Tech Talk Speaker

John Haslett - KI6MCB

The Manteno Expedition

Radio Adventures
Aboard A Balsa Raft

THE BIO OF JOHN HASLETT

Author, Voyage of the Manteño

St. Martin’s Press, Nov. 2006

John Haslett has spent the last fifteen years leading expeditions and researching the ancient cultures of Pre-Columbian Ecuador.

In 1995, with the help of an isolated community of Ecuadorian mariners, he built a 30,000-pound, full-scale replica of an ocean-going raft used by the ancient Manteño people, and then voyaged on the open sea for thirty-eight days.

Haslett was elected to The Explorer’s Club in 1998, and later that year he flew the Club’s flag on his second raft, voyaging for a total of eight-five days on the Pacific.

His expeditions have yielded large amounts of technical data and practical knowledge about the Manteño people and their coastal trading network, and in 2000 Haslett teamed up with noted archaeologist Dr. Cameron McPherson Smith to publish “Construction and Sailing Characteristics of a Pre-Columbian Raft Replica” in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology.

In November of 2006, he published his memoir of his first decade of exploring, Voyage of the Manteño: The Education of a Modern-Day Expeditioner (St. Martin’s Press, Nov. 2006). Haslett’s call sign during his expedition’s was KC5KHA/MM.

John's website for the talk is www.balsaraft.com.