Quote:

Some years ago a group from Ireland did a similar trip trying to prove that the voyage of Saint Brendan "the Navigator" was feasible. They made an open oxehide boat according to ancient specifications and sailed it from Ireland to America via Iceland & Greenland. This was known to be the probable route of Saint Brendan some 1500 years ago. The Irish were in Iceland when the vikings arrived, so it was certain they had at least gotten that far.

It's tough when your back end begins to rot!

The back end of the vessel had started to rot well before it even took sail - I questioned a guy about it who was building bits and pieces for it at the Marina and he didn't want to comment, other then it would be fine.

thanks

does anyone know the story behind this picture? it was displayed on jclist, look really cool.

After Jersey launch, reed boat falls short of Spain goal

by Russell Ben-Ali
Thursday September 27, 2007, 8:41 PM
The Star-Ledger

Crew members board the Abora III after it was placed in the water at Liberty Harbor Marina in Jersey City in June.

A reed boat manned by adventurers with ties to New Jersey has failed to prove its theory that trans-Atlantic travel was an option for prehistoric explorers, as it was forced to call off its voyage due to damage.

The Abora III, which set sail two months ago, suffered serious damage to its stern and twin rudders in late August and early September. Having sailed 2,000 miles from its dock in New York Harbor, it was crippled 550 miles short of a supply stop in the Azores. It fell about 1,000 miles short of its final destination in Spain.

''The vessel was critically damaged. Some 30 percent of the rear end got knocked off in the storm," said marine biologist Ken Hayes, whose Flemington environmental research firm helped sponsor the Abora III expedition.

The boat was built in Bolivia and shipped to New Jersey, where it was launched in June and spent several weeks making test runs in the Hudson River. The mission was an attempt to prove that ancient people sailed to the New World from Africa or Europe thousands of years before Columbus or the Vikings.

A 42-foot-long, 12-ton sailboat, Abora III was made from Bolivian reed found along Lake Titicaca and designed like boats found in rock drawings that are thousands of years old. The expedition ended Sept. 4, after 56 days at sea. The 12-member team was transferred to the vessel of a film crew that arrived to document the final days of the trip, Hayes said. They arrived in Azores on Sept. 12.

Read more in Friday's Star-Ledger.

Looks like they threw in the towel on September 11th:

http://www.abora3.de/index-eng.html

Am I a sicko....or does anyone else want these Krauts to sink?

Come on...be honest!

Severe Storms Batter ABORA III: Reconstruction at Sea

Six hundred miles west of the Azores, Dominique G?rlitz and crew are trying to rebuild their vessel after being battered by two heavy storms, the last of which was a large cyclone lasting over three days. These storms caused a good deal of damage to the portside rudder and broke the stern end of the vessel off in its entirety.

At the moment, the multi-national crew has stabilized the situation by tightening the spiral-ropes that hold the reed-rolls together. The sailors feel confident that the ship will neither sink nor disintegrate further.

G?rlitz has developed designs for a new rudder and a different trim of the mast, both based on ancient Egyptian rock drawings, in hopes that these modifications will allow them to continue in their journey to the Azores.

The work will progress further during the day, and G?rlitz expects to keep working for another day or two before being able to sail his vessel. His comments are: "First of all, I?m very proud of the crew who has all done a marvelous job during our crisis. Second, although saddened by what happened to our proud-looking ABORA III, I?m glad to confirm what I always believed: Reed-boats are incredibly safe. Even after loosing 25% of the ship we are still floating safely. No other ancient watercraft than a reed boat would have this kind of seaworthiness."

The weather in the area has improved since the incident, at the moment all forecasts predict the prevailing anti-cyclone surrounding the Azores to return and stabilize, bringing favorable mild northerly or westerly winds to the sailors of ABORA III.

