Based in Asia. Filming the World.

In 1993, a chance encounter in a Hanoi Hotel with writer, sailor, adventurer and raconteur Tim Severin resulted in Laurie K. Gilbert making a professional contribution to an extraordinary Trans Pacific Adventure.

Tim was in Vietnam to source the material and craftsmen capable of building a bamboo raft that would carry him across the Pacific Ocean from Asia to America. The adventure was to test the theory that Asian raft sailors reached America more than 2000 years ago.

Called Hsu Fu, after the Chinese mariner who explored the Pacific Acean in the 3rd century BC, the Vietnamese raft was constructed from 220 huge bamboo pieces 60 ft long and was powered by three Chinese Junk style sails.

It was brought to Aberdeen Typhoon shelter in Hong Kong to be provisioned for the voyage and on an appropriately auspicious day, was blessed, named and launched by a local Chinese priest.

Three days later, with its intrepid crew of six men and one woman, the raft sailed out from from Repulse Bay at dawn on the first leg of an epic voyage of discovery that was to take them 6 months and more than 5,500 nautical miles.