Photo by Maka

Kinohi loa

This is just the kinohi loa - the beginning - of a long voyage of words. It is dedicated to my aumakua and my kupuna in general and especially to my father, to Clorinda, to Pinky and Laura.

My father's ashes were laid in deep swirling pools of water in the Atlantic more than 35 years ago - blood of Hawaii nurtured by blood of New England - joined in the moana that knows no boundaries. I am two spirits - of the anuanu land, the cold one, and the nopu, the hot - of the ohana of my mother and father. Their love for each other joined those two worlds. May this work which we all together take on - from the valley of Niu to the sand plains of Martha's Vineyard - strengthen that union.

Aloha

The heiau browed the hill, gift of many ancient hands, strong with mana like bleached bone wrapped in tapa. The knowledge came with a price, was a gift encumbered with obligations. He accepted them with ha'aha'a - humility. He would soon stand with naked soles upon the smooth planks of the canoe - the leader of yet another seeking, accompanied by his aumakua and his ohana, his comrades, entrusted to each other, sliding through danger. But first this. Alone. The request for pomaika'i - blessing - and for alaka'ina - guidance - and for koa - courage. Before they joined, each man of the crew would seek pono - balance - with the aina they must leave. Stored up separately and alone in places unique to each, powerfully joined when they assembled as a crew, ancestral mana - now throbbed from the stones of the heiau into the soles of his feet as he stood there beneath the hooded eyes of the heiau - waiting for the moment to enter.

Departure

In the harbor - ice like pancakes. On the ship - decks rimed with salt stirred by yesterday's wind. Sloops and schooners - moored in ice - wear mustaches. Sleeping.

A longshoreman exits a building, windows sheathed in condensed warmth. "Ain't seen it like this for a long time. It's the wind chill - forty below." Pigeons huddle on the building's roof.

Seagulls squat on lily pads of ice. The air is still. A plume of chimney smoke rises like a white pine tree. The ship glides through slush. I slide away from one island home - to another.

A faint sun. Sky joins sea in a dull crease - a deeper band of gray - as if at the ocean's extremity the atmosphere was bent upon itself like a piece of tin. The island, receding, is dark. Then lighter. Then gone.

Tautira: Hokule'a's Home in Tahiti

I first visited Pape'ete in 1966 when it was a somnolent seaside town with a few yachts tied to the quay along the main street. There were low buildings along the street and a famous bar, called Quinns, which had a rough reputation. Today, few places are left from that earlier time. There are the grand avenues where the old French Colonial buildings still stand and the Hotel Royal Pape'ete which was once the best but is now overshadowed by many new one on the city's outskirts. Office buildings rise above boutiques and restaurants. The bars are fancy in the French manner, which means expensive and with an "I could care less if you sit there waiting for your drink" attitude which passes for an island weltzschmertz.

The Banyan trees that I remember still cast pools of shade along the park beside the main street and locals with tattoos still sit under them watching life pass by and talking in a mix of Tahitian and French. The popping of motor scooters is familiar but it's now almost drowned out by the roar of big diesel tourist busses and Mercedes trucks and the street is clouded with fumes. Pape'ete has become a place that, if you know better, you leave as soon as possible.

Hokule'a's home port in Tahitian waters is the village of Tautira, an hour's drive from Pape'ete on a road that winds through a landscape of utilitarian architecture, burgeoning strip malls, gas stations, lotissemonts - a French-Polynesian version of suburban sprawl. Following the road, the hubbub of uncontrolled development subsides. The air clears of fumes. Mountain peaks jostle toward the shore - presenting waterfalls and vistas into deep valleys. In Tautira, the road ends.

Robert Louis Stevenson visited Tautira in 1888 on a cruise through the South Seas. "One November night in the village of Tautira," he wrote to a friend, "we sat at the high table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. It was dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn... You are to conceive us, therefore, in strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race that all travelers have agreed to be the most engaging... We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest lawn which is the street of Tautira. The Pacific roared outside upon the reef. Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight bursting through the crannies of the wall."

Tautira has changed since then, of course. The "palm-built lodges" are long gone, replaced by neat bungalows of wood or cinderblock with metal roofs. But the mountains of the Vai Te Pi Ha Valley still rise above the village and the Pacific still roars upon the reef and the swells still make a solid white line on an azure gin-clear sea. In the lagoon it is calm. There are stands of tall coconut palm along the shore along with ironwood, milo, mango and ulu trees with leaves that open like human hands, yellow in the palm, dark green at the finger tips. Small fishing skiffs are parked in many lawns. There is a public water tap by the Mairie - the Mayor's office - and many village women come here to wash their clothes; hanging them out to dry in the yard - pareos of many colors and designs. Driving into the village, the valley opens wide, revealing peaks deep inside, masked in cloud. The slopes are light green with ferns. Mango trees stand above the ferns and lower there are hala trees in groves. Tautira remains, as Stevenson wrote more than a hundred years ago, "a strange land and climate, the most beautiful on earth."

Nainoa Thompson first visited Tautira in 1976 as a crewmember aboard Hokule'a. There he met Puaniho Tauotaha, one of the village elders - a fisherman, canoe paddler, and canoe carver - a man of immense physical and spiritual strength.

"You could be in the canoe house," Nainoa remembers, "and there was laughter and singing and people talking but when Puaniho got up to speak there was complete silence. I didn't know what he was saying but it felt like an oration. And if he wasn't doing that he never said anything. When he coached the canoe paddlers he hardly said a word. He was an extremely quiet man. Very religious, very disciplined. He was the edge of the old times."

After her famous maiden voyage to Tahiti, Hokule'a sailed from village to village along the coast. Wherever she stopped, the crew was hosted like visiting royalty. Nainoa had yet to sail aboard the canoe on a long voyage and although he had prepared for the return trip he was nervous and he was embarrassed by the attention.

"We would prance into these parties and sit down and they would feed us food and beer all night as if we were very special people - which we were not," he remembers. "We sailed into Tautira, the last stop in Tahiti, and we anchored and I had just had enough. I told Kawika, the captain, 'I will stay aboard the canoe.' The current was strong. We had two anchors and the bottom was coral and they were not going to hold well so I was worried. 'We are so close to leaving,' I thought, 'what if the anchors drag and we damage the canoe?'"

Kawika agreed that Nainoa could stay aboard while the rest of the crew went to the party in the village. That afternoon, Nainoa enjoyed the solitude. The canoe bobbed serenely at her anchorage. The sun began to settle over the nearby mountains.

"Finally, the sun went down behind Tahiti Nui," Nainoa remembers, "and I saw this little girl, maybe four or five years old, on the beach. She had a flower in her ear and she was waving to me to come on shore. She just kept on waving. So I went on shore and she grabbed me with hands so small that she could just hold two of my fingers. She took me by the hand and led me down the road and into a simple house with a dirt floor. They had put in some picnic tables and they had the whole crew in there and they were feeding them shrimp and steak and all kinds of food. Somebody would stand behind you and if your beer glass got half empty they would fill it up. Puaniho came in. He was the stroker for the old time canoe paddlers. He sat down. He had powerful eyes. He was poor in material things but he was a very strong and powerful man. He couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French or Tahitian. We sat there and we spent the evening with him. It was just overwhelming how much the people of the village give when they had so little to give. They didn't have a floor in their house, much less beer and steak to share. I felt awkward. Here was this Hawaiian group who really didn't know a damn thing about sailing and they were treating us as if we were special people."

"We sailed back to Pape'ete and we were staying in a hostel," Nainoa continues. "Two days before we left I was sleeping in my room and about four o'clock in the morning I woke up. Puaniho's wife was pulling me by my toes and waving to me to go outside. So I got my clothes on and we went outside. She couldn't speak any English and so she just signaled to get in her truck. We drove all the way back to Tautira, early in the morning, as the sun came up. We went to every house, every house, and we stopped and they filled that truck up with food. By the time we drove back to Pape'ete I was sitting on a mound of food - banana, taro, mango, uru - everything. There was no verbal communication. Puaniho drove right up to the canoe. He knew exactly what he was going to do. They put all the food aboard and then he drove off."

"Somehow Puaniho knew that I was nervous about the trip. I was even considering not going. The next day he came back and he had carved a wooden cross, a necklace, and he gave it to me. That was when I knew that I had to go."

When Nainoa returned to Hawai'i aboard Hokule'a in 1976, he told his grandmother, Clorinda Lucas, and his parents, Pinky and Laura Thompson about Puaniho and the hospitality the crew had received in Tautira.

"I told that story to my grandmother and to my mom and dad and you can imagine what that meant to them. They knew that I was afraid - that I felt that I was not prepared. And these Tahitians knew what to do to care for me and the crew by giving us what they could - their food and their aloha."

In 1977, Nainoa invited Tautira's Maire Nui Canoe Club to Hawai'i to compete in the Moloka'i Race. About fifty people arrived. Pinky and Laura moved out of their home in the Niu Valley as did Nainoa and his sister Lita and her husband Bruce Blankenfeld. They converted the Hui Nalu canoe shed into a dormitory with bunk beds on loan from the National Guard. For a month Nainoa and his family hosted their Tahitian guests. It was the beginning of many such exchanges between the people of Hawaii and Tautira.

Maire Nui won the race. "All the other crews were competing for second place," Nainoa remembers. They returned twice more, winning each time, and retired the famous Outrigger Canoe Club cup which now sits in the house of Sane Matehau Salmon - Hokule'a's host whenever she visits Tautira.

"If you understand how anxious my parents and grandmother were during the 1976 voyage, you can understand how grateful they were for the hospitality shown to us by the people of Tautira. And you can understand how they would move out of their house and give it to them and feed them for a month. That's why Sane says 'This we will never forget and this is why we will always take care of you when you visit Tahiti.' And then you can also understand why Hokule'a has to come back to Tautira whenever we come to Tahiti."

"For me, Tautira is not just a beautiful physical place. It's a symbol for the kinds of values that are important," Nainoa says. "I learned from the people of Tautira that there are other ways to measure wealth besides the things that you accumulate. The people of Tautira are extremely happy when they see that we are happy. When they give to you they feel rich themselves. That is what Tautira is all about."

Thursday, January 27, 2000

It's simmering in the flat skirt of land beneath Tautira's towering peaks. Crevices etched in the peaks by rainy season waterfalls are dry. The lagoon is a mirror and the surf is a light scrim lining the reef. Puffy cumulus clouds crenellate the horizon as cirrus and mare's tails glide almost imperceptibly overhead. There's not a breath of wind.

In the morning, we receive flu shots from doctor Ming-Lei Tim Sing and Kaui Pelekane, a nurse at Queen's Hospital in Honolulu.

Chad Baybayan presides at our first meeting as a crew.

"Have all the halyards been checked for wear and replaces where necessary?" he asks Kamaki Worthington, a crew member on the voyage to Rapa Nui who remained in Tahiti to care for the canoe.

"The halyards are done," Kamaki says, "and the sails are tied on and ready. The number twenty-nine is on the fore mast and the thirty-two is on the mizzen."

"How about the radios?"

"The handhelds work fine and we tested the transponders and the single sideband."

The transponder is a radio transmitter that sends a signal to Honolulu via satellite where it is decoded at the University of Hawaii to provide a record of Hokule'a's track across the ocean.

"Good work," says Chad.

"Mike and Kahua will check out the radios today," he continues, assigning each of us our tasks, "and call PSAT this morning."

"Ka'iulani and I will make sure the water is loaded aboard."

"Sam, you inventory the documentation gear."

"Bruce and Snake, you check the fishing equipment. Pomai and Terry will check the galley, and Bruce - can you make a list of the fresh food we'll have to take aboard?"

Whenever Hokule'a arrives in Tautira, her crew is fed and housed by the villagers, with assignments arranged by Sane Matehau, mayor for the last 23 years and a prosperous building contractor. Sane appears to be in his early fifties. He is a physically strong man, barrel-chested, with a round open face that is often creased with pleasure. He wears his hair in a modified brush cut. His girth is ample. He is a man who naturally commands attention. Sane has six brothers and three sisters - a huge family that has become our 'ohana in Tautra.