The ABORA III is the prehistoric reed boat skippered by botanist Dominique G?rlitz. Based on the expedition, Mr. G?rlitz investigates a need to re-write naval history in his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn, Germany. His thesis is that intercontinental journeys happened thousands of years before both Columbus and the Vikings.

www.abora3.com

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Dan.

Who would have thought that there would be two identical boats?

Maybe anyone who read the website?

Duhh.

This photo was taken of the Abora III while on test sail before it was finished.

The boat on display in Manhattan is the Abora II which has already crossed the Mediterranean . The german expedition team was giving free tours to the public on it.

The Abora II and the Abora III look exactly the same.

They are now trying to get the Abora II to Liberty State Park to be put on display.

WTF ?
i would swear that I just saw this boat moored along the West Side Highway two weeks ago.

You don't suppose there is more than one, do you?

Or the diary and map thing is a hoax?

Quote:

Hey, let'em rewrite history that way - pretty harmless.

Quote: 'We want to rewrite the history of sea travel,' Goerlitz said.....

Why are Germans always trying to rewrite history?

http://www.abora3.de/index-eng.html

They will be lucky to make it by Christmas - see link and CLICK live - NEW on the left, near the top!

Update or lack of one -- not much news on the "Abora III" since July



Not much new on the old DIARY

Last News story:
===========================================================
Calm over Atlantic brings ancient expedition to a standstill

Europe News
Jul 27, 2007, 19:11 GMT

New York - The Abora III expedition that aims to replicate ancient seafaring techniques has experienced a delay of almost three weeks due to a long period of calm over the Atlantic, a representative told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Friday.

Werner Middendorf confirmed that the boat piloted by German biologist Dominique Goerlitz is some 100 kilometres off the Gulf Stream. Once it reaches the current, it will be automatically pushed forward by sea currents.

First stop will be the Azores islands, where Goerlitz hoped to put in for fresh provisions by August 10 before moving on to Cadiz on Spain's southern tip and the Canary Islands. With the current delay, the boat will get to the Azores in late August, Middendorf said.

However, Middendorf noted that in spite of the calm at sea, Goerlitz's crew are not getting bored.

'The crew spend their time swimming, sunbathing and fishing,' he said.

They have also devote time to repairs, Middendorf said.

Goerlitz set out to prove that ancient civilizations could have made the trip from the Americas back to the Old World. He embarked on July 11 on a more than three-month journey from the US coast back to Spain.

Goerlitz set off from New York in a prehistoric-style reed boat called the Abora III, constructed out of 17 tonnes of reed papyrus and fashioned with 16 leeboards - retractable foils - that he says aided seafarers with steering some 6,000 years ago.

Taking his cue from Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, the 41- year-old Goerlitz hopes to prove that people traversed between the old and new worlds as early as 14,000 years ago, and even conducted transatlantic trade.

'We want to rewrite the history of sea travel,' Goerlitz said.

Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki and later Ra expeditions proved that ancient civilizations could have used trade winds and ocean currents to drift westward around the globe to South America and the South Pacific. Goerlitz and his 10-person international crew hope to prove the opposite direction was possible too.

The boat is equipped with modern navigation and communications equipment.

Goerlitz, who is working on his doctorate in invasion biology at the University of Bonn, has cited evidence of plants known to have originated exclusively in the New World, like coca and tobacco, that were found in the tomb of ancient Egyptian ruler Ramses II.

Vintage 6,000-year-old rock drawings in Egypt's Wadi Hammamat depict reed boats with keels on the side, which Goerlitz says demonstrate how the ancients could have undertaken their travels across the Atlantic.

Quote:

Quote:
I hate when that happens.

I just heard it started to break apart. I know some people at the marina who were trying to charter my yacht to go out there and bring it some wood for repairs, but unfortunately my crew is in Italy at the moment. That's that last I heard. I'll make a call tomorrow and see what I can find out.

