70-Year-Old Sets Off On Long Raft Voyage

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 20

70-Year-Old Sets Off On Long Raft Voyage

(By a Reuter Correspondent)

NEW YORK, William Willis, the 70-year-old German-born adventurer who sailed a balsa raft alone across the Pacific from Peru to Samoa nine years ago, set off on another test of man’s endurance. This time he intends to sail alone from Callao, Peru, tn Sydney, in Australia, a trip of 10,000 miles.

On July 5, after towing Willis’s latest raft out at Callao harbour, a naval tug cast it adrift at a point 45 miles from the Peruvian coast, in the full Sweep of the Humboldt current. Willis plans to sail north of Samoa, then south-west. After his record-breaking, 115-day, 6700-mile voyage in 1954, Willis wrote that solitude can send a man mad if he is not suited to it. His new voyage will be at least 3300 miles longer. He is sailing aboard a raft of steel. ‘‘You can really call this a ‘space age’ raft, if such a thing is possible,” he' commented as the craft was loaded on to a freighter in New York early in May for Callao.

Several space engineers helped to work out the stresses and strains which the ocean will exert against the 33 x 18ft craft. It weighs five tons, compared with the 1954 balsa raft’s 12 tons, and it has three pontoons with the cross pieces welded together instead of tied with ropes. There is a tiny steel cabin. Willis has devised a rig which, he says, will enable

him to sail almost as close to the wind as a fore-and-aft vessel. It consists of a square sail, a jib and a mizzen, all of artifical fibre.

Willis was bom at Hamburg, in Germany, in 1883. At 17, he sailed round Cape Horn on a square-rigged ship. Later, he prospected for gold in Alaska, worked as a lumberjack in Canada and prospected for oil in Texas. Once he rescued a Frenchman whom he thought to be ihnocent from Devil’s Island. Proof of Survival

His home now is New York. He has no special scientific objectives on the coming, voyage. It will be enough, he says, to prove that a man of 70 can undergo endless hardships, and survive. Of his motives for his 1954 voyage, he wrote in his book, “I wanted to put myself to the great test, the test to which each man must put himself some time.” He added: “Solitude is overpowering. A man not suited to it may easily go out of his mind. Solitude’s first effect is that the world slowly sinks away and fades. A man feels as though he is floating in space and is no longer part of the material world.”

Sailing with him on his new “great test” are two cats. The adventurer had a cat and a parrot with him in 1954 and when loneliness became unbearable, would talk to them for hours at a time. A staunch advocate of diet and exercise, Willis has no patience with those who retire at 65. believing that their active life is finished. His faith in himself is proclaimed in the name of his new raft, “Age Unlimited.” It is inscribed in large letters on the sails. “I feel myself at least the equal of men of 35 in coordination and reflexes, and am in prime physical condition,” he told reporters before leaving New York preparatory to set forth on his new odyssey. “I feel fully able to face the hardships again without qualms.” Physical Records

During his trip, he will keep records of his heartbeat and the mental effect upon him of up to six months alone at sea. Willis saw no signs of human life, not even a distant ship or an aircraft, in 1954, and expects to meet none this time. He will be out of communication with all vessels not closer than 700 miles, the range of his radio transmitter.

“The last voyage was all hardship, there was always the sustaining factor of pitt-

ments and surviving. So I was almost in a state of exing myself against the eleulation,” he said.

His perils on the last voyage included falling overboard in shark-infested sea and a badly gashed wrist while taking a hopk from a shark's mouth. He sewed up the wound and it healed.

He will live mainly on fish which he catches; augmented with coffee, ground barley and raw sugar .As on the first voyage, he expects to get little sleep. Last time he was continuously busy handling the raft, never able to drop off to sleep for more than half an hour to an hour at a time. ,

"A square sail is very difficult to handle,” he explained. ‘‘lt has a constant tendency to back into the wind and once it does it is difficult to get set properly again. And there must be constant navigation. I knew within a mile of where 1 was at all times.”

His future plans are to write another book and some magazine articles and resume lecturing when the voyage is over.

“If I survive,” he added with a smile, “I may think of another trip when I am BQ.”