Our Tautira Hosts

Edmon and Lurline - Shantell, Sam and Pomai
Vaihirua - Maka
Tepe'a and Toimata - Bruce
Ota and Terrevarua - Tava, Kamaki and Chad
Sikke and Linda Matehau - Mailing and Kona
Franco and Laiza Toofa - Kaui Pelekane
Jaqueline and Sabu - Marco
Sylvain and Lydia Atchong - Terry
Mereille and Manuia Marutaata - Ka'iulani
Maeva and Patrice Taerea - Nainoa and Pinky
Rosedine and Gerrard Mana - Joey

Friday, January 28

We continue to prepare for sea. During the morning crew meeting, Nainoa asks us to have the canoe ready to depart on three hours notice beginning tomorrow. The wind has been light and northerly but if it shifts back to trades from the southeast, we must be ready to take advantage of it.

"Our main problem is to get north beyond the Tuamotus," he tells us, "and that's about 240 miles. So if the wind shifts we've got to go."

The Tuamotus screen our course to Hawaii. Sometimes called "the dangerous islands," they are low coral atolls - difficult to see during the day and almost impossible to see at night - although Master Navigator Mau Piailug can smell their coconut palms many miles at sea. The islands are a blessing for canoes sailing from Hawaii to Tahiti because they provide a 405 mile long "safety net" across the canoe's path - a large area of land and bird signs that extends the geography of landfall. But sailing back to Hawai'i they're a barrier to the open ocean which must be passed before a navigator can breathe freely.

With the wind on our beam - from the east - we can sail through the Tuamotus quickly, but when it's from the north, as it is today, we must tack - extending the time we are among the low coral atolls - and the danger.

As we wait for favorable winds, hundreds of chores are completed - life jackets, harnesses and flashlights are distributed to the crew; strobe lights, and man overboard gear is checked; electrical equipment - radios, satellite transponders, solar panels and batteries - is tested; galley gear is loaded aboard.

Tomorrow the vigil begins. The navigators will scan the skies for signs of easterly winds while we await the word to depart. Our duffel bags are packed.

A Laying on of Hands - flashback

Sailing Hokule'a with a crew of volunteers over routes not traversed for perhaps a millennium has presented many crises. One such occurred in May of 1997, when Nainoa hired a surveyor to inspect the canoe prior to its voyage to Rapa Nui.

A marine surveyor is empowered to say whether or not a vessel is seaworthy. He uses simple tools, a trained eye, a pocketknife and a rubber mallet. With his knife he probes for dry rot, a kind of virus that reduces wood to dust, although not obviously so to the naked eye. Poking in strategic places tells the story. If the knife goes in easily, the wood is rotten. Banging on the hull with a mallet may produce discordant notes to a surveyor's ear, another sign of problems.

After a few hours of poking and banging on that May afternoon, the surveyor made his report: "the canoe is rotten," he said. "I cannot certify her seaworthiness. I suggest you think about putting her in a museum." The pronouncement was a surprise but not a shock. Nainoa had seen places where there was dry rot, but the canoe had taken him safely across many oceans and had demonstrated more than seaworthiness, she had shown her mana, her strength of spirit. Retiring Hokule'a to a museum was not an option.

"I need two lists," Nainoa said to the surveyor, "I need a list of what's wrong with her, and a list of what to do to make her even stronger than when she was built."

The what-to-do list was long. Two of the wooden iakos had to be replaced - an onerous job but not exceedingly so. The hull was another matter. Wooden stringers run lengthwise from bow to stern, providing strength. There are five such stringers on each side, many of them rotten. The job of fixing all these problems fell to Bruce Blankenfeld.

In September, the canoe went into dry-dock. Perhaps "dry-dock" is a misnomer because it conjures a picture of Hokule'a in a mammoth shipyard cofferdam. Hokule'a's dry-dock was a shed in a decrepit section of the Port of Honolulu. Nearby was a junkyard with a tall fence and barking dogs, a pile of sand for making cement, a small marina, a few boatyards that did not appear very busy. Bruce set about finding workers.

"It's easy to find people when you're ready to go sailing but when you need them to maintain the canoe it can be pretty difficult. I had a group of young folk come down at the beginning of September and tell me they wanted to help. I said, 'well, it's pretty easy to do that. All you have to do is show up.' But after they saw all the work that was going on, they never returned."

What the prospective workers saw was nasty. Young men and women squirmed through hatches only slightly wider than their shoulders where they toiled for hours, in Stygian gloom, amidst fiberglass dust and the odor of polyvinyl resin. They excised the rotten stringers. They fitted new sections of wood. Then they "sister-framed" each stringer by adding two new pieces of wood, one on top and one on the bottom. Triangular wedges of foamed plastic followed for yet more strength and to "fair" the stringers into the hull. They sanded all this smooth and laid layers of glass fiber over it. They pushed resin into the fiber's mesh. When it hardened, the process was repeated. Then again. Three coats of resin; then two coats of paint. Meanwhile, other volunteers sanded off the hulls' gel-coat. Fiberglass dust veiled the canoe, clogging the pores of exposed skin. For eight months, Bruce found himself down at dry-dock at odd hours inspecting the work. Seeing his crew laboring over the canoe was like seeing a resurrection.

"Even though the work was hard, there was always a lot of energy. We saw progress every day. People are working together in the same place. It's usually dry and, compared to sailing the canoe, working conditions are luxurious. There are fits and starts, but everything seems to come together all right in the end. You are working on something that is very beautiful. You are touching the past with sandpaper and saws and rope lashings."

Bruce supervised his crew as they stripped the canoe's twin masts and brushed on eight coats of varnish and sanded each to the texture of baby-skin. Then they renewed five miles of rope lashings a few feet at a time. They ripped off deck planking, replaced and relashed it. The canoe received new iakos, new splashboards, and new manus fore and aft. She received stanchions, catwalks, hatches, and wiring for running lights and emergency radios.

An army of volunteers donated thousands of man and woman hours to Hokule'a's rebirth, a laying on of hands that expressed their deep commitment to the canoe and what she meant to them. They came from all walks of life. There is Russell Amimoto, for example, nineteen years old, a professional house painter and volunteer canoe lasher. He has served Hokule'a for three years. There is Kamaki Worthington, twenty-six, a teacher, fiberglasser, also a veteran of three years service. There is Kiki Hugo, in his forties, a cross country trucker who spends long months on the mainland driving from San Francisco to the Bronx, the Bronx to San Francisco, until he earns enough money to return home to Oahu. He is a kupuna, an elder crewmember with twenty-five years service. There is Lilikala Kamalehiva, fortyish, college professor, chair of the department of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii, Hokule'a's chanter and master of protocol; Wally Froiseth, early seventies, once Hawaii's most famous big-wave surfer, now captain of the pilot boat of the Port of Honolulu; Jerry Ongies, early sixties, retired Army officer, ex-manager Dole Pineapple plant, boat builder, cabinet maker, canoe fabricator. This list of workers is an extremely small selection of the hundreds who donated their time to the canoe. The complete list would fill a book. If you were to ask these people why they have so freely given of themselves to the canoe they will provide a variety of reasons, unique to each of them, but there will also be a common response similar to what Nainoa once told an audience of legislators when they asked him why they should fund Hokule'a and her voyages.

"We must sail in the wake of our ancestors," he told them, "to find ourselves."

Finally, on the last week in March, the work was finished. The surveyor returned with his knife, his mallet and his well trained eye and certified the canoe "Lloyds A-1," nomenclature used by the world's largest insurer of watercraft to signify complete readiness for sea. A few days later, the canoe was launched. Among the men and women who tended Hokule'a as a giant crane lifted her from her cradle and laid her upon the ocean was Bruce Blankenfeld.

"The mana in this canoe comes from all the people who have sailed aboard Hokule'a and cared for her," Bruce said, looking out over the crowd that had come down for the launching. "I think of the literally hundreds of people who have come down and given to the canoe when she was in dry dock. I think of everyone who has shared similar work since she was first launched in 1975, those who have sailed aboard her, the men and women in all the islands we have visited who hosted us. All of this malama - this laying on of hands - adds to the mana of the canoe. It is intangible but it is alive and well."

January 27 - Meeting at the Mayor's Office
"The Old Men of Tautira"

You could imagine a meeting like this in a thatch-roofed canoe house hundreds of years ago with the visitors' double-hull voyaging canoe drawn up on the beach outside. But this meeting is held in the white-washed conference room of Tautira's mayor - Sane Matehau - and the date is January 27th, the year 2000. Only the feeling is ancient - a sharing of stories by friends from distant islands, a bonding together of a wide-spread `ohana.

Outside the conference room, the setting sun colors clouds over nearby mountains and a cool wind washes ashore over the reef. Inside, we are seated in a circle with representatives of Tautira's community, including Kahu from the Protestant, Catholic and Mormon churches. Sane has called the gathering to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the joining of Tautira's people with the people of Hawai`i.

The first to speak is Tutaha Salmon. For a Tahitian, he appears almost delicate, yet his bearing is dignified, suggesting confidence. His graying hair indicates he may be in his seventies. Tutaha was once the mayor of Tautira - a position now held by Sane - his son-in-law. He is now the governor of a large Tahitiian district including Tautira and three other towns: Faaone, Taravao and Pueu.

"It's an honor that whenever Hokule`a sails to Tahiti she lands here in Tautira," Tutaha tells us. "How many times have you come? I cannot count them. But what's important is that you are now our family - our brothers and sisters."

Following protocol that is ancient, Tutaha then speaks of his elders. The enfolding story of Hokule`a's relationship with Tautira began with "the old men" - a six-man canoe team who paddled their way into the history books

"Our dream of cultural exchange was born twenty-five years ago. In those days the man I remember first is Puaniho. He has now passed on but he showed us the way. He was a quiet man, but powerful. There was Mate Hoatua the steersman on the canoe from Haleolono to Waikiki. He steered the whole way, without relief. Henere, Tevae, Nanua and Vahirua paddled the canoe. We called them "the old men" because their minimum age was fifty. This is our time to remember them and to tie that rope tight to the mast."

"The old men" of Tautira's Maire Nui canoe club first traveled to Hawai`i in 1975 to compete in the Moloka`i race. Pinky Thompson next rose to speak in response to Tutaha's welcome.

"I want you to know that we feel at home ever since you took a strange looking Hawaiian youth into your homes 25 years ago, my son Nainoa. You recognized immediately that he was a stranger in a land that was strange to him and you malama-ed [took care of] him."

Nainoa came to Tautira in 1995 as a member of Hokule`a's crew. He recognized immediately that the "old men" of Maire nui paddled differently then any team in Hawai`i.

"They were so smooth," Nainoa recalls, "their movements were fluid, no lost energy, and their canoe seemed to leap forward - faster than anything I had every seen."

He wanted to learn from them and in 1977 he got the chance. In that year's Moloka`i race, Nainoa's team from Hui Nalu lined up next to "the old men."

"They were twice our age, and we were a pretty strong crew but they left us in their wake, paddling easily."

In that same year, Nainoa traveled to Marina del Rey to serve on a motor boat escorting Maire Nui in the Race to Newport Beach, California.

"They finished the race, took a shower, and were drinking a beer before the second place canoe arrived. They beat them by an hour and 4 minutes."

Nainoa invited Maire Nui to stay in Niu Valley when they came to Hawai`i in 1978 for the Moloka`i race and again in 1979 when they won the koa division for the third consecutive time - retiring the famous Outrigger Canoe Club cup to an exhibit case at Sane Matehau's home in Tautira. Over the years, visits by Maire Nui to Hawai`i and by Hawaiians to Tahiti continued. Puaniho built a Koa canoe for Hui Nalu and later another famous Tautira canoe builder flew to Kona to build six Koa canoes - helping to inspire a renewal in traditional canoe building that thrives today.

Nainoa, Bruce, Pinky and their Hui Nalu colleagues studied the Tahitian way of paddling and became champions themselves. Pinky remembered those moments in his presentation at the Mayor's office.

"You helped us become champion paddlers, but you did much more than that. You helped us to return pride to our Polynesian people by restoring our native craft of canoe building and paddling."

"'The old men' taught us what it means to be champs," Nainoa added. "It's not about outward appearance. It's about what happens inside. They didn't talk much because they knew that the mana comes from within. They didn't think of themselves representing just a club - they represented all their people."