Emergent, what have you heard?? If you go to their website, zzom in on their GPS tracking and you can see it going in circles all of a sudden, does *not* look good....

http://www.abora3.de/index-eng.html


Brian

Just got word that the ship is disintegrating. They're trying to get a boat out there to patch it up.

Quote:

I heard that in the interests of historical accuracy they are carrying a case of Marlboro Lites and two ounces of blow on board.

Trans-Atlantic voyage
Set out to prove prehistoric trips
Thursday, July 12, 2007

A German botanist and former schoolteacher who wants to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a reed boat to prove that ancient mariners could have performed such a feat isn't taking any chances: He'll be equipped with GPS and e-mail.

Dominique Gorlitz, 41, of Chemnitz, Germany, departed from Manhattan yesterday - after spending months on the Jersey City waterfront building the vessel - bound for the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic and Spain, in an effort to replicate ocean voyages that he believes were taking place 12,000 years before Christopher Columbus reached the New World.
Advertisement

The 41-foot reed boat Abora III, named for a Canary Island sun god, cast off from a Hudson River dock yesterday morning.

The first stop for Gorlitz and 11 companions is to be the Azores, five weeks' sailing from New York, by Gorlitz's estimate. From there the Abora III hopes to turn northeast and head for journey's end at Pontevedra, Spain. The entire voyage is expected to take two months.

"We are trying to retrace the ancient waterways to prove that prehistoric people crossed the ocean both ways," Gorlitz told reporters before leaving.

According to Gorlitz, traces of tobacco and coca found in the tomb of Egypt's pharaoh Ramses II are evidence of long-distance trans-Atlantic commerce during the Stone Age, and cave drawings in Spain show that people living 14,000 years ago had an understanding of ocean currents.

Though some scholars have expressed doubts about his assertions, a representative of the Explorers Club was at the dock to present Gorlitz with a club flag to carry on the 41-foot reed-and-eucalyptus craft.

Kenneth L. Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn., and author of "Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology," said the Abora III sailors, while courageous, cannot prove that prehistoric people sailed across the Atlantic.

"I wish them well, but for a proper replicative experiment in archaeology, the culture has to be consistent," he said in a telephone interview. "How can they replicate the past accurately by using evidence from thousands of years ago in Egypt and a boat similar to those built 800 years ago in South America? These are completely different periods."

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/200 ... voyage-but-will-it-float/

New York Times -- July 11, 2007

An Intrepid Voyage, but Will It Float?

By Sewell Chan

It was an incongruous juxtaposition: the gleaming walls of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on one side of the West Side Highway, and on the other, at the Hudson River?s edge, a 42-foot, 12-ton sailboat made from Bolivian reeds.

The boat, the Abora III, set sail from the Hudson River at West 42nd Street in Manhattan this morning, bound ? its crew hopes ? for the coast of Spain. The crew hopes to make the journey in 65 days.

The quixotic trans-Atlantic journey is being conducted by a group of adventurers who believe that such voyages occurred 14,000 years ago between Africa and Latin America in boats made of grass.

It is a theory that has few supporters among scholars, but that hasn?t stopped its proponents. They argue that traces of nicotine and cocaine ? drugs not popular until Columbus?s voyage ? were found in the mummy of the Egyptian pharoah Ramses II. They also believe that Spanish cave drawings show that people 14,000 years ago had intricate knowledge of ocean currents.

Writing in The Times in May, Jonathan Miller described Dominique G?rlitz, the German former schoolteacher who is leading the expedition, as ?part P. T. Barnum and part Indiana Jones.? The Times noted:

?Most archaeologists, especially today, know that ancient people were fully capable of achieving remarkable feats,? said Kenneth L. Feder, a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University who wrote ?Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology.?

But Professor Feder said that while a few stray samples of cocaine and tobacco inside a tomb might be intriguing, they were not enough to construct a grand theory of prehistoric trans-Atlantic trade.

?There?s this 99.9 percent certainty that it didn?t happen,? Professor Feder said, ?because we don?t have evidence that it happened. They have this little bit of evidence ? that?s really cool ? but what else do you have??

