The First Mariners | Non-profit organisation

The First Mariners

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25.01.2022 A few snaps of our lovely floaty lady, decks on and shelter well under way!

23.01.2022 How did the first mariners 60,000 years ago cut the bamboo I hear you ask? With stone tools of course!

22.01.2022 Barth has gifted the first mariners crew with their own stone tools to use during the voyage. Scrapers, cutters and even drills! Can you guess which one is which?

20.01.2022 Some of the first mariners!

17.01.2022 Oeseli Blog 3 (Monday 20th Jan) As if the continuing squalls aren’t enough to disturb our tight and meaningful schedule here, the daily visits from chain smoking representatives of every R. Indonesia Government department are.... Nothing, however, is allowed to blur our focus on the job at hand. The original concept was to emulate what sea oriented people were up to thousands of years ago, to become them in order to understand how they achieved what they did without Google and Bunnings. With each project this is how we start out at least we try to. But I don’t know why we bother because like replacing every metal tool with Barth’s carefully knapped flintstone ones, it is simply not possible. Nor is the other Utopian ambition which is to lean on the local’s infinite knowledge, undimmed over several millennia, when designing and building our various ancient craft. The unfortunate reality and it becomes more noticeable as the years go by is that like us, they don’t really have a clue. And in any case think we are a bit barmy. So imagination and logic are in command. Blind leading the blind. Just as it must have been all that time ago, which I suppose makes our efforts even more authentic. It is also a group effort. Them and us. All sea people and all theorising the next step. So the lovely bamboo raft that grows daily will have been designed and built with the combined thought-force of 17 people; many of them using as if it was the most natural thing in the world a razor sharp stone tool to cut the palm rope which holds the raft together. Sunday morning in a packed church is routine for our workers, and for us down on the beach for us to spin two lengths of bark fibre rope together to make it stronger. This is an example of ‘cheating’ because it is usually done by the rope maker and there isn’t one left on Rote. Our supply of ‘gumuti’ took six months to find on the island of Flores. It is still produced, still painstakingly by hand somewhere in the island’s mountains. Alas, the rope-twisters don’t do double strand anymore. To produce sufficient ‘keke’ glue from the sap of the special mulberry which grows on Rote, calls for dozens of people to tediously trap tiny dribbles of white sap into coconut shells. To repair sun splits in our bamboo called for a calculated five litres of the sap, the collection of which would have taken weeks. Silicone is the name for ‘keke’s’ time-saving replacement. There was nothing to be done about it. Ho, hum. So the beat goes on. One bamboo layer of the raft’s ultimate three is in place and by this afternoon our pious workers will be let loose on row No. 2. Another 25 culms of seasoned bamboo. Splits and all. Five days under the whip and a steady work pace inspired by a building anxiety to start the crossing is likely to see the raft lowered into the rising tide and floating for the first time. On, on.. Bob Hobman

14.01.2022 Oeseli Blog 4 ...Continue reading

11.01.2022 Once we're underway, if you'd like to follow us on the raft and track our position across that wide expanse of water, then here's the site to do so: ----> https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp

10.01.2022 Bob talks to Jo Laverty live on ABC Darwin about the First Mariners Project

09.01.2022 Raft Updates: Bob Hobman catches up with Jo Laverty on ABC Darwin breakfast program 04/02/2020 about raft launch progress, mood and food. (Listen in from 46mins 35 seconds into the program) https://www.abc.net.au//progr/breakfast/breakfast/11908646

06.01.2022 As part of the first mariners expedition, Glenn Marshall has been making and testing drifters to use while crossing the Timor sea.

04.01.2022 Today just before our first test paddle in the lagoon!

03.01.2022 Oeseli Blog..5 Well I can tell you one thing, if we set out to produce a primitive watercraft the result is without parallel in the long and honourable history of maritime architecture. Sangga Ndolu is a raft Homo erectus would never have dreamed up, even if he had lasted another half a million years. Neanderthals would have swooned. And here at lagoonside Oeseli village we are even more impressed that 65,000 years ago Middle Pleistocene sailors crossed the Timor Sea to Au...stralia in something similar. And survived. But there is precious little time to admire our handiwork. There are palm leaf sails to prepare, victualing our craft with roots, tubers, coconuts and green bananas. There are hatches to hack into the strip bamboo deck and six more sleepless nights trying to figure out how to steer it. Barth van der Geer gifted the crew with a fine selection of stone tools before he left two days ago without getting his sun parched dolphin skull and a similarly-weather beaten giant clam through the luggage x-rays at Kupang’s airport. Neither Barth’s wife or his cardiologist were in favour of his making the voyage. No company would insure the cameraman, Sam Harriss. So we are eight souls, including the two Rotinese who are, at the moment, the only ones with passports because Indonesian Immigration officials for reasons known only to them - confiscated ours two weeks ago. That surprise inconvenience seems to be the only factor to spoil the plan to set sail next Sunday. The weather forecast is on our side and two lively pigs which at the moment run in and out of our accommodation should be looking nervous about now. The farewell blessing/party is scheduled for Friday. Complete with a traditional gong orchestra and lashings of Sopi, the locals’ wickedly potent brew. We are promised dancing to help digest the two little piggies. They would be lonely when we are gone so we could be doing them a favour. There is no escort vessel but all the correct authorities are alerted. We have arranged a daily sat phone sked with our land-based crew in Darwin and before departure anyone wanting to track our progress can log on to https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp So wish us well in this week’s somewhat vital passport retrieval exercise, the Land of Dreams eureka moment with regard to a raft steering method (also sort of vital) but we have four Bonggo’s to help with this. More about those in the final blog before kick off. Bob Hobman