Friday, January 28 - Crew Briefing

"We're on three hour call to set sail," Nainoa tells us at this morning's crew briefing. "Our first problem will be to get to the Tuamotus, 240 miles to the northeast. The crew is made up of new sailors and expert sailors. It's designed that way. Bruce and Chad are in overall charge of safety and of educating the new crew. They will stand six-hour watches each - six on and six off. They will hot bunk with each other, share the same puka, because when one is sleeping the other will be on watch. Tava, Snake and Mike will be watch captains. Shantell will navigate and so she will be up most of the time. Ka'iulani and Kahualaulani will assist her so they will stand 6 hour watches, on and off. Pomai will cook, so she'll not stand a watch. The rest of you will be on watch for 4 hours, then have 8 hours off."

On one of the long tables at Sane's house, where we eat every morning and evening, Nainoa spreads a map of the Pacific. He traces his finger along a red line drawn on the map from Tahiti to the Big Island.

"This is our course line. It's been drawn like this ever since 1980. Makatea, here, and Rangiroa and Tikihau, here, will be stepping-stones as we head north. Once we clear the Tuamotus we will sail on long tacks, hopefully one single tack, to this point 275 miles west of the Big Island, where we will turn to sail downwind, probably to Hilo. With the new sails we have now we should be able to sail efficiently. I think it will take about 22 days."

"Our problem now is the weather. Normal trade winds, from the east or southeast, are ideal. Hokule'a can point six houses into the wind, so we can sail north or northeast. But the forecasts are now calling for winds from the north and in those conditions here's what happens."

Nainoa takes two pencils and joins them together at the ends, the lead tips pointing outward. He arranges them in a fan with the included angle equal to six houses - 67 and a half degrees - the angle that Hokule'a can make when sailing into the wind. He lays the pencils up against the chart with the right hand pencil heading north, into the wind, and the left hand one - our course in a northerly wind - pointing off to the northwest.

"If the wind forces us to sail off to the northwest, we'll end up in Satawal."

"The weather pattern in the Pacific at this time of the year extends over an area 5000 miles long. Since December, the Pacific (mid Pacific?) has been a convective factory of rising air. There's a large high-pressure system to the east. In the winter, the high-pressure systems move, but now they stall and another has formed to the west. In between the two systems there's a depression - a trough that extends south of Tahiti and to the west across the Pacific. It's a doldrum condition caused by two stationary air masses. A whole Pacific-wide system. That trough (which causes the north winds?) extends for a long, long way. If we set out now and sail to the northwest, we'll never get out of it. That system may be here for a long time. We're stuck."

"There's a hurricane to the north of New Zealand, 2000 miles away, but there's no real chance that it will come up here. The hurricane is a refrigerator. It sucks out warm winds so it might allow the trades to reestablish themselves. If that happens we might get a single day of good sailing weather. But don't count on it."

"So we have a big challenge. We have light winds but they're blowing from the direction we want to go - right in our face. To get out of here, we may have to tow. No one likes to tow, but we may have no other choice. Our voyage has a larger intent - we sail to serve our community - and we have to be back in time to get the canoe ready for her birthday at Kualoa on March 12th. We cannot wait beyond the 5th of February to leave, even if we have to tow. About 240 miles north of Manihi we can get into good trade winds.

Nainoa pauses, for a moment, allowing this to sink in.

"Okay, Chad and Bruce, you are in charge of seeing that the canoe is ready and conducting safety drills. But remember; be careful of the heat. You can easily dehydrate."

(Check all of the above weather analysis with Nainoa)

Saturday, January 29 - Weather Watch

The ocean remains unsullied. Parapets of cumulus cloud are stalled around the horizon. There's a breath, and no more than that, of wind - but it's out of the north, so getting to the Tuamotus will be an ordeal of constant tacking into headwinds.

The high-pressure(?) ridge containing light unstable winds continues to dominate our weather system. We want the ridge to move but it's blocked by a zone of low pressure to the south, which pulls the wind toward it, creating northerlies. This morning Nainoa speaks with Bernie Kilonsky at the University of Hawai`i. The low may finally move south, Bernie tells him, allowing the high pressure ridge to move with it. If so, the light and variable northerlies should be replaced by easterly trades. We may see some change on Sunday and certainly by Monday. And, if Bernie is right, the trades should fill back in by Tuesday.

"Ok," says Nainoa, "we stay on alert to go within three hours notice - but if Bernie is correct we'll probably not leave until Tuesday."

In the meantime, Nainoa and Shantell Ching join with student navigators Kahualaulani Mick and Ka`iulani Murphy to lay out their course line to Hawai`i and discuss alternative routes depending on changeable wind and weather conditions. Bending over the kitchen table in Nainoa's house, they first consider the effect of the current.

"The longer you're in the current the more its effect will be," Nainoa explains, reviewing basic knowledge, "so the amount of offset will depend on your speed. The slower you go - the more the offset."

The offset is also affected by the angle that the canoe makes to the current. Assuming the canoe's speed to be five knots, for example, with an easterly current of half a knot, a heading of Manu (NE) will produce an offset to the west of four degrees. Increasing the canoe's angle to the current increases the offset. If she heads Nalani (NE by N) the offset is five degrees, while a course to the north (Akau) means an offset of six degrees. This kind of effect becomes great over long distances. Consider the passage from Rangiroa to the doldrums, about 1100 miles. At a speed of 5 knots, a half knot easterly current will set the canoe to the west 12 miles a day or 108 miles during the nine day voyage.

The navigators memorize current effects like these as a set of general principles which can be easily modified mentally as conditions change. If they sail north at 5 knots and the current is from the east at half a knot - the westerly offset is 12 miles each day. Change the canoes speed by 50% to 2.5 knots and the daily offset will be twice as much - or 24 miles - because the canoe will take twice as long to cover the same distance.

"We always try to eliminate having to do math in our heads," Nainoa explains, "it can cause serious brain damage."

For now, the navigators concentrate on the "first stage" of the voyage home - from Tahiti to just north of Rangiroa - when the canoe will enter the open ocean and begin "stage two" to the doldrums. During the first stage, Makatea - about 124 miles to the north - will be a stepping stone, a chance for Shantell and her colleagues to test the accuracy of their navigation. They consider when to depart Tautira in order to arrive at Makatea with sufficient time to explore the island.

They decide to leave at 11 am. They will have no celestial bodies to steer by so they must guide the canoe by "back sighting" on Tautira's mountain peaks. Shantell figures they will be able to use the 4,500' high mountains for about 60 miles on a clear day and maybe 30 on a humid day - like today.

"That means that if we sail at five knots we can use our back sight for about 6 hours," she says, "or until 5 p.m. By 3 p.m. the sun will be low enough on the horizon to steer by so we can check our course to Makatea and modify it if necessary."

When they reach Makatea, the navigators must decide when to set out for the difficult pass between the low coral atoll of Tikehau and Rangiroa which leads out into the open ocean. Kahualaulani runs his finger over the eastern side of Tikihau's fringing reef.

"These black marks are coconut trees," he says "and we should be able to see them maybe ten miles at sea - during the day. At night, forget about it. We might be right on top of the reef before we see it."

"The distance from Makatea to Tikehau is 40 miles," says Shantell "and we want to be no closer than 10 miles at sunrise, so when should we leave?"

"If we can average five knots then we should leave about midnight," says Ka`iulani, "which should get us to a point about ten miles off the reef at about 6 a.m."

And so it goes - the three navigators bend over their charts, discuss strategy, and make notes in their logbooks. From time to time, Nainoa joins them, asking questions - probing their readiness.

"I may be asking a lot of questions of you guys now," he says, "but at sea I'm going to back off. We'll meet at sunrise and sunset and talk about where you think you are and what course we should steer, but I will only step in if you're about to make a mistake that will jeopardize our safety."

The navigators' meeting breaks up at about noon but they will meet again at sunset to watch the stars rise over Tautira's peaks and establish their "back sight." The rest of us wait impatiently to board the canoe and leave - but for them the voyage has already begun.

Sunday, January 30

For the crews of Kamahele and Hokule`a, including new arrival Nalani Wilson, today was mainly one of rest. The weather continues unchanged - hot, humid with little wind - although it was cooler last night. At 4 a.m. this morning Ota, Sabu, Papa Vaihiroa and Tepea began preparing the imu for what may be our last big feast in Tautira before departing. At one p.m., we gathered at Sane's to pule, then dig into roast pork, fish, taro, breadfruit and all the traditional dressings - a grand Tahitian feast. And singing, lots of singing.

CREW PROFILE - Pomaikalani Bertelmann

A generation or so ago two Bertelmann brothers married two Lindsey sisters and the trajectory of history in the Big Island town of Waimea shifted slightly. Glenn Bertelmann and Delsa Lindsey had seven children and Clay Bertelmann and Deedee Lindsey produced five - a tight family with deep roots in a much larger `ohana that thrived beneath the gentle catenary arc of Mauna Kea. In Clay and Deedee's family, Pomaikalani was the first-born - on March 7, 1973, in Honoka`a. At the time, her father was a well known Parker Ranch cowboy, so it's not surprising that young Pomai grew to love horses - in fact, animals of all kinds.

"I was basically raised on my family's ranch and riding was a passion since I can remember," Pomai says. "I also worked as a kid on Hale Kea ranch in Waimea, fixing fences, raking the arenas, exercising horses and taking care of the livestock."

Waimea was less dressy in those days, an informal rural town where children could safely ride horses along the main street and in the surrounding empty pastures. They rode to the Dairy Queen drive-up window to order hamburgers, they staged informal barrel and baton races and played "musical chairs" in the vast empty prairie just outside town.

"A sense of community was second nature among us," Pomai says, "there were kids from all the families - the Keakealani family, also Rebozos, De Silvas, Kimuras, Lindseys - a lot of Lindseys - Kainoas, Colemans, Kanihos, Kaauas, Bergins, Awaas, Purdeys and the Fergerstrom family - to name a few. All of us were kaukalio (riding horses)."

One of the biggest events in Waimea was the fourth of July rodeo organized by the Parker Ranch Roundup Club where cowboys from the ranch's numerous divisions competed in various events - cutting, roping, racing.

"The cowboy life style was not exclusive of women, not at all. There were a lot of awesome women riders too. Lorraine Urbic sat a horse like no one else, and she won a lot of races. Then, just to name a few, there was Hoppy Whitehead, Val Hanohano, and Peewee Lindsey - all of them very strong people - great role models for us."

But life in Waimea embraced more than the land-based culture of the Paniolo.

"One of my fondest memories," Pomai explains, "was loading up the family Bronco with my mom and dad and the five of us kids and then picking up all my cousins and food and camping gear and heading for the beach. We went to a place called Wailea at Puako. There was no one there in those days. We had the place all to ourselves. Right next to where we used to camp there's a telephone pole with the number "69" printed on it. Since then, things have changed. Malahini now call Wailea "number sixty-nine". When you lose the real Hawaiian name, you lose a lot."

At Wailea and other places, Pomai learned to dive with her father and she enjoyed fishing but never really grew fond of other water sports. As a youngster it was always the life kaukalio and with animals that attracted her most. But in 1975, her Uncle Shorty sailed aboard Hokule`a on her maiden voyage to Tahiti.

"We supported him as a family, and whenever the canoe came to the Big Island we helped care for her and her crew."

During the series of voyages between 1985 and 1987, Pomai's father Clay sailed often aboard Hokule`a.

"He was away at sea for maybe six months during those two years, and I began to wonder a little about the kind of life he was leading."

Gradually, Pomai's family was becoming more and more entwined with the sea. From 1989 to 1991 the Bertelmann family helped search the forests surrounding Mauna Kea for koa logs to build Hawai`iloa. They cooked and packed food for the searchers, walked side by side with them during long weekend treks - took a key role in the entire process. Ultimately, so devastated were Hawai`i's forests, that no logs were found and the canoe was built instead of Alaskan spruce. But from this effort, Mauloa was born - the first traditionally made Hawaiian six man coastal canoe fashioned within perhaps centuries.

"We did find Koa logs big enough for a smaller canoe," Pomai explains. "We went to Keahou to fell the trees and we lived there over a long weekend in tents."