On June 8, the vessel was lowered it into the Hudson River from the Liberty Harbor Marina in Jersey City, still lacking a sail, The Jersey Journey reported.

The voyagers are admirers of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer who twice attempted trans-Atlantic voyages on boats made of reeds.

Whether the Abora III will make its away across the ocean is no sure thing. The North Atlantic gales and currents are one concern, but another is collision with large container vessels. ?It?s always possible that at night a huge container vessel will approach us too much and I hope very much we?ll be able to call them by VHF to protect us against an unwanted meeting,? The Star-Ledger quoted Mr. G?rlitz as saying last month.

Mr. G?rlitz, who has no formal training in sailing or archaeology, hopes to raise more than $500,000 for the journey. But even if he succeeds, he will be hounded by skeptics. The Times quoted Professor Feder, in May, as saying: ?If the boat succeeds, what have they proved? That a Bolivian boat can cross the Atlantic? And what does that have to do with a 14,000-year-old site in Spain? And what does that have to do with cocaine and tobacco mummies??

haha, i can't stop laughing at the appearance of this ship. it's a cool idea/concept, but it looks like a giant shoe!

More " Feel Good History "


DTG

Abora 3 is leaving Jersey City, NJ and being towed tommorrow (Tuesday) from Liberty Harbor (ceremony starting around 5:00pm) over to the Circle Line Pier in Manhattan in the evening. She'll leave from there on Wednesday morning at 8:30am bound for Spain.

Best viewing will be at the end of Washington or Wayne Street around 7pm as it is towed through the Morris Canal.



A boat made entirely of reeds

Special vessel at Liberty Harbor Marina will prove trade occurred before Vikings
Ricardo Kaulessar
Reporter staff writer

ON BOARD ? This is the crew quarters on the Abora III.
At first glimpse, the Abora III doesn't look like it should sail across the Atlantic Ocean.

It seems more fitting for a short leisurely trip around the Liberty Harbor Marina in Jersey City, where it has been docked for the last two months.

However, this boat made of reeds and wood will undertake an ambitious trip between July 8 and July 12.

The brainchild of German botanist and amateur sailor Dominique G?erlitz, the Abora III is set for a voyage to Spain to prove that goods could have been traded across the Atlantic Ocean thousands of years before Christopher Columbus or the Vikings crossed it.

G?erlitz is following in the footsteps of legendary Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who journeyed 3,800 miles in 1947 across the Pacific in a sailing vessel called Kon-Tiki to explore his belief that people from South America may have settled in Polynesia before Columbus.

The 42-foot-long, 12-ton Abora III's design was inspired by ancient rock drawings.

For this particular sailboat, the Aymara Indians at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia built the parts, which were then shipped to the United States and put together by G?erlitz and a team of volunteers.

A crew of 12 from five different countries has been selected for the trip.

Last week the Abora III, named for the father of the mythical sun god Ra, made several runs on the Hudson River, from the marina to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, to test how the boat will sail under various wind and water conditions.

G?erlitz was confident last week that his boat will hold up despite its archaic construction. He looked at a motorized boat docked nearby for comparison.

"If I took a trip in that [motorized] boat across the Atlantic, I would sink like the Titanic," G?erlitz said. "The inside of the Abora is filled in with reeds, not hollowed out like other boats, so water will not come in too easily."
Like the ancestors

The boat is called Abora III because there were two previous Aboras, in 1999 and 2002, which were similar sailing vessels that G?erlitz created to test theories on ancient travel and exploration.

In this case, G?erlitz says is making his upcoming trip to prove insights about land rather than water.

In his research studies, he came across scientists' discoveries of traces of nicotine and cocaine in the mummy of Ramses II in Egypt. Both drugs were not popular until after Christopher Columbus returned to the Old World. G?erlitz also found that certain plant life in South America and Africa was not indigenous to those continents and originated in other areas. Thus, G?erlitz believes that ancient traders had transported those seeds.

