there is doubt how widespread in the Seven Seas this clam was in Inca time. Had it gone abroad together with the explorers 500 years ago - or was it present before. To support for the last theory, we have found fossil wood in Canada showing the bore holes of Teredo or a similar species from the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago.

The Ship Worm Teredo Navalis is a wood-eating salt water living mollusc as doesn't like fresh water. That is a clam - growing to 30 cm and thick like a finger, and by its voracity and propagation this ship-worm together with its near family is able to sink a raft in few months, eating it from inside and out.
Despite the common name, Ship Worm this is NOT a worm, but a worm-shaped clam. Anatomic head of this clam is equipped with hard points to grind the wood - followed by a body bringing backwards the waste. That is the two valves of its shell, the nature has modified from protective devices into two small, but extremely effective grinding tool, that are used to bore into any piece of wood encountered in the ocean.

Technical comparison.
It work just like a TBM = a Tunnel Boring Machine as we today use to penetrate our underground making tunnels for trains or aqueducts: Cutting and milling the material with its jaws in front end and expelling the tailing backwards.
The clam starts out as a small juvenile larva, that settles and start its destruction on a wood surface. As the hole gets deeper, the animal's body elongates to maintain a connection to the surface, and the burrow is buttressed with a shell-like chalky lining - all like we prolonge and line a running TBM. The Ship Worm is simply hollowing out the wooden planks or trunks from inside - there is not much to see from outside surface.

In Puerto Pizarro, in North of Peru near the frontier to Ecuador, I several years ago met a man, who sailed tourists in his home-build dinghy. He treated his wooden dinghy by painting it over each year with a mix of tar, cement and Baygon = a common insecticide from the local shop. That man had resolved his ship-worm problem in his own way, but if we want to make serious archaeological experiments in Inca rafts we have to find out, what the Incas did. In other words: if we depend of modern chemicals, we will have difficulties to defend our research as serious archaeological experiment - under such anachronistic conditions.

We have never heard of wood-tar extraction in pre-columbian South America, but had the people around Manta other means? If we can't cover the trunks, what about impregnation with venom or poisons, as could be used preventive and work as protection. Perhaps an animal grease of any type could have been used, as they did in Arabia.
We don't know much, but one answer could be, as John Haslett point out in the end of his book 'The Lost Raft', that natural asphalt as is found as tar pits, asphalt pit or rock asphalt around in the Andes Mountains. So we can state, that a protective coating of the balsa trunks was possible - but we have no evidence.

With reference to History of Trinidad:
The Pitch Lake has fascinated explorers and scientists as well as attracting tourists on the island of Trinidad. The American Indians knew about and showed it 1595 to the British Sir Raleigh. That was short time after the Spainiards had met the Balsa raft, and Sir Raleigh himself found immediate use for the asphalt to caulk his ship at Trinidad. He referred to the pitch as "most excellent... It melted not with the sun as the pitch of Norway".
I personally have met and used pitch tar in the high Andes in a altitude of around 4000 meters.

One thing is to avoid infestation - a more serious task is to cure an attacked raft and kill the ship worms inside the trunks, and that is theoretically only possible by drying out the trunks - what is very difficult to do under the navigation.

Another way to combat and kill Teredo
Ship-Worm is abivalve and like both cockles, mussels and oysters it is edible and is eaten in countries as Thailand and Indonesia as a delicacy on level of oyster. The attractiveness of such a meal as always depends more of the cook and your own preconceived opinion - and not so much of the raw material.
Try to google: "Tamilok".

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