The canoe builders used adzes that they fashioned from stone gathered at the ancient Keanakakao`i adze quarry on Mauna Kea under the watchful eye of Mau Piailug. From 1991 to 1993, Pomai's father Clay spent every weekend at Pu`uhonua O Honaunau working on the canoe.

"In traditional times women were not allowed to work on canoes so we supported the men," Pomai explains. "Mauloa was built by the Na kalai wa`a - the canoe builders - from Koa and Breadfruit sap and sennit and Lauhala, her hulls were smoothed by stones and she was given a sheen with Kukui oil.

In 1992, Pomai went with her father to O`ahu to help him prepare for Hokule`a's voyage to the Cook Islands. There she met a group of young people who were beginning to assume leadership roles - Moana Doi, Keahi Omai, Ka`au McKenney and Chadd Paishon, who she would eventually marry.

"I began to think seriously about my life in 1992," she remembers, "and as I learned more about the values involved in voyaging, I thought I wanted them in my own life. Voyaging gave me a sense of family - which was familiar since I had grown up in a strong supportive family - and it gave me a connection to my cultural roots. And when Mau Piailug began to stay with us I met a man who had done so much for our people - how could I not be excited?"

Next came Makali`i - the Big Island canoe built by a passionate community effort spearheaded by Clay, Shorty and Tiger Espere. Beginning work in January 1994, the canoe was finished the following December. In September, Pomai became - as she puts it - "a one woman administrative staff," for Na Kalai Wa`a Moku O Hawai`i - The Canoe Builders of Hawai`i. She was hooked.

In 1995, Pomai sailed aboard Makali`i from Tahiti, through the Marquesas, and back to Hawai`i. "Then in 1997, Mau asked us to take him home to Satawal on Makali`i and, of course, there was no question about it." In February of 1999, Makali`i raised anchor and set out on the voyage called E Mau - "Sailing the Master Home."

"We sailed to many islands in Micronesia to honor Mau among his own people," says Pomai. "On Satawal I saw Mau as a complete man for the first time - not just as a navigator - but also as a father, a husband, a fisherman, a farmer - you should see his taro patch. I have never seen him so happy."

Soon after Makali`i returned from Micronesia, Pomai was once again deeply immersed in organizing the details of caring for the canoe and organizing it's many educational voyages. Through the intimate grapevine of Hawaiian sailors, she learned of Hokule`a's upcoming voyage to Rapa Nui. "I also heard that it might be Nainoa's last voyage as a navigator," she remembers, "and I was heart broken. I always wanted to sail with him. I thought I might never get the chance." A short time later, Nainoa called and invited her to come aboard Hokule`a for the fifth leg - the voyage home.

"This is such an honor for me," Pomai says, "to have a chance to not only learn from Nainoa but from the greatest sailors of the last quarter century of traditional voyaging - from Uncle Snake and Uncle Mike and Uncle Tava. I'm now sailing with the guys who started the renewal of our ancient voyaging arts and contributed to the beginning of the revival of our Hawaiian culture."

January 31, Monday - Wind Watch

At 5:30 a.m. Shantell and Pomai Bertelmann stand at the end of the jetty leading into Tautira's harbor. They see the dark outline of mountain peaks descend to the sea - punctuated by upthrusting coconut palms at the shore. They see an upturned scimitar of moon, pale against the brightening sky, and the bright spot that is Venus. More importantly, they see a broken rope of compressed ropy cumulus clouds trailing away to sea from the mountains' dark slopes.

"There's wind out there," Shantell says, "and it looks like light trades. The clouds are dispersed on the horizon which means the wind is light, it's not strong enough to push them together, but it's there alright."

Ripples flit across the surface of the lagoon - fanning away from the beach - the result of wind funneling through deep valleys behind Tautira.

"That's a local wind," Pomai says, "which is apparently from the south, but it's not significant."

Cars and bicyclists begin to move through the village. A group of children, bearing baguettes, walk by. The sun rises orange behind the low scudding clouds and the clouds lighten and pick up the sun's orange glow. High cirrus clouds are brush strokes of yellow and white.

After breakfast, we meet aboard Hokule`a where Nainoa, Chad and Bruce assign each of us watches and duties while underway. The canoe is moored in the sheltered lagoon. There's no breeze and it's already extremely hot. Snake, Mike and Tava - the three Watch Captains - take us through drills. We open and close the sails and practice bending different jibs on the forestay. We rig a larger mizzen sail in anticipation of light winds. As a final drill, and without warning, Bruce yells "man overboard" which elicits a scurry to pull in the sails, douse the jib, deploy the man overboard pole and make radio contact with the imaginary escort boat ghosting in our wake.

"Good job," is Bruce's comment.

By 2 p.m., the low ropy cumulus clouds have morphed into puffy ragged shapes - an N.C. Weyeth sky - with exuberant parapets of cloud marching briskly from east to west. Palm fronds clack together in the freshening breeze. Nainoa spreads the word - if the winds continue to build, we may depart tomorrow morning.

In the afternoon, Shantell and the student navigators gather with Nainoa. They discuss the weather. "When you look at the clouds and see that the bases are all at the same level over the horizon, then you can predict that there is wind out there." says Nainoa. "If you see high clouds with a lot of vertical development, the winds are slowing down. But you can be fooled. During a hot day like this morning, the land heats up and the cool air over the water tends to flow toward the land - a convection effect - and that makes it appear that there may be strong trade winds. But if the wind comes out of the valleys at night, you know that it's not trades."

"This morning it looked like we might have light trades," says Shantell, "but in the afternoon when I was at Sane's the clouds started to get more vertical."

"And wisps of cirrus," says Nainoa. "When rain squalls develop vertically the rain pulls down the moisture and leaves cirrus behind. The wind regime is still very light. We have to wait until tomorrow to see what develops."

"The trip to Rapa Nui required that I be able to focus and to use my instinct much more than my intellect," Nainoa says. "We sailed on even when there were no stars. We were pushing every inch of the way to stay ahead of a front behind us. That was a trip that I knew my intellect would not get us through, so for this voyage I'm paying more attention to the other side."

The navigators focus on the upcoming voyage to Makatea. (Check this) "Makatea is 65 degrees from Tautira," says Shantell, " so if you factor in 5 degrees of lee drift and 5 degrees of current at 5 knots (the current or speed of canoe?) we want to point the canoe one house upwind of the current. We want to steer Nalani."

"What is the estimated time of departure out of Tautira to get to Makatea based on a canoe speed of three knots?" Nainoa asks. "Keep in mind that we can see about 21 miles on a light wind day because there's no salt in the air."

"At one a.m. on Wednesday," says Shantell.

"So we would be at Makatea at 6 p.m., that's ugly."

"How long would it take if we can sail at 4 knots?"

"Thirty-one hours."

"So when do we leave?"

"Eleven a.m." (I don't think this is right. If takes 41 hours at 3 knots and 31 hours at 4 knots, the difference in time to leave is 10 hours, so 6pm minus 10 hours = 9AM?)

"Yes, so we need a wind that will allow us to sail at about 4 knots. If our speed parameter is 4 knots, we won't leave tomorrow. Let's shoot for Wednesday and better winds."

"If we want to stop ten miles short of Tikihau at night, do we wait at Makatea or de we leave and wait at Rangiroa?" Kahualaulani asks.

"If the winds are from the east we go and wait at Rangiroa. If they are behind us - no. The wind will tend to blow us onto the islands."

"Tikihau is hard to see," says Shantell. "When we went there in '95, it took me a long time before I could see the trees."

"I want to sail home," says Nainoa at the close of the meeting, "because only through sailing can we learn. It's the relationship between us and the canoe and nature that I want, so I'm opposed to towing because that allows us to artificially set our speed and we don't learn."

At the end of the day, we fan out to our homes to wash clothes, write in our journals and prepare for departure. Shantell Ching lays out her star charts on the long dining table at Sane's house and immerses herself once again in the intricate details of navigating Hokule`a home.

Tuesday, February 1 - No Wind

At 5 a.m., when the village first begins to stir, the lagoon is calm. Palm fronds are motionless. The air is still. It appears that yesterday's cloud messengers and their rumor of trade winds was a ruse. Last night, downpours cleaned the sky, opening a view to brilliant stars - Orion (ka heihei o na keiki), Taurus (kapuahi) and the Pleiades (makali'i) - a virtual explosion of tiny, blinking points of light. This morning it is, once again, much too tranquil for our tastes.

At last night's navigator's meeting, Nainoa discussed the French weather predictions, courtesy of Guy Raoul - our meteorological guru in Mangareva. Today - winds ESE at ten knots; tomorrow - ESE at 5 knots, Thursday - ESE at 10 knots and Friday - variable. The direction of the wind is favorable but its velocity is not. In ten knots of wind, the canoe - heavily loaded as she will be at the beginning our voyage - can make maybe three knots. In a five knot zephyr, she will bob and rock - almost stalled. We decide to wait for the weather pattern to reveal itself. But deadlines are approaching - Hokule`a's March 12th birthday celebration at Kualoa, for example. Nainoa's guesses that if the winds do not become favorable by Saturday, we will be forced to depart Tautira under tow. To prepare for that, and be ready to leave on short notice, Alex and Elsa Jakubenko will depart Mo'orea, where they've been visiting with their family, to arrive here tomorrow aboard Kama Hele.

Today, the crew gathers at the canoe to load fresh produce. Over the rail, gifts from the people of Tautiura, come bananas, mango, limes, coconuts, vi (a mango-like fruit), grapefruits... We stow onions and ginger in netting along the port and starboard navigators' platforms. Pomaika`i Bertelmann and Dr. Ming-Lei Tim Sing check out the galley - a two burner propane stove in a fiberglass box on deck - and inventory basic staples. Mike Tongg briefs us on radio procedures. Joey Mallot, Kaui Pelekane, Kona Woolsey and Snake Ah Hee lash spare booms along the port and starboard catwalks.

At six thirty p.m. we meet aboard the canoe. Nainoa tells us we may depart tomorrow if the wind shifts, but more likely on Thursday. The latest weather reports from both French and American meteorologists agree that the wind north of Rangiroa, beginning on Saturday, is likely to be 20 knots out of the east - reason enough, he explains, to leave on Thursday even if at the end of Kama Hele's towline. A Thursday departure will also give the navigators some moonlight when we reach the vicinity of Hawaii so they may see the nighttime horizon and more easily judge a star's altitude - the key to latitude.

"If we wait here too long," says Nainoa, "the moon will be too small to see the horizon. We want to be in the latitude of Hawaii on the 25th when the moon will be up at 11:30."

And when we reach three degrees north - the usual address of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (the doldrums) - the moon should be full, a guide to direction even under heavily occluded skies.

"But right now there is no convergence zone," Nainoa tell us, "because the low to the South is pulling the southeast trades around more to the east."

The convergence zone is where two massive wind belts collide - the northeast and southeast trades. It's a broad zone of unstable weather near the planet's belt line. But partially because of the low to the south - pulling the winds down to it - there is now virtually no convergence so the weathermen predict that to the north of Rangiroa we should encounter steady easterly winds to power us all the way to Hawaiian landfall.

CREW PROFILE - Abraham "Snake" Ah Hee

"My father taught me to get lobster without a spear," Snake Ah Hee explains, "you have to be gentle, have a good hand, or you spoil the hole. If you do it right you can come back in a few days and there will be another lobster there."

Snake was born on March 18, 1946 in Lahaina, Maui. He lived for a time with his great grandfather in a house on the ocean outside town. "It was a fishing family. "We had nets and canoes and ever since I was a small kid my dad took me fishing. I learned the different areas to fishing, how to find the fish, how the current moves, how to steer a canoe using Japanese oars." Snake's father, Abraham Ah Hee, Sr., was called "Froggy" because he swam so powerfully and could stay underwater so long. Like most Hawaiians, Snake began to surf as a youngster, gradually becoming comfortable in big waves. He surfed for a time with the Wind and Sea Surf Club, a California group, and in contests he often went home with a cup marked "first place." Later he was on the Gregg Knoll surf team and paddled for the Lahaina Canoe Club where he was also a coach. "I still love to surf," Snake says, " and I hope to do it into my eighties. The ocean has taken hold of me spiritually and mentally. I think it's because it's tied in with my family, with being raised on the ocean."