"There is very good indication that these plant seeds came as people set sail across the Atlantic, as there are findings of African plants in America and Central American plants in Africa," G?erlitz said.

He consulted the ancestors' designs to construct the current boat.

"There were rock drawings done in Egypt as far as back as 6,000 years that show these types of boats," G?erlitz said. But unlike the ancient mariners that he and his crew are trying to emulate, the Abora III crew will have the latest navigation equipment on board to ensure their survival.

"This is not a kamikaze mission. While I am optimistic this boat could hold up, obviously I want to ensure the safety of everyone on the Abora," said G?erlitz.

Not quite a pleasure boat

On a windy Monday afternoon, the Abora III sailed back into the dock at Liberty Harbor Marina. To prevent the boat from crashing into the dock, the crew dropped weighted bags into the water to help steer the ship safely.

One of the guests was Vladimir Drtmlyug, a Downtown Jersey City resident for over 25 years, who boarded the boat with his girlfriend.

A young sailor in his native Russia, Drtmlyug was an invited guest. He said the trip, his second on the Abora III, was "amazing."

"Today, it was a pleasure, but on Friday [June 22] with the winds, it was a bit scary," Drtmlyug said.

He added, "It's a lot of hard work for the crew, and I wish them nothing but the best of luck."

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com

http://www.hudsonreporter.com/site/ne ... =461&dept_id=523586&rfi=6

I went this morning to see this boat and I'm no expert with 'reed' boats, but I too suspect this thing will get water logged or rot - I would have sprayed it with a clear waterproof coating / adhesion or sailed off straight away before any problems set in.
It does look cool though!

Reed all about it: Ancient cruiser
Adventurers attempt an Atlantic crossing

Saturday, June 09, 2007
BY RUSSELL BEN-ALI
Star-Ledger Staff

Thousands of years before the Vikings and Columbus, an ancient people may have sailed across the treacherous Atlantic, a round trip voyage from North Africa to the Americas in boats crafted from tall slender grass.

That's the working philosophy of a dozen international adventurers who will attempt to replicate the return voyage in July, using a 42-foot-long, 12-ton sailboat made from Bolivian reed and designed according to boats found in 10,000-year-old rock drawings.

Some nautical experts predict the boat will absorb too much water and sink or fall apart during the voyage. But it's not ABORA III's buoyancy or durability that troubles Dominique G?rlitz, a German botanist who will head the expedition.

"Of course you can never underestimate the danger of the North Atlantic," said G?rlitz who gathered his crew to set the vessel in water yesterday at the Liberty Park Marina in Jersey City.

"But my biggest concern is modern navigation, this is a danger," G?rlitz said. "It's always possible that at night a huge container vessel will approach us too much and I hope very much we'll be able to call them by VHF (radio) to protect us against an unwanted meeting."

The boat is equipped with lights, two life boats and a radar reflector, G?rlitz said, but they also will rely on the crew to look for danger as they share duties in four-person shifts, three shifts per day.

The crew plans to spend the next few days repairing damage caused when the vessel was transported by ship from South America to New Jersey. They'll then spend several weeks making trial runs up and down the Hudson before sailing in early July from New York for the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic. They hope to then sail to northern Spain, arriving two months after they leave the U.S.

The adventure can be followed on the crew's Web site, www.abora3.com.

Behind the ship will be towed two large bags of seeds indigenous to North America. G?rlitz said he'll present them to a botanist at the University of Bonn, where he hopes to use the expedition to earn his doctorate, and see if the seeds grow.

He said he wants to show that these seeds cannot germinate after exposure to salt water for two months. That could contradict theories that seeds indigenous to North America, like tobacco seeds, could have floated to Africa, where evidence of nicotine and charred tobacco leaves were found in ancient Egyptian graves.