what would you build to escape a desert island?

[kyky]

OK, I've always felt that i'm the only one who thinks about this stuff, but every time i see bear grylls on islands or cast away or something, i try to think how i would've got off the island.

so i'm going to paint a scenario, and hopefully you'll tell me how you would get off the island.

you wake up to find yourself on a long white beach, after looking around for a while, you discover that you are on an uninhabited island with no other land in sight, most of the shore is rocky and dangerous, with the only exception being the beach which you woke up on, the beach opens to a lagoon created by a reef, with only one opening, which is only about 8 feet wide, and is only calm enough to go through between tides. there is a constant off shore wind from the beach. you find water from a stream and there are coconuts and fish in the lagoon. there is plenty of rope washed up around the shore and in the lagoon. inland is covered in palm tree's, a few larger trees, plenty of vines and some kind of paper grass. further up the stream you find sharp rocks. and lucky you, theres some things washed up from your wreck, which is too far out to dive to. you've found, your hatchet tangled in your jib, and your knife is thankfully still in the sheaf at your belt, you've also managed to find, the kettle, the hiking compass that guy you gave a lift to in mexico left behind, and mother of mercy your last bottle of whiskey is safely ashore! diving in the lagoon also reveals a length of rusty chain, its not rusted solid thankfully, you might be able to use it.

so what would you do?
if you're lucky i might reveal what i came up with for this conundrum when it was presented to me.

[Michael D. Storey]

Paper grass sail to compliment your jib or to use as a tent on the raft, rope to lash up a raft.
Spend as much of the night as possible studying the sky to see if anything looks familiar, to help determine latitude. Get to the highest part of the island to spend time studying the horizon. Use the chain for a backstay if it is not too heavy.
Unanswered: Was your last landfall Mexico? Prevailing wind from where? Any stuff washing up on the beach that was not from your boat? Chain in the lagoon; other things from other inhabitants? What happened to your memory?

[SeaB]

I'm wondering why I would want to get off. Food, water, shelter no irritating people to deal with.

[kyky]

Paper grass sail to compliment your jib or to use as a tent on the raft, rope to lash up a raft.
Spend as much of the night as possible studying the sky to see if anything looks familiar, to help determine latitude. Get to the highest part of the island to spend time studying the horizon. Use the chain for a backstay if it is not too heavy.
Unanswered: Was your last landfall Mexico? Prevailing wind from where? Any stuff washing up on the beach that was not from your boat? Chain in the lagoon; other things from other inhabitants? What happened to your memory?

seeming as i spent ages typing a very detailed answer, only to have my internet crash, i'm going to be lazy and say that your hit your head quite hard on the boom and are having great trouble remembering some details.

[wizbang 13]

Yea, I'd stay put.
besides, WO epoxy, I can't build a boat.

[C. Ross]

How far do you reckon is your destination?
I'd try to build a catamaran or proa of some kind, rather than a raft.

[rbgarr]

I'd ask a higher power what he thinks...

http://i51.tinypic.com/24wvgxe.jpg

[paladin]

I'd build a water still.

[TimH]

I'm wondering why I would want to get off. Food, water, shelter no irritating people to deal with.


Ditto. I am trying to GET to a deserted island. :)

[JayInOz]

I'd do what Bear Grylls would do. Find something dead and wear it, pee on my head, bite a small piece out of a harmless snake and talk about puss, climb to the top of the only hill so that I'd have to get down (after cooeeing a couple of times) get naked and jump in the water, build a shelter that won't protect me from anything and then not sleep in it anyway 'coz I heard a noise, eat a beetle, then tell one of the crew to radio the helicopter. Yep- that about covers it I reckon. JayInOz

[TimH]

You forgot about the part where you would repel down a cliff face for no reason and swim across freezing rapids when its 20 below out.

[David G]

I'd build a Spruce Goose. Might as well leave in style.