Snake graduated from Lahainaluna High School in 1964 and worked as a life guard at hotels on Maui. He joined the National Guard and was called up in 1968 to go on active duty - one tour in Vietnam. He served in the Southern war zone, not too far from Saigon, and he rose to be a squad leader in charge of patrols.

"It made my mind stronger," he says, "more adult. It taught me the value of life. It's crazy to fight. I hope my children will never go to war. I want to see peace - all the time - all over the world."

Snake has five children, three girls and two boys: Malia Mahealani, Nainoa Chad, Makalea Rose, Mau Nukuhiva, and David. It's not an accident that the names Nainoa, Chad and Mau appear in this family. "Hokule`a brought all her crew together, "Snake says, "we're like a family of brothers and sisters. I can go anywhere in Hawaii and stay with my `ohana. On the Big Island, for example, I stay with Shorty or Tava or Chad; on Moloka`i maybe with Mel Paoa or Penny Rawlins. I might not see them for a year but when I do it seems like just a short time."

In 1975, Snake first heard about Hokule`a and that she would sail to Tahiti, but he had never laid eyes on her. "Then one day I was in my truck on the way to the canoe beach and I saw this boat coming from Lana`i. 'What's that?' I thought. I stopped. I had never seen anything like it before."

Later, George Paoa and Sam Ka`ai came to the beach where Snake was lifeguarding and asked him to be a member of the crew. He began training right away and was chosen for the return trip from Tahiti to Hawai`i. That's where he first met Nainoa.

"That trip gave me a real good feeling inside," Snake remembers, "It was a good thing for my generation. The canoe makes us strong in mind and spirit - close to our culture. If not for the canoe I won't say that our culture would be lost, but it would be weaker. It helped bring back the language, and helped bring back the community, not only in Hawai`i but throughout all the Pacific - wherever she has stopped."

"On this trip," he continues, "I'm here to teach the younger generation who are sailing with us - how to take care of themselves and each other - how to be humble. For me that's the one key part. If you're humble everything will be fine. Everyone will think the same, work the same, be closer together. Only if you are humble can you learn."

Wednesday, February 2

Dogs, sleeping in the shade, pant rhythmically. Even at complete rest, under Hokule'a's deck awnings, sweat sheens the skin of her crew and darkens their tee shirts. Chad runs an abbreviated meeting - explaining that we plan to raise anchor tomorrow morning and move to a pier near Tautira's school where we will invite aboard the children and families who have so generously hosted us.

At nine a.m., precisely on schedule, Kama Hele glides through the entrance to Tautira's fringing reef and drops anchor a few hundred yards from Hokule`a. Maka welcomes her with warbling blasts from his pu. With Kama Hele's arrival, it seems now, finally, all is ready for our departure.

The student navigators have been studying together most of the day. In the afternoon, Nainoa joins them.

"So how are we doing?"

"Brain tied in knots," answers Khualaulani.

"How's the weather?" Shantell asks.

Nainoa shuffles weather maps produced by meteorological computers and sent to us by fax.

"There's a light pocket of wind here now but that should change on Thursday. The wind should increase to ten to fifteen knots."

He runs his finger over the map's tiny wind arrows, cartographic symbols that contain the informed guesswork of meteorologists laboring over their instruments in Hawaii and Mangareva.

"By Saturday the trades fill in to the south as much as 300 miles from Tahiti. In reality, we should wait until Friday. I'd rather not tow because it will be a good experience to sail, even if we just bob around. Hard times are good learning experiences."

Thursday, February 3 - Sunrise

At dawn, the white "bread truck" threads its way through the streets of Tautira, honking its horn. Women emerge from trim bungalows, cross lawns rimmed by hibiscus, and take delivery of slim baguettes - the Tahitian breakfast staple. Puddles fill potholes -evidence of another early morning downpour. At the thin strand of beach near Tautira's boat harbor Nainoa, Bruce, Chad and Shantell gather once again to study the clouds at sunrise. For a time they lean on the hood of a borrowed Renault sedan.

"What do you see, Shantell?" Nainoa asks, after the group has studied the brightening skyline for signs of weather.

"The clouds are towering," she says, "so the wind is light."

"What direction?"

"Looking north I can see the clouds moving, so the direction is probably northeast."

"Right, but slow, yeah?"

"Yes."

Light northeast winds will make it hard for us to sail to Makatea - our first landfall after Tahiti. The navigators huddle. The rising sun disappears behind a dark smudge of cloud from which spears of light descend to the rippled waters of the lagoon. A fishing boat exits the harbor and picks up speed, heading east.

"I feel the pressure of our schedule to return to Hawaii," Nainoa says, "but the wind is light. We might make it to Makatea but we should think of what's best for the experience of the young navigators and for the canoe. My instinct - from having watched the changes since Sunday - is that the wind will continue to improve. Mau says you don't decide when to go, the weather tells you when to go, so I think we wait."

We won't depart today but neither will we be idle. Hokule'a and Kama Hele will set sail so a Bishop Museum/Olelo film crew to shoot video for a documentary. In the afternoon, canoe and escort will return to their moorings to await a favorable wind. We're disappointed not to be on our way but glad for the opportunity to spend one more day with our Tahitian families.

Friday - February 4 - Tautira

The weather began to change yesterday when the periphery of the trade wind zone spread over Tahiti - announcing its arrival with an advance phalanx of puffy cumulus clouds and an occasional torrential downpour. At five in the afternoon, the island is surrounded by cloud castles sliding to the west under the impulse of 10 - 15 knot winds from the east-northeast. Our expected departure has been delayed by the need to move electronic equipment to send text and photographs from Kama Hele to the canoe. We will leave tomorrow.

The crew of Kama Hele now consists of Elsa and Alex Jakubenko, Makanani Attwood and four Tahitians - Mate Hotua Jr., Richard Konn, Eric Deane and Teikinui Tamarii.

Tonight we will gather for one last time at Sane Matehau's house on the hill overlooking our anchorage and tomorrow - shortly after sunrise - we will report to Kama Hele and Hokule'a. Soon the voyage home will begin.

Navigation Lessons

There may be nothing so ambiguous in man's relationship to the natural world as the movement of a ship across earth's surface. A sailing vessel, in particular, moves in two fluids - the air and the ocean - neither of them stable or predictable. The moving air provides the vessel's power. In the case of Hokule'a and other vessels rigged with sails that are essentially airfoils, wind flowing over the sails causes a vacuum on their leading edge - pulling them forward - an invisible suction. But in nature there are no free rides. Vectors of force along the sails' bellied shape also push the airfoil sideways - a motion called leeway by sailors. This action is countered by the ship's hull, which sits deep in the water, and its keel, if it has one, but never completely. So the vessel is coaxed into the wind but also driven away from it. The balance between leeway and forward motion is always delicate and it's here that races between sailboats are often won or lost. For Hokule'a, attaining this balance is a different kind of competition - one that determines whether the canoe finds land or sails by it. Our navigators must calculate how much leeway the canoe has experienced in a voyage that may last for 30 days and 2500 miles. In ancient times, this calculation meant literally life or death for the vessel's crew.

All airfoils have an ideal angle of attack to the wind. If the angle is too small - if the airfoil is "pinched" into the wind, as sailors call it, the airfoil loses efficiency and stalls. But the wind, often fickle, may blow from the direction in which the vessel wants to go, luring the helmsman to pinch up too much - to make the angle too acute, to cause the vessel to become slow and sluggish. Or the opposite may happen. The helmsman feels the vessel increase speed as he steers off the wind and is lured into sailing away from the direction he wants to go. Either way - navigation suffers.

The fluid in which the vessel moves is moving too, but not in a way that is detectable by normal human perception. A vessel proceeding into a current will be slowed by it. One moving with it speeds up. These deflections are relatively easy to deal with as they merely retard or advance a ship's arrival in port. But a vessel moving at an angle to the current will be pushed off course. The amount of this deviation depends on the acuteness of the angle and the speed of the current and the vessel. A current acting at 90 degrees to the vessel's course has the most severe effect, for example. And a vessel sailing slowly will take more time to reach port, consequently providing more time for the current to act upon it. If a vessel travels at two knots, for example, the current will exert twice as much effect as it does at four knots because the current will act on the vessel twice as long. And currents, like the winds that set them in motion, are not only invisible - they are often unpredictable.

It's because the interaction of fluid and air upon a vessel is so imprecise and difficult to determine that the job of a navigator is so complex. It's his task to figure the course of his ship over the ground, not through the water, because it's "ground truth" that determines whether or not he will reach port. The advent of modern global positioning satellites has done away with these uncertainties. Electronic vectors locate the ship precisely over the ground, negating the need to consider wind and current effect. But a navigator without instruments, like Nainoa and his students, has no such crutch - they must find their way over the undulating boundary of sea and water by combining intelligent guesswork with trained instinct.

For the last week, Hokule`a's student navigators - Shantell Ching (the principal navigator) and Ka`iulani Murphy and Kahualaulani Mick (apprentice navigators) - have been meeting with Nainoa at his bungalow in Tautira village. The meetings are collegial but the distance between teacher and students, even though they are the best of friends, is apparent.

Much of the teaching comes in general principles presented by Nainoa through questions - like this one: "When we leave the Tuamotus we will have to travel about 300 miles using only dead reckoning because there will be no good stars for latitude observations. Suppose you think you're at nine degrees south by dead reckoning but you measure Kochab crossing the meridian sixteen degrees above the horizon - where are you?"

The students know that when they measure Kochab's altitude at sixteen degrees (check this, 6 or 16?) they're at ten degrees south latitude. But should they rely on their star sights to determine latitude or their dead reckoning? Are they at nine degrees - as they guess by dead reckoning - or ten degrees - as indicated by Kochab?

There is a long silence. Nainoa breaks it.

"When you get a good star measurement I'd trust it. Restart your dead reckoning from the position indicated by the stars - in this case ten degrees south."

"Here's another question. Can you use Kochab to get latitude even if it doesn't cross the meridian?"

Normally, the altitude of a star is measured when at the highest point in its arc across the sky - its meridian. But during our first few weeks at sea, Kochab will cross the meridian after sunrise so it cannot be observed. Tomorrow, for example, Kochab reaches its meridian at 6 a.m.

" OK," Nainoa continues, "at 6 a.m. the sky will be too bright to see the meridian crossing, but at 5 a.m. Kochab will still be visible and close enough to its meridian to give you a fix."

Using a computer program to replicate the motion of the stars - and during marathon sessions with Will Kyselka in Bishop Museum's Planetarium - Nainoa employed modern technology to accelerate the years of patient observation used by his ancestors. Like them, he watched Kochab cross the meridian again and again. Carefully measuring the star's altitude at its meridian and an hour before it crossed the meridian, Nainoa discovered the difference was tiny - only a quarter of a degree. "And that's not measurable with the naked eye, so yeah, you can easily use Kochab at 5 a.m. to get latitude."

Nainoa's way of locating himself on earth is, as he himself will explain it, "as much about math as it is about observing the sky." He knows that he cannot state with certainty that he's navigating as the ancients did - but he's using the same signs they used and sailing the same ocean and so some of his insights must cross barriers of time. It would not take a planetarium to make the same observation of Kochab, for example. A few years of patient observation of the real sky would do the trick.

In some ways, modern technology and math has helped Nainoa, but in others it has also limited his perception of the sky. It has, for example, caused him to divide it up artificially by western concepts of angles and triangles and circles. Perhaps the ancients saw the sky more in its entirety than in its pieces. "Mau steers by the shape of the sky," as Nainoa once said of his mentor, "rather than by measuring the specific height of celestial bodies (check)."

When Nainoa looks out over the horizon, he sees a world of angles mediated by his understanding of trigonometry. Take, for example, the way he mentally computes his position east or west of his reference course when he's forced to sail off it by fickle winds. He does it by nestling a set of right triangles into the circle of his star compass.

The star compass, like the modern magnetic one, is divided into thirty-two points - or houses as Nainoa calls them. Suppose Nainoa wants to sail north, but is forced by the winds to sail for an entire day one house (11 and ¼ degrees) west of north. Say its an average trade wind day, so the canoe makes good five knots each hour or 120 miles in all. How far has he proceeded to the north and how far has he traveled to the west of his ideal course? Nainoa will tell you the answer without hesitation - 118 miles north and 24 miles to the west. Here's how he does it, using simple vectors.

