Ark Survival Ascended - The Island - Day 9: Why are rafts like this?

Day 9. It sure will be nice once I can just fly around and not use a raft again, eh?

This isn't a 100 day challenge, but more of a how many days challenge.
I'm planning on going through each Ark map and seeing how many days it would take with the following rules.

Ascend at Alpha
No mods (Either official or non-official)
All settings set to default single player (No cross-hair)
Only Solo (It's lonely here)
No use of Cryo pods. While they're really useful I want to try to make this an adventure as close to the original feel as possible.

While I'm not strictly shooting for 100 days I would like to try to be as close to that as possible.