[Breakaway]

Build a shelter, start catching and drying fish. Once I had enough food stockpiled to allow me to build a boat full time, I'd start in cutting down some of those "larger" trees. Then I'd figure a way to get them down to the beach--slide/roll/ whatever I could make work. My plan would be to make a three or for sponson pontoon out of these trees, decked crosswise with palm trunks.

I'd erect a mast, secure it with vine stays, wedges, however. Construct a rudder. Sail it in the lagoon to figure it out. Once confident of at ;east some directional ability with this pontoon raft. I'd start filling coconuts with water and stowing them aboard. I'd stockpile the dried fish too. Then, one day--I'd sail away. hoping the downwind course intercepted either a shipping lane or a continent.

Kevin

[Meli]

I'd use a rock and the chain to make odd but sequenced rattles.
NASA would soon pick me up, meanwhile, fish, swim snooze

[peter radclyffe]

i'd do what bear grylls would do. Find something dead and wear it, pee on my head, bite a small piece out of a harmless snake and talk about puss, climb to the top of the only hill so that i'd have to get down (after cooeeing a couple of times) get naked and jump in the water, build a shelter that won't protect me from anything and then not sleep in it anyway 'coz i heard a noise, eat a beetle, then tell one of the crew to radio the helicopter. Yep- that about covers it i reckon. Jayinoz
:d:d:d:d:d

[peter radclyffe]

id make a beautiful pea green boat and chill out
http://www.mrbsemporium.com/internetshop/images/uploads/0552528196.02_owl.jpg

[TimH]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/TomNeale.jpg

http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/

[Canoeyawl]

I'd start looking for Ginger and Mary-Ann

http://blogs.dixcdn.com/leftofcybercenter/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mary-ann-ginger.jpg

[Old Dryfoot]

I'd start looking for Ginger and Mary-Ann

http://blogs.dixcdn.com/leftofcybercenter/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mary-ann-ginger.jpg

Ahhh the eternal question, Ginger or Marie Ann

[wizbang 13]

I guess Ginger really is hotter than MA.

[gazzer]

I was always partial to Mary Ann.

So deserted island, no phones or pagers, no relatives seeking handouts, no traffic jams, no bosses or customers with unreasonable expectations. I'm staying put, at least until I wake up.

-G

[teaksmith]

I'm building my Tiki 26 to escape to a desert island!

[rbgarr]

About twenty years ago, when airlines were throwing reward miles at their customers by the truckload, I'd accumulated enough for us to charter a sailboat with another couple in Tonga for ten days. One of the things I secretly wanted to do was find one of those 'deserted islands' and spend time alone on it. On an afternoon when we dropped the hook for lunch, I spied one of those islands off in the distance. I mentioned my idea to Margaret and the others. They told me to go for it and so I did.

Rowing the dinghy across the shallows and around to the other side of the island I was thinking I could enjoy the solitude and view out toward the pounding reef break and Tonga Trench beyond. As I was looking for a spot to ride in through the surf I saw movement in the water. It was a naked man! He sprinted out of the surf and disappeared into the underbrush as fast as he could. I waited around a bit to see if he'd come back out looking for help, but he didn't. I guessed he wasn't looking for company, and since there would be other deserted islands, I turned and rowed back to the boat.

About ten minutes later the guy appeared in a kayak paddling toward us. He came alongside and we invited him aboard but he said he was fine where he was. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball hat. He was from Cape Cod, not far from where I grew up. It became clear that he was Paul Theroux, the noted travel writer. (His brother was a friend of my wife's.) He was writing a book that came to be entitled "The Happy Isles of Oceania". A few days later we all ended up on the same plane flights to Hawaii, where he was living at the time, and he bent my wife's friend's ear about his recent marital difficulties.

That's my 'desert isle' story. The world is smaller than we think.

As an aside, our meeting is mentioned in his book, but strangely it's recalled inaccurately in almost every detail.

[hokiefan]

I guess Ginger really is hotter than MA.