Draw a single line due north - Nainoa's ideal reference course. Now draw another line one house (or 11 ¼ degrees) to the west of north - the course he is forced to sail bv the wind. Using a scale, measure 120 miles along that course line - the distance made good during the day. Now draw a line perpendicular from the ideal northerly course to intersect the point where you ended up at day's end. You have drawn a right triangle and graphically solved a simple trig problem. Use the scale to measure the distance traveled north and you will find it's 118 miles. Use the same scale to measure the offset to the west. It will be 24 miles. If you continue drawing course lines on the surface of the compass, one for each of the 8 houses included between a course due north and one due west, you will have solved all the problems needed to determine the course offset for every deviation from the ideal. These Nainoa has memorized. He knows, for example, that a deviation two houses to the west for one average sailing day means that he will have sailed 112 miles north and 47 miles west. A deviation of three houses is equivalent to 100 miles north and 67 miles to the west. And so on.

The problem, of course, is never that simple.

"When you hold a course for 24 hours - it's easy," Nainoa says. "But that hardly ever happens because the wind changes or the crew doesn't steer a straight course - and on this trip we'll have a lot of new crewmembers so that can be a problem."

"How do you average all those changes in course?" one of the students asks.

"Pick a time to do it. I do it every 12 hours because it's easy - at sunrise and sunset. Here's a problem to figure out. Assume you want to go akau (north) but between sunrise and sunset you steer nalani (3 houses west of north) for 4 hours at 4 knots. Then you steer Akau (north) for 6 hours at 3 knots. Then Haka (one house west of north) for 2 hours at 5 knots. How far to the west of the ideal reference course are you and how far to the north have you gone?"

The students grabble with the problem. If they sailed nalani - 3 houses west of their ideal course line - for a full day at 5 knots they would cover 120 miles. But they sailed 4 knots and so they traveled only 16 miles nalani or about 1/7th as much. (The accurate figure is 1 over 7.5 but "don't try to be too accurate," Nainoa tells them, "just figure 1/7th.") A full day sailing nalani would give them a distance of 67 miles west and 100 miles north, but 1/7th of that is only 9.5 miles west and 14 north. Next they sail akau, north, for 6 hours at 3 knots so they add 18 miles north to their earlier dead reckoning position. Now they are 32 miles north along their reference course and 9.5 miles west of it. Finally, they sail haka, one house west of their ideal course, for 10 miles - or 1/12th of the normal 120 miles of daily sailing. In a full day heading haka, they would have sailed 24 miles west and 120 miles north - but 1/12th of that is 2 miles west and 10 north. So the final estimate for the 12 hour period comes to 11 ½ miles west of the reference course and 42 miles made good along it to the north. (check with Nainoa)

"The hardest part of sailing is getting your dead reckoning accurate," says Nainoa. "you can help remove steering error by shaping the sails and balancing the weight aboard so the canoe steers itself and if the canoe is trimmed to the wind and it gets cloudy then at least you can steer by the wind."

Nainoa's quadrant of triangles define all kinds of useful relationships which he applies to solve many complex problems. He has used it, in fact, to figure how much error is involved in his earlier example of sighting Kochab one hour prior to its meridian crossing.

"If Kochab crosses the meridian at 6 am when it's not observable how can you use our set of triangles to find the error involved in observing it at 5 am?" he asks his students.

It's a problem that none of them have solved before. They have never thought to elevate into the night sky the angular relationships they use to solve navigational problems on the planet's horizon. Their silence is understandable.

"The stars appear to circle the earth in 24 hours," Nainoa explains, "so in one hour they travel 1/24th of 360 degrees - or 15 degrees. For the sake of approximation, that's about one house, or 11 ¼ degrees. A deviation of one house west of our course means that we sailed only 118 miles to the north, not 120 miles.That's 2 miles less. Now use that relationship. Two miles of error in 120 miles is an error factor of 1/60th (2 over 120). So, if we expect Kochab to cross the meridian at 16 degrees and we observe it one hour earlier, then the error will be only 1/60th of 16 degrees, or ¼ of a degree."

This explanation causes heads to bob over notepaper as the students draw out the angles for themselves and do the math.

"I told you that doing the math will break your brain," says Nainoa, "but if you memorize a specific set of relationships you can easily solve difficult problems in your heads. Don't worry about it now, just think it over."

Next, as a change of pace, Nainoa steps through a series of simpler problems. How far away can you see land? It depends on the height of the island. The Big Island of Hawai'i - 13,789 ft. high - can be seen a hundred miles away on a clear day; an atoll, where the tops of coconut trees are the highest point, is visible only ten miles away.

How can vog be helpful in finding the Big Island? If you see it, you're downwind of the island.

How do you account for the current effect in the doldrums? You disregard it, because the currents are too variable to predict.

How to determine the amount of leeway caused by the force of the wind on Hokule`a's sails? Watch the angle between the canoe's wake and her hulls.

"The average leeway into the wind is 7 degrees. If you want to hold haka, for example, steer between haka and one house over into the wind."

These question and answer sessions are accompanied by stories. Sometimes Nainoa shares mistakes he's made to indicate that navigation is, after all, a process of learning in which there is much trial and many errors. Take the case of sighting the Big Island at the end of the 1995 voyage, for example:

"We were making our approach at night, and I was pretty confident we were getting close but all I saw ahead were layers of light - a pink glow shading to purple then black. We couldn't see the island because of all the vog. We posted lookouts. Snake spotted something glowing ahead. A fishing boat? We couldn't tell. A moment of panic. All of a sudden Snake says, 'Hey, I think it's the volcano.' It will be like that, you go through moments of panic and even hallucination combined with moments of insight."

The training lasts for an hour or two after which the students study together - memorizing the stars or various "formulas" to determine leeway and current set - or review mental maps of the course to Hawai`i.

"Don't forget this should be fun," Nainoa tells them. "Don't study so much that you lose your excitement and your instinctual sense of knowing. You have each other - remember that. I look forward to seeing you huddling together to figure things out. And don't worry. I won't let you do anything foolish but I also promise you that I'll let you do this trip - as much as possible - on your own."

Saturday - February 5th - Departure

At sunrise a squall passes over Tautira. Gusting winds bend slender coconut palms and shake plump fruit off Mango trees. At the house of Edmon and Lurline, where we are staying, the wind enters through open windows and slams doors. For a while there is the drumming of rain. Iorana. Bon Jour. Good Morning.

Crew call is for six-thirty at Sane's house. Shantell, Pomai and I sit quietly for a while with Lurline, Edmon, Raiatea and xxxxx, enjoying our last intimate moments together. Looking to sea, we observe a low, thick wall of cloud, somber and formidable in the early morning light. Dark cloud bellies slide over the house. We watch higher layers billow into the sky, etched by the light of the rising sun. We are mostly quiet. We have said goodbye in expectation of departure almost every day, but we all know that today it will be for real.

February 6 - A Squally First Day at Sea
The winds, having been on vacation from Tahitian waters for almost two months, return - with fireworks.

Yesterday, after an emotional farewell, Hokule'a passed through the reef at 2 p.m. Close to the island, the winds were gentle - five to ten knots. But as we released the towline and set our sails, a bolt of lighting lanced through the clouds and struck a low peak over Tautira. A few seconds later, a sharp crack of thunder jolted the canoe and some of us felt an electrical shock tingle our hands and feet. As Tahiti dropped lower behind us, the wind accelerated and swells puckered the ocean, passing under Hokule'a from the east. Hokule'a leaned against her lee hull and plunged forward - her responses slowed by the heavy load she carried. All around the darkening horizon - too far away to hear thunder - lighting licked at tight knots of cloud, revealing squalls moving from east to west in the trade winds.

Nainoa divides us into two watches - five hours on and five off - so we have the maximum number of crew on deck to help us through a difficult first night at sea. Squalls assemble to the east and rush toward us. We take in sail, rolling in the troughs of waves. We open them again when the squall has passed. The night - moonless and dark, conceals the rapidly approaching storms - so we listen for them, and search the horizon when lightning bolts pierce the darkness with a lurid pulsing glow.

A little before midnight, Nainoa orders all sails triced up. A few moments later, terrific gusts shake the canoe. Fifty knots of wind drives rain across Hokule'a's deck in horizontal strata. Swells crash aboard. By sunrise the next day, we've closed our sails at least a dozen times.

"If we hadn't done that when the big squalls came through, we would have been in real trouble," Nainoa says.

At dawn, Shantell and Ka'iulani gather for their first navigator's meeting with Nainoa.
"During the day yesterday, up until sunset, I figure we made na leo (NNE) at 5 knots for 4 and a half hours or 22 miles," says Shantell. "The wind was la malanai (E by S) at between 5 to 25 knots."

"What about the 6 to 12 watch?" Nainoa asks.

"We made 3 to 6 knots," says Ka'iulani.

"We were stopped for an hour," says Nainoa, " and in the squalls I counted eight knots, some fours and many sevens. I think we should average it out to 5 knots for five hours. What did you get for direction?"

"Na leo," says Kaiulani.

"I think na lani (NE by N),' Shantell says. "I think we made na lani over the ground up until midnight, then between naleo and nalani."

During the 12 to 6 watch they stopped for an hour to let squalls pass. They figure five hours of sailing at 5 knots. The wind shifted a little north, so the course made good was haka, north by east.

"That was a difficult first night," says Nainoa. "We had a lot of down time, some major squalls, few clues because the sky was so clouded over, and when we had the sails down we drifted. We made na leo, na lani and haka so I say we figure the average to be naleo. I think we went about 72 miles, so we should be 52 miles from Makatea. Shan, if we continue at this speed do we get to Makatea before dark?"

"Yes."

"There's a lot of salt in the air but I think we can see the island 20 miles away. If we don't see it we can figure we passed it to the east of us. The next stop is Mataiva. Will we go by it at night if we keep this course and speed?"

"Yes."

"And that's what you've got to worry about. We won't see it."

"So we are 72 miles from Tahiti and 52 miles from Makatea," says Shantell. "Our heading during the night was na leo - one house to the west of what we wanted. At this speed, we should see Makatea in about 8 hours."

"After that, we'll head for Mataiva," Nainoa says. "Be careful about approaching Mataiva. We can't see it at night, so figure your sail plan accordingly."

It's been an uncomfortable first night at sea - but the crew has done well. At about 9 a.m. of the morning of our second day we pass through another squall and take in sail. Today, we look forward to better weather as we continue on toward Makatea - a raised coral atoll between Tahiti and Rangiroa.

The wind played upon his bones. There was music there but he could not hear it - only feel. He tried to draw inside himself but instead was thrust out. He could not take his eyes off the waves. What was it? The song there. The swells as chords. White caps as tympani. Drum rolls in cloud bellies. Orchestra of the gods. He was, for a moment, inside the music. He could feel it but not express it.

February 7th - 2 days since departure

The sun rises and sets each day on two navigator's meetings, one in which Nainoa joins with the senior navigators and another with Shantell and the students. At the senior navigators meeting, Nainoa says, "We are thirty plus miles west of Makatea and going right on toward Mataiva. I think we will cross the latitude of Mataiva tonight. If we get caught upwind it will be scary, so we don't want to pinch up now. It's safer to steer off the wind. There will be no moon so we won't see Mataiva, even though there are plenty of trees. So I say we should stop at 10 PM and set sail at about 4 a.m."

"Let out the mainsail."

The order to get under way comes at 4 a.m. We had stopped sailing for six hours during the night to wait for enough light to pick our way through the dangerous low atolls of the Tuamotus. And what a night! We watched Orion pursue the Pleiades over the mast as the Southern Cross arced upright and the Scorpion rose from the sea.

"I think the islands are right there," Nainoa says to Shantell this morning - gesturing toward a rosy haze of clouds rising thousands of feet into the sky. "The eastern swell is gone. Something is blocking it. It's got to be the Tuamotus - Rangiroa is 40 miles wide - so its effect can be felt many miles away."

We're reaching the end of the first leg of our voyage - the passage from Tautira to the Tuamotus. It's a test for the three student navigators. If they can find their way through the Tuamotus, they can begin the next leg - north to the doldrum zone - with confidence.

