Voyage of the Manteno: The Education of a Modern-Day Expeditioner

About this book

This book has been republished under the new title "The Lost Raft." In 1995 John Haslett went to a tiny fishing village in Ecuador to begin building a thirty-thousand-pound raft made entirely of balsa wood bamboo and manila rope. Inspired by Thor Heyerdahls famed Kon-Tiki voyage Haslett intended to sail five thousand nautical miles across the open sea to Hawaii. What transpired however was anything but a recreation of Heyerdahls famous voyage. Over the next five years Haslett and his crews journeyed through a surreal odyssey of madness mutiny obsession and survival. They lived aboard primitive rafts for months at a time were marooned in alien worlds saw one vessel sunk another abandoned and another wrecked. Ultimately Haslett and his colleagues would emerge with new discoveries about a lost culture. Voyage of the Manteno is an ancient sea tale lived by modern men. It is a compelling adventure brought to life by a cast of characters who vary from the ordinary to the heroic to an Ahab-like crewman who teetered on the brink of insanity. A tale of hope survival and discovery Voyage of the Manteno is the true story of two harrowing expeditions in the late 1990s.