Yeah, I suppose so, with the red hair and all. But Marie Ann was always the one I wanted. :D

Cheers,

Bobby

[Old Dryfoot]

Farm girls know stuff... Y>:DY>

[CMAsailor]

OK, I've always felt that i'm the only one who thinks about this stuff, but every time i see bear grylls on islands or cast away or something, i try to think how i would've got off the island.

so i'm going to paint a scenario, and hopefully you'll tell me how you would get off the island.

you wake up to find yourself on a long white beach, after looking around for a while, you discover that you are on an uninhabited island with no other land in sight, most of the shore is rocky and dangerous, with the only exception being the beach which you woke up on, the beach opens to a lagoon created by a reef, with only one opening, which is only about 8 feet wide, and is only calm enough to go through between tides. there is a constant off shore wind from the beach. you find water from a stream and there are coconuts and fish in the lagoon. there is plenty of rope washed up around the shore and in the lagoon. inland is covered in palm tree's, a few larger trees, plenty of vines and some kind of paper grass. further up the stream you find sharp rocks. and lucky you, theres some things washed up from your wreck, which is too far out to dive to. you've found, your hatchet tangled in your jib, and your knife is thankfully still in the sheaf at your belt, you've also managed to find, the kettle, the hiking compass that guy you gave a lift to in mexico left behind, and mother of mercy your last bottle of whiskey is safely ashore! diving in the lagoon also reveals a length of rusty chain, its not rusted solid thankfully, you might be able to use it.

so what would you do?
if you're lucky i might reveal what i came up with for this conundrum when it was presented to me.

having beem to tonga, saipan, and a couple of other really bitchen places of the like, i can say that there's not much you cant make with just the things highlighted from your quote...
my first priority would be to recover more from the wreck any way possible(rigging a grappling hook on the end of the chain on the end of a rode of wire (cause we all know "rope" is wire :p and i know how to splice it molly-hogans aren't that hard... use coconut fiber seasings dried on) and I would establish a faster way to get to the wreck i.e pulling myself to the wreck vs trying to swim down... pulling is much faster.

once i have determined that either it's too far, or i've gotten everything i can cause i couldn't get the rig to the surface...and i would figure out how to pull the wreck to the beach with trees wood wire vines purchases and booms from trees as leverage points...but to go with the scenario...

My second priority would be distilling coconuts and seeking more friendly foodstuffs and Fire... making Tooba isn't hard (take the juice from young coconuts collect in whiskey bottle(that didn't last long) let ferment buried 4ft in the sand for about a couple weeks with chards of coconut for more sugars... Or something more southern utilizing a more modern approach with coconut mash, hopefully make some sort of vapor catching arrangement with the big leaves found on bushes near the bases of said palm trees(yea it's and assumption that those plants are there too but they're rarely not when you've got coconut trees)
Fire would presumably be a trial and error thing using some leather or vine and sticks like my injun ancestors did with the aid of the "paper grass" instead of last week's newspaper and a match

Some of this may seem far-fetched to those never having been to the kinds of places described and hung around with the locals... they're ingenious, i got whole new look on life after visiting a family in Tonga. they could care less if they had money, food was another matter but was everywhere. dive the reef and spear some dinner, eat it on a leaf like a plate, drink coconut water.

shelter would be next, something more permanent from the trees and palm leafs arranged appropriately

the compass does you no good other than to map-out the island you're on unless you know where the island is in respects to other shipping lanes or continents and I didn't gather it was implied by the scenario at first... so... i'd settle in, seek high ground and get comfortable unless I was able (my fist priority) to reach the wreck and gather charts and other stuffs...

However, 'cause this is a "what boat would you build" thread, I would plot my boat build. presumably as a large outrigger canoe type with shelter center-mass. the larger timbers from the "larger trees" and construction fastened with vines/rope/coconut fibers. sails could be made from remnants of the jib i found my hatchet in :) and sewn with coconut fibers
the rudder being the traditional starboard type fashioned like the viking boats had theirs cause it's the only picture i have in my head or a long sweep oar
the outrigger canoe type has proven in history to be the most reliable option from these locations and supplies and were of respectable size :P

the sharp rocks and reef may or may not prove to be places to find stuffs for making tools out of, an Adze would prove to be useful, as would a larger than hatchet smacking device somewhere in the sledge hammer size for driving larger steaks into the ground or all around fun and good measure... after all... unless we're building, cooking, fishing nonstop... there has to be fun in there somewhere... i figure i'd get really good at "stones"... a game i just made up... it's like washers... but with stones