Yesterday, the wind settled down out of the east and blew steadily at 10-15 knots. The squalls disappeared. We hoped to spot Makatea late in the afternoon, but the winds forced us to the west, so we passed the island unseen below the horizon. Not sighting Makatea as a stepping stone makes our navigation less certain. "But it's a good lesson," Nainoa reminds the three student navigators. "Often you cannot steer an ideal course, so you have to make changes in your mind all the time."

At last night's sunset navigator's meeting, Nainoa posed three questions to his students.

"How many miles from Tahiti were we at 6 p.m. today?"
" What is our latitude?"
" Where are the Tuamotus and what is your plan for approaching them?"

Earlier Nainoa, Bruce, and Chad concluded we passed Makatea a little more than 30 miles to the west on a course that would intersect Mataiva during the night.

"That's not good," Nainoa says. There's no moon and a little salt in the air, so it'll be difficult to see Mataiva, even though there are plenty of trees on it. We should probably heave to around 11 p.m. tonight and wait for six hours, then set sail and go through the Tuamotus during the day."

Shantell, Ka'iulani, and Kahualaulani, calculate that between sunrise and sunset, we've sailed 124 miles toward Na Leo Ko'olau (NNE). Makatea lies 124 miles from Tautira in about the same direction, so the canoe should be at the island's latitude - 15 degrees 50 minutes south. But they also figure that the winds have pushed the canoe 32 miles to the west of our reference course. "So we're about 50 to 55 miles from Mataiva," Shantell reports to Nainoa.

"Good, your dead reckoning position and mine are about the same. I think we're about 49 miles from Mataiva."

Shantell and Nainoa agree that we will continue on for 25 miles and then heave to and wait until just before sunrise to sail through the Tuamotus.

During the evening, the wind shifts. We sail northeast, Manu Ko'olau, so this morning we sight Tikehau rather than Mataiva. The atoll sinks into the ocean behind us a little before noon. We trim our sails for the long voyage ahead of us - across an empty sea to Hawai'i.

Shantell's navigation calculations at sunset February 6

Dawn February 6
Shantell calculates the canoe has sailed an average course of na leo for 72 miles. Na leo is one house to the west of her intended course - nalani. If she sailed 120 miles na leo, she would be a full house to the west of her intended course line, or 24 miles west. But she sailed only 72 miles na leo, show far to the west is she? Here's how she thinks about it. If she had sailed 60 miles na leo - or ½ of 120 miles - her error would be ½ of 24 miles west, or 12 miles. But she sailed an additional 12 miles na leo - so she adds 2 miles of westing - giving her a total of 14 miles to the west of her course line at dawn. If you do the math on paper or with a computer, you find the distance is 14.4 miles west, but with non-instrument navigation the trick is to keep things simple, 14 miles is close enough.

Sunset February 6
During the 6 to 12 watch, Shantell calculates the canoe was stopped for 1 hour and sailed haka for 5 hours at 5 knots, so the distance made good was 25 miles haka. During the 12 to 6 watch, she calculates the canoe sailed na leo for 6 hours at 4.5 knots, or 27 miles na leo. The total is 52 miles na leo/haka. Na leo/haka is 1-½ houses to the west of her desired course line. A full day of sailing 1 house to the west of the course produces an error of 24 miles west. But she sailed 1 and ½ houses to the west, so the total error for a full day would be 24 miles plus 12 miles, or 36 miles west. She sailed only 52 miles na leo/haka, however. This is close enough to a half day sailing - or 60 miles - so she figures ½ of 36 miles to arrive at 18 miles of error to the west at sunset. So between sunrise and sunset, she sailed 52 miles na leo/haka and was an additional 18 miles to the west of her course line.

Total distance made good and total error from departure to sunset February 6
From departure until sunrise February 6 the canoe proceeded 72 miles na leo - producing a westerly error of 14 miles. From sunrise to sunset February 6 the canoe sailed 52 miles na leo/haka with a westerly error of 18 miles. Adding the two errors together gives a total of 32 miles to the west of the course line at sunset. Because the difference in heading between na leo/haka and na leo is so small (a little over 5 ½ degrees), and because the previous calculations (from departure until sunrise February 6) assumed a course of na leo, Shantell simplifies her calculations by assuming she sailed na leo for the entire distance - 52 plus 72 miles - or 124 miles.

If the canoe had sailed the intended course, na lani, for 124 miles she would have arrived at Makatea at about sunset. Not surprisingly, they failed to spot Makatea because it will not appear above the horizon if you are more than 20 miles away and Shantell figures they passed 32 miles to the west of it at sunset.

February 8 - 3 days: Calm Seas

A double rainbow frames Shantell, Kahualaulani, and Ka'iulani as they sit on the port navigator's platform considering Hokule`a's progress from sunset to sunrise. Behind them, Kamahele gleams. In the slanting light, the sloop's sails and hull are stark white against towering cumulus clouds ringing the horizon. The clouds rise to about 10,000 feet and then bend away under the impulse of an eastward moving air stream to form a swirling parasol high above the escort boat.

"How did we do?" Nainoa asks Shantell.

"We went an average of 5 knots for the 12 hours, heading haka"

In response, Nainoa simply smiles and nods his head.

Yesterday, when we departed Tikehau, Nainoa made a slight adjustment to our sail plan. He altered our reference course to begin at Tikehau - 25 miles to the west of its previous beginning point at Rangiroa.

"We have to keep those 25 miles in mind as we approach Hawai`i," Shantell explains, "and remember that our cushion for sighting land has been reduced from 275 to 250 miles."

The 'cushion' is a safety factor calculated into the canoe's reference course. Instead of heading directly from Tahiti to Hawaii, the navigators aim at an imaginary point 275 miles to the east of the islands. Here, the canoe will turn west and begin searching for landfall.

"We always approach the islands from the east because it's much easier to search with the northeast tradewinds behind us then tacking into them," Nainoa explains, "and because determining longitude is one of the hardest things to do without instruments."

Hokule'a's reference course carries the canoe northeast from Tahiti across invisible parallels of latitude - from that of Tautira - 17 degrees 44 minutes south - to the center of the Hawaiian islands - 20 degrees 30 minutes north. Using the stars, it's relatively easy to judge latitude to within a degree or so, about 60 miles, so finding our position north or south of Hawaii is not difficult. Longitude - our position east or west of the islands - is another matter. Without instruments, our navigators determine longitude by dead reckoning. Each day, they estimate their course and speed and mentally plot their position. But errors naturally accumulate. The 'cushion' accounts for this - providing a 275 mile margin of error by steering well to the east of the Hawaiian chain.

"When you arrive at the latitude of the islands you have got to know whether you are east or west of them," Nainoa explains. "Suppose you think you are east of them, but you are really to the west. If you make that kind of error and turn west to search, you will head out into open ocean. Next stop Japan. So by heading well to the east of Hawaii we can be certain the islands lie to the west of us when we make our turn to search for them."

Yesterday evening the horizon was smudged with low clouds illuminated by an occasional flicker of lightning. The dome of sky was clear except for wisps of fast moving high clouds.

"It's so beautiful out here tonight," Bruce told the crew on watch. "It's really difficult for me to explain it to my friends back home. You've got to experience it to believe it."

The moon was a tiny upturned sliver, in a phase the navigators call hoaka, the second day since it was new. With the shining sliver abeam to port, we steered northward toward Capella's pointers. Overhead, the Milky Way was a glowing ribbon, matched by phosphorescent fire in our wake stirred by swarms of darting squid. We sailed north on a beam reach - the wind steady from the east. Under these conditions, Hokule`a wanders when asked to steer herself, so we manned the giant center steering sweep. I watched Kau`i relieve Tava and align Hokule`a with the setting moon on our port beam. She pushed down on the sweep to lift the blade from the water - steering the canoe into the wind. Standing up, she allowed the blade to lower into our wake - steering us off the wind. Under a sky of glittering stars, her motion became a graceful dance.

During the day, we encounter the remnants of an upper level disturbance that occasionally descends to the surface, bringing squalls. The crew takes fresh water baths in the downpour. By mid-day, the sun is hot, forcing us to seek shelter in shade pools cast by Hokule`a's sails. The tradewinds are now clearly established and we move along at a steady 5 knots.

Wednesday, February 9 - Light Winds

Yesterday, we awoke to what seemed to be solid east winds accompanied by typical tradewind cumulus. We sailed well, working north for half a day.

"In the afternoon I saw large towering cumulus ahead of us," says Nainoa, "which indicates a probable breakdown in the trades."

Later, as Nainoa predicted, squalls brought rain. After each squall, the wind arrived in puffs, so we would move for a time and then stall in our tracks, a pattern that Nainoa calls "jump sailing." The pattern continued through the evening. This morning at 11 a.m., the canoe bobs in very light winds.

Shantell presents her navigation report. "We were at 10 degrees, 51 minutes south at sunrise," she says, "and about ten and a half miles west of our course line - which is pretty much right on it. Everyone is doing a good job of steering. In spite of the setbacks from the squalls, we're doing very well."

At noon, Nainoa orders us to bend on Hokule'a's largest mizzen sail to take advantage of what little wind there is. We fix awnings to protect us from the blasting heat of this almost windless day.

Thursday, February 10 - Slow Going
Navigator's report, sunrise, February 10th. "We have traveled 15 miles since yesterday at sunset and are now at 11 degrees, 27 minutes south - 21 miles west of our course."

Ua hala ka `ino, ua kau ka malie
"The storm has passed, calmness is here."

The squall begins with a rustling of wind - a restless hunting quality. Then it pulses. At night, we see a thickening in the darkness - a blotting of stars - then a dark line at the horizon and, beneath it, a froth of white. The squall, approaching, sends out scouts - then deploys its main body in a flanking maneuver. Or it may rush ahead as if to harmlessly cross our bow, then stop and lurk. Finally, it moves toward us, gathering mass, pumping itself up to become something altogether more sinister than a mere thickening of the night - a thing - what to call it? A monstrous dark blob with malevolent intent.

The wind arrives, accompanied by a deep whooshing sound - still distant - and then a moaning and a thumping as rain strikes Hokule`a's decks and buckshot bursts as it slaps our canvas half-tents.

Way before that has happened, Nainoa will have climbed onto the Navigator's platform to stand patiently with one hand on the rigging - examining the squall's intent. After a time, depending on the signs he detects, he will order us to stand by the sails. We disperse to our stations - three of us forward to douse the jib, four to the mizzen, the largest sail and so the first to be taken in. One of us is at the sheet to loosen it; another at the clew to carry the sail forward as a third hauls down on the tricing lines to pull it tight against the mast. We pay the sheet out slowly to prevent the clew, flapping in the wind, from injuring one of us.

We have experienced a range of squalls on our voyage - from the violent one on our first day, with blasting winds and staccato bursts of lightning all around the horizon - to Tuesday's downpour in almost still air. In the first squall, the rain crossed the deck horizontally; in the second, it was vertical.

"You have to watch the squalls carefully," Nainoa says, "if you see one coming to starboard, for example, you sail right up to the last minute to let it go astern because if it crosses in front of you it blocks your passage. A squall creates a kind of vacuum behind it. There may be no wind for hours at a time. But don't want to wait too long to take in sail because then the squall will hit you and damage our rig or endanger the crew. The first principle aboard this canoe is safety."

This voyage has been a cram course in meteorology. We've experienced the gamut of weather- from constant squalls (ten in a single day) to days like this one in which the sails droop, limp and useless. In this windless world, the sun is hot enough to be dangerous. It's as if we've sailed into the aptly named "Horse Latitudes" at 40 degrees north and south of the equator where a zone of constant high pressure conjures listless winds and the horses - carried aboard the ships of, for example, the Spanish Conquistadors - begin dying of thirst.

From his office at the University of Hawai`i, Bernie Kilonsky has a unique view of our situation - from space, using sophisticated computer imaging. Every day he tells us what he sees via single side band radio. Today, accompanied by wheezing static, he says: "I see an upper cloud layer thick to the south of you all the way to 20 degrees south - solid - but there are no organized storms in it. It's lucky that you left when you did, the convergence zone is settled solidly over Tahiti right now. If you were there it would be a long time before you could leave."

