In 1995, John Haslett went to a tiny fishing village in Ecuador to begin building a thirty-thousand-pound raft made entirely of balsa wood, bamboo, and manila rope. Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's famed Kon-Tiki voyage, Haslett intended to sail five thousand nautical miles across the open sea to Hawaii. What transpired, however, was anything but a recreation of Heyerdahl's famous voyage. Over the next five years, Haslett and his crews journeyed through...