I figure I'd talk to myself a lot too (more than I already do)

the alcohol would greatly contribute to productivity and comfort of life(probably more the latter) so I'd like to say again that I'd find a way of fermenting something... I'd never get anything done till i figured that out. and if you got good at it it burns but that's sacrilege in my book.

sorry for the long novel of a reply... I'm stuck on a boat:cool: without whiskey.

[paladin]

Talking to yourself is just fine....it's when you start answering yourself I would tend to get worried.

[wardd]

Talking to yourself is just fine....it's when you start answering yourself I would tend to get worried.

especially if you argue with yourself

[Lewisboater]

especially if you argue with yourself

Yeah...but look at it this way...you will always win!

[JayInOz]

having beem to tonga, saipan, and a couple of other really bitchen places of the like, i can say that there's not much you cant make with just the things highlighted from your quote...
Some of this may seem far-fetched to those never having been to the kinds of places described and hung around with the locals... they're ingenious, i got whole new look on life after visiting a family in Tonga. they could care less if they had money, food was another matter but was everywhere. dive the reef and spear some dinner, eat it on a leaf like a plate, drink coconut water.

shelter would be next, something more permanent from the trees and palm leafs arranged appropriately sorry for the long novel of a reply... I'm stuck on a boat:cool: without whiskey.

I've always said that stuck in that situation my Dad and I could actually put on weight. We used to hunt and trap for a living and can improvise. We can make cordage, start fire, build shelters and weapons. I'm a flintknapper and passable bowyer. We can find water and whatever else we need. When the first of the survivor TV shows was advertised I got all excited thinking it was going to be real survival stuff. What a disappointment that was!!! Someone upset because there were no more canned peaches, or needing counseling because someone used the last of the Pantene. About twenty years ago an opportunity presented itself for me to prove once and for all that I could survive in the bush. A volunteer was called for to live wild for a year, starting out with just a handful of basic stuff. All bills and commitments to be covered for the duration. I was busting to do it but I had several little kids and my then wife said no:)
As for fermenting anything- that would be a very big mistake. If you're alone and totally self reliant for an extended period, the last thing you want is something to impair your physical ability, your judgement or your mental health. What would normally be a minor injury at home could be fatal when your stuck in the bush. And there will be periods of depression and maybe total despair.
By the way, Bear Grylls is actually on TV here tonight, showing how to survive in Alabama- I kid you not :D JayInOz

[Old Dryfoot]

Bear Grylls...

I find this guy to be an obnoxious joke, pure shock value TV, I was really disappointed with The Discovery Channel when they put this chump on the air. Les Stroud (http://lesstroud.ca/) was far better as Survivorman and he actually did it for real, no camera crew, no support, just what he could carry, scavenge or catch, a week at a time in some pretty hostile places.

[Breakaway]

Ahhh the eternal question, Ginger or Marie Ann

Make a castaway sandwich. No more questions. ;)

Kevin

[JayInOz]

One of my favourites was Malcolm Douglas from Broome in Western Australia. He made lots of documentaries and spent a lot of time learning from traditional aborigines. His first film was made when he owned an old pearling luggar. He was killed a few months ago when his vehicled rolled back while he was closing a gate, pinning him against a tree. Damned shame. A lot of his stuff was survival tips for modern day travellers. I think you'll enjoy this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUiliNiTxus JayInOz

[perldog007]