Bernie's computer model shows that we should be experiencing winds a little south of east at about 10 knots, but Nainoa reports that there's virtually no wind here. Our situation appears to be a meteorological anomaly which neither Bernie nor Nainoa can explain.

Every day, Bernie huddles with his colleague Tom Schroeder at the University of Hawai`i's School of Ocean, Earth, Science and Technology and with meteorologists at the National Weather Service - organizations that have provided what Nainoa calls a "Weather Safety Net" for the last 20 years.

"it's not rare to have light, easterly winds in this part of the Pacific at this time of year," Nainoa explains. "It's better to sail from Tahiti to Hawai`i in June, but we're sailing now because this voyage was planned to take advantage of the weather on our leg to Rapa Nui. At this time of year, high pressure systems which cause the trades tend to be weaker and so the trades are lighter."

"The trough over Tahiti compounds our problem. There's a lot of convection in it - rising moist air - which pulls the weak tradewinds down to it, sucking the wind south toward Tahiti and shifting the normal easterly winds to the northeast - and that's where we want to go."

But that's the big picture. Our local weather pattern is caused by rising air, stirred by the heat of the day, which diminishes the trades - stalling us. At night, as Earth cools, the convection dies down - allowing the weak trades to reassert themselves. So during the day, under a blistering sun, we wait patiently for the cool of the night. Under the stars, we make her way slowly north.

A Battle of Inches

Bruce, Joey and Kona are on their hands and knees over a tanbark sail carefully aligning the luff (leading edge) so it is taut as it would be when filled by the wind. They measure a precise distance in from the luff and then paste a small strip of plastic on the sail's surface. This is a "telltale." When the sail is raised and the wind is flowing over it, the telltale will conform to the wind's direction, allowing the navigators to judge whether or not the wind is flowing smoothly over the sail.

Like an airplane's wing, sails create an area of reduced pressure along their leading. The laws of nature decree that as the speed of air flowing over a foil increases, it's pressure decreases. Particles of air, encountering the leading edge of the sail, part to flow over it. Those particles that flow over the curved surface of the sail speed up - producing lower pressure over the sail's surface - lifting it into the wind and imparting forward motion to the canoe. All this works best when the air flow is smooth and this is where Bruce's telltales come in. When trimming Hokule'a's sails, he tightens or loosens the sheet until the telltales lie along the sail's surface without fluttering. "We can trim the sails by eye and experience," Bruce says, "but by using the telltales we can actually see the flow of air to be sure the sail is working at its best."

Then the wind was gone and the sea a vast skin of mercury breathing with the sun. It had the power of it - a million nuclear reactors purring but without the hands of man upon it. Pure - so smooth yet fierce. Calm, yet dangerous. The canoe spun like a needle in a field of lost magnetism. Clues to landfall were lost. Only the sun.

February 11- Moving Again - 6 days since departure

After breakfast every day, as the sun rises off Hokule'a's starboard beam, Nainoa calls a crew meeting. We assemble slowly - finishing chores already begun. On this day, Pomai stows galley utensils as Tava finishes washing dishes in buckets laid out on deck. Nainoa patiently allows the natural morning rhythms to complete themselves.

Today, Shantell presents the navigator's report. "Our estimated position at sunrise was 10 degrees 11 minutes south. We had a good sailing day from sunrise yesterday to sunrise today - 76 miles north. We made up some easting and are now 16 miles west of our course line. We still have 2200 miles to go. We'll try to hold Na Leo/Na Lani - two houses east of north. Last night, we got a fix on Kochab - giving us a position of 10 degrees 30 minutes south. Our dead reckoning position was 10 degrees 11 minutes south, so the two are in pretty close agreement. We're doing great."

The last few days of calm weather have been a blessing - except for the heat - which is somewhat diffused by Hokule'a's sun shades. Are we bored by the constant empty horizon, the repetitive work, our snail's pace? Hardly. When we're sailing hard, we focus on the basics - steering the canoe, navigating, pumping the bilges, trimming sails and all the other tasks associated with crossing 2400 miles of open ocean. But in this zone of calms we have a chance to get to know each other - to talk story, sing songs and try our hands at cooking a special meal. Last night, Mike Tongg prepared fish (a gift from Kamahele's freezer chest) along with taro, rice, and a mix of fruits and spices - a recipe he will not reveal. Today, we wash clothes - festooning Hokule`a's rigging with jackets, bathing suits, tee shirts, pareos - whatever. We read. We talk to our families via single side band and to various school classes by satellite phone. We fish - but at this speed there's little chance of catching anything - and we try, so far without success, to scoop up squid from schools that have accompanied us almost every night.

Yesterday, we made perhaps a knot an hour. Joey Malott broke out a book to read in the shade pool cast by the main sail. Others dozed in their bunks, the canvas flaps of their half tents tied open to encourage errant wind drafts below. The air was thick with heat. The sea satin clam. Sunset brought cooler air and a slight breeze, allowing us to sail north at about 4 knots. Today, with the wind piping up, we steer Haka Ko`olau - one house east of north at about 5 knots.

CREW PROFILE - Joey Mallott

"When I was younger, I fished with my Dad every summer," says Joey Mallott. "We went power trolling for salmon and long lining for halibut in the Gulf of Alaska. It was a lot of hard work and long hours. The waters were rough and cold. We also fished for Coho salmon in the Inside Passage. Sometimes the water was mild and we would nest up with other boats in an isolated cove, cook dinner, tell stories. In the morning we woke up surrounded by an almost undisturbed wilderness. It was beautiful."

The Inside Passage is a legendary waterway - often violent and extremely dangerous, about which author Jonathan Rabin wrote this in his recent book, Passage to Juneau: "The water on which the northwest coast Indians lived their daily lives was full of danger and disorder; seething white through rocky passages, liable to turn violent at the first hint of a contrary wind, plagued with fierce and deceptive currents. The whirlpool - capable of ingesting a whole cedar tree, and then spitting it out again like a cherry pit - was a central symbol of the sea at large, and all its terrors."

Joey was born in Anchorage, Alaska on June 2nd, 1977 to Byron and Toni Mallott. Through his father, he was also born into the Killer Whale clan of the Eagle moiety of the Tlingit Nation and through his mother into an Athabaskan group of people - more specifically the Koyukon Tribe who lived in the interior of Alaska on the Yukon River.

"I spent most of my summers growing up in small Indian villages," Joey says. "My parents wanted me to have that kind of experience, living in small indigenous communities rather than in big cities."

Joey's father, Byron Mallott, is well known among his people. He was born in a time when you saw signs posted which said "No Indians and Dogs Allowed."

"From a young age my dad was motivated by a strong desire to help his people," Joey says, "because he saw a lot of pain among them and the problems of poverty, alcoholism and high rates of illness and early death. He worked hard all his life. When he was only 18 he captained a 56 foot schooner from Washington to Yakutat on the inland passage."

Growing up on this difficult ocean, Byron Mallott learned early to be determined to reach his goals, either at sea or on land among his people. As a young man of only 34, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Sea Alaska Corporation, which manages a huge tract of land belonging to native Alaskans, and he used funds from this enterprise to help lift his people from poverty and depression. Joey Mallott lived with his grandmother as a boy where he learned many of the same values that have motivated his father.

"The day I arrived in her village," Joey says of this experience, "my grandmother handed me a 4/10 gauge shot gun and told me to get dinner. She taught me how to hunt, fish and trap and to live and survive in the outdoors, but more important, her lessons were about patience and kindness and about being open to everyone you meet."

Joey graduated from elementary school and high school in Juneau, Alaska and went on to earn his Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education at the University of the Pacific in 1999.

"Life in college was different than the way I was raised. I saw a lot of vanity there and selfish acts."

In 1991 Nainoa first traveled to Juneau to meet with Byron Mallott to discuss receiving the gift of two giant spruce trees from the Sea Alaska Corporation to build Hawai`iloa. The two men became fast friends which led to a joining of the Thompson and Mallott families which Joey describes as "one single family."

When Pinky Thompson asked Nainoa to choose an Alaskan representative to journey on at least one leg of the voyage to Rapa Nui Joey was offered the position. "I got the call in 1998," Joey remembers, "and I knew right off that I wanted to go."

In 1999, Joey moved to Hawai`i where he now lives with his girlfriend Lissa Jones in Pauoa Valley on O`ahu. "I wanted to take some time off between college and beginning my teaching career, and we both like the idea of living for a while in the islands. Besides, I have family here now."

The experience of being involved with building Hawai`iloa and living in the islands has allowed Joey a deep insight into Hawaiian culture. "I think there's a great deal of similarity between any indigenous culture and how we view the world. That's why Hawaiians and Native Alaskans share so many values. We both respect our elders and believe in taking care of our environment, for example, and we're motivated to recover our native traditions and pride and to bring back our sense of community."

In time, Joey expects to return to Alaska to begin his career as a teacher. When he does, he will bring with him a vision inspired by sailing aboard Hokule`a and Hawai`iloa.

"My people were a seafaring people," Joey explains. "When my father was a young boy he saw large dugout canoes which were used for fishing and traveling from village to village. They're still made today, but mainly as works of art, not for sailing. One of the first things I want to do when I get home is start a project to build a traditional canoe in the traditional way."

Weather Analysis - Sunrise, February 11
Nainoa Thompson

Nainoa spends most of his time on the navigator's platform aft - staring out to sea. He sometimes appears lost in thought, willing himself back a few thousand years to an era when Polynesian navigators sailed across similar expanses of ocean and found landfall without the use of charts or instruments. But mostly, he is observing the sky for subtle changes - clues to the weather.

"A Navigator always looks for signs of weather at sunrise and sunset," Nainoa says. "that's when you try to predict the weather for the next 12 hours. Today, I see strong evidence in the clouds of a change from what we've experienced in the last 2 to 3 days. Looking to the east - off the beam of the canoe - I see various complicated towering high cloud masses. They're remnants of the squalls that we went through last night. Yesterday, and the day before, I looked out and saw actual squalls there. Today there are no squalls evident. You can't really predict the weather, as Mau taught me, from a single snapshot like this. You have to observe changes over time. In this case, I see a change from observing squalls off to starboard yesterday to this view today where there are no active squalls. The wind definitely feels stronger. I can see wind wavelets on the surface of the ocean. And the wind is coming from the normal direction of the southeast trades, so I think the trades are reasserting themselves."

View towards the bow of the canoe from roughly dead ahead to 45 degrees off the bow.

"I see a lot of low level cumulus clouds ahead of us. There are no indications of squalls in those clouds so I think I can predict we're approaching an area of clean flowing wind - trades from the southeast - which will be steady. That's quite a change from the variable winds we've been experiencing. So, for the next 12 hours, I believe the wind will remain steady from the southeast at a fairly constant speed, maybe 10 knots, so we'll be able to sail north today."

"Every time I attempt to predict the weather I'm constantly reminded of how smart our ancestors were. My understanding of nature is feeble compared to theirs. I have only a glimpse into their world - into the strength and courage that made them the greatest navigators and explorers on earth. We sail in comfort, with foul weather gear to protect us on a canoe partly made of modern materials, with all kinds of safety devices on board. They had none of that. They were attuned intimately to nature in a way that we cannot be. At best, our voyages are just beginning to give us a glimpse into their world."

The horizon opened out like a circle of glass and as they moved the circle moved with them, enclosing a changing world of stars and planets. Every night he watched - the clouds, the stars, the planets, the sea mood. Earth tilted against the heavens. It spun in the firmament. He watched. He gathered up the lore of the ho'okele like fierce (word - bird of paradise flower), pliant hibiscus, enfolding maile. Softly and slowly - oh so slowly - the knowledge came. Because he watched patiently and with ha'aha'a and aloha. And watched. And watched. Until he began to see.

Shantell Ching - In the Zone

For the past week, Shantell Ching, navigating Hokule'a home, has gone without appreciable sleep.

"I catnap" she says, "for maybe an hour or so a day. Last night, I was so tired that my head was bouncing. I like to sit in the navigator's seat but I was afraid I might go to sleep and fall overboard so I moved over to the platform."

What Shantell is going through is part of any navigator's rite of passage - attaining the mental and physical stamina needