Setting sail from Nuku'alofa to Tofua this afternoon was the Talisker Bounty, a 25ft long and 7ft wide open wooden boat carrying four adventurers who are recreating the epic voyage of Captain William Bligh, who was cast adrift from HMS Bounty following a mutiny in 1789 in Tongan waters.

The replica "Mutiny on the Bounty Expedition" expected to take seven weeks consists of a four-member crew led by Australian adventurer Don McIntyre, with David Bryce an experienced Antarctic and Southern Ocean sailor from Australia, David Wilkinson a businessman from Hong Kong and 18-year-old Christopher Wilde of the United Kingdom who has no sailing experience.

In a special sending-off ceremony held at the Touliki Naval Base this afternoon, Prime Minister Hon Dr Feleti Sevele bid the crew farewell as they set sail on an eight-days voyage to the exact location where the mutiny took place, which is 25 miles South East of Tofua island in Tonga's Ha'apai Group.

On April 28 the crew expected to be on the exact location of the mutiny off Tofua marking its 221st anniversary, before embarking off on a 4,000 nautical mile journey from Tonga across the Pacific.

The expedition would be heading west across to Fiji, Vanuatu, and then to Restoration Island, before sailing north inside the Great Barrier Reef to Thursday Island, through the Torres Strait to West Timor.

Recreation

On April 12, Don told Tongan journalists, that what is different about their expedition is that they are trying to get close to what Bligh encountered by only taking with them what he had with him on board.

This includes limited supplies of only 150 bounds of biscuits, 16 pounds of pork, six-quarters of rum, six bottles of wine and 28 gallons of water. The crew would not be taking any modern navigational equipment like charts, compass, light, torches or toilet paper.

McIntyre said the expedition has been four years in the planning and what drew them to the mutiny is the essence of undertaking something with an unknown outcome. And we don't know what is going to happen in the next few months, he said.

"It is going to be really an adventure as our boat is half the size of Bligh's boat so the challenge is trying to survive on board and our biggest fear is capsizing," he added.

Funding

The expedition, which is costing over quarter of a million dollars, is funded by the crew members themselves with, each contributing about $20,000.

Sponsors also chip in by covering a major share of the operating cost and the rest is funded by Don and his equally adventurous wife, Maggie

The crew who are filming a documentary of their expedition hope to raise more than $250,000 for the Sheffield Institute Foundation for Motor Neurone Disease (SIF) in the UK.

Captain Bligh's Mutiny on the Bounty has become one of the greatest open ocean boat voyages in maritime history, following a mutiny by his crew that saw him and 18 of his sailors sail some 4,000 miles from Tonga to Timor in a 25ft boat in 48 days. They lived off birds and fish.