KT2 Release Update
For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for the release of our book - full name We’re Sinking, but Not Tonight; The Kon-Tiki 2 Expedition, also known as the raft book or simply KT2 - please continue to bate a little longer. But, hopefully, not too much longer. We are making progress toward getting this puppy out the door, i.e., pushing the Publish button. Well, at least the English ebook version. Torgeir has been working on the Norwegian translation and plans are for us to release both languages in paper format as well. Maybe even an audiobook will be available someday. For the immediate future, however, the plan is to release the English ebook first - hopefully, in the coming weeks, not months. However, as Anton (a vital member of the World’s Best Self-Publishing Team) says, “Just call it final and that’s it. Well, I know there may be superfinal, final2, final3, final_new, final final versions later, but okay, this is life )).” Wise word describing a long complicated process. Still, we hope this final version is the last final version. It’s a great book but it can’t become a beloved classic until after it is released.
But those little gremlins of details and decisions and coordinations and communications between remote working sites in different time zones keep appearing. Plus, amazingly enough, we four on the World’s Best Self-Publishing Team have lives outside of this book, lives filled with spouses and children, changing seasons and changing relationships, daily routines and changes therein, emergency matters, laundry and shopping, and an occasional lapse into lethargy and spring fever to deal with. (My high school English teacher, Mrs. Jensen, taught us to never end a sentence with a preposition. Sorry, Mrs. Jensen, but sometimes you just have to.)
But, as I said, we are very close to a release date. Hence, this update. And, for those of you joining us in the middle of this minidrama - or, to follow the high seas theme, in mid-ocean - here is a brief intro of what you can expect to see on the electronic shelves of your digital bookstore soon:
First, a promotional video produced by our Norwegian raft philosopher, Torgeir Higraff.
Then, a little background about our intrepid drift voyage explorer (a nice way to say high seas vagabond) to provide our own answer to the question so adroitly posed by Thor Heyerdahl in his classic book, Kon-Tiki, “Bengt, can you tell me how the hell we came to be doing this?”
As I said, stay tuned for further announcements. But we are close. Very close. And, for any who may be asking what a book about a high seas adventure is doing in an expat forum, I can only reply, “Damfino. Sometimes, things just happen. Like babies, tiramisu, and relocating to a different continent to become an expat.”
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Author’s Note (Torgeir Higraff)
I was seven years old when I made my first raft. From that day, I was destined to make rafts, and sail. And now I have written a book about one of my adventures, the Kon-Tiki2 expedition.
When people ask why I do “the raft thing”, I don’t really know what to say. It’s like asking me why I breathe. I do it because this is me. I do it for its own sake. If I lost all my money and I lost all my friends because of “the raft thing”, I would still do it.
My motivation for sailing rafts is about getting to another dimension, an elevated way of living that makes everyday life seem shallow in comparison. That sounds spiritual and it’s not what I intended. But, in a way, I guess it is true. As I wrote in my book,
When you sail on a raft, you develop a very close relationship with the sea. If you make several drift voyages for a total of a year at sea, you may become best friends. This is partly due to the raft's unique characteristics. But it is also because of the sea life you became a part of. The sea is always just below you, around you, everywhere. You can't escape from it. So perhaps it is man's natural instinct on a primitive raft to surrender to the sea. Over your head, the sun rises during the day. At night, you are surrounded by a dome of stars and a seemingly endless sea. It is this sea life that really reflects human reality best. You find your place in the universe and settle down. For me, that place was on the ocean.
From my grandparents' house in the arctic village where I grew up, a path led down to a bay. The high tide filled it with sea water.
With my friend, André, age six, I dragged a pallet down to the shore and tied it to a tree. All through the spring, we filled it with empty plastic bottles and Styrofoam. One day in the middle of summer, the temperature rose to twenty degrees or so. We knew this was our time. We pulled our raft out onto the sand and waited for the tide. When the tide came, we were slowly lifted up and began drifting into the bay. We were floating. We made it! This was the best day in my childhood.
15 years later, in a cheap hotel room in Panama City, I sat mesmerized by Thor Heyerdahl's book. The street noise from the open window turned into a chaos of waves that tumbled against me, one after another, without stopping. It was impossible to put the book down. In the reflections of the neon lights, I clutched that book like the Kon-Tiki crew clung to their steering oar. As I was reading, the waves broke against me through the night with a deafening crash of thunder and I felt I was "the helmsman in water up to his stomach". After that reading experience, I was sure about what to do. This was it!
Thus, a few years later, together with five others - the world's best raft sailing team - we built the fastest sailing raft in modern history and sailed it to Polynesia on the same route as Kon-Tiki. The Tangaroa Expedition in 2006 was my childhood dream come true.
A few years after this feat, I wanted to develop a new expedition that further challenged the balsa raft’s capability and the mettle of its sailors. This adventure would include everything that interested me - survival, science, and historical exploration.
I planned Kon-Tiki 2 not to make money and not to be famous. (We didn’t and I’m not.) But we did what I do best: Sailing a raft on the Pacific Ocean. This new adventure provided new pleasures, new companionship, new challenges, and a deeper understanding of human society. It graphically demonstrated how the world had changed in the years since Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki had sailed.
The sea, however, was still the sea.