I've always said that stuck in that situation my Dad and I could actually put on weight. We used to hunt and trap for a living and can improvise. We can make cordage, start fire, build shelters and weapons. I'm a flintknapper and passable bowyer. We can find water and whatever else we need. When the first of the survivor TV shows was advertised I got all excited thinking it was going to be real survival stuff. What a disappointment that was!!! Someone upset because there were no more canned peaches, or needing counseling because someone used the last of the Pantene. About twenty years ago an opportunity presented itself for me to prove once and for all that I could survive in the bush. A volunteer was called for to live wild for a year, starting out with just a handful of basic stuff. All bills and commitments to be covered for the duration. I was busting to do it but I had several little kids and my then wife said no:)
As for fermenting anything- that would be a very big mistake. If you're alone and totally self reliant for an extended period, the last thing you want is something to impair your physical ability, your judgement or your mental health. What would normally be a minor injury at home could be fatal when your stuck in the bush. And there will be periods of depression and maybe total despair.
By the way, Bear Grylls is actually on TV here tonight, showing how to survive in Alabama- I kid you not :D JayInOz

I managed to hew a bow that will put down a deer (appx 55#) but had to buy a string for it, can you recommend any resources for learning cordage? Always been fascinated with that, and if I could make my own rope and thread, there would be no reason for me not to build something like Slocum's Liberdade to git off'n that Island when I was good and ready :D

[JayInOz]

G'day Doug:) One site I really like has some cordage but mostly more arty type stuff- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NativeAmericanSkills-Technology/?yguid=421621470 I don't know what is available where you live, but if you just Google "Making Cordage" you'll find something to suit- there's a lot to pick from! I make Flemish twist strings for my bows- easy to do but you need a simple jig. And I mostly use dacron because it never breaks:) JayInOz

P.S.- thanks for the info you sent mate- much appreciated! Jay.

[Old Dryfoot]

Make a castaway sandwich. No more questions. ;)

Kevin

I like your though process, first rate solution! :D


One of my favourites was Malcolm Douglas from Broome in Western Australia. He made lots of documentaries and spent a lot of learning from traditional aborigines. His first film was made when he owned an old pearling luggar. He was killed a few months ago when his vehicled rolled back while he was closing a gate, pinning him against a tree. Damned shame. A lot of his stuff was survival tips for modern day travellers. I think you'll enjoy this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUiliNiTxus JayInOz

I actually just learned of Malcolm Douglas a few weeks back on this board, great documentaries, and a terrible loss. His approach to learning from the native peoples was one of the thing that I found appealing about the Survivorman series. Just about anyone can be taught to survive when properly outfitted for the task, it's another thing altogether to live off the land.

[TimH]

I find this guy to be an obnoxious joke, pure shock value TV, I was really disappointed with The Discovery Channel when they put this chump on the air. Les Stroud (http://lesstroud.ca/) was far better as Survivorman and he actually did it for real, no camera crew, no support, just what he could carry, scavenge or catch, a week at a time in some pretty hostile places.

Les is for real.

[peter radclyffe]

One of my favourites was Malcolm Douglas from Broome in Western Australia. He made lots of documentaries and spent a lot of time learning from traditional aborigines. His first film was made when he owned an old pearling luggar. He was killed a few months ago when his vehicled rolled back while he was closing a gate, pinning him against a tree. Damned shame. A lot of his stuff was survival tips for modern day travellers. I think you'll enjoy this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUiliNiTxus JayInOz

youd think someone would have told him about handbrakes

[purri]

I'd change channels.

[Thorne]

In answer to the original question: A cabin and a fire that I'd keep tended during the day with green wood to produce smoke.

First rule of being lost in the wilderness: STAY WITH THE VEHICLE/BOAT! In this case you'd have more luck being spotted by searchers on the island (and plotted course of your boat) than you would wandering around on the water...

[hokiefan]

In answer to the original question: A cabin and a fire that I'd keep tended during the day with green wood to produce smoke.

First rule of being lost in the wilderness: STAY WITH THE VEHICLE/BOAT! In this case you'd have more luck being spotted by searchers on the island (and plotted course of your boat) than you would wandering around on the water...

Which I would hope would lure Ms. Mary Ann to my little paradise.:D

Cheers,

Bobby

[dskira]

I'm wondering why I would want to get off. Food, water, shelter no irritating people to deal with.

I think it is the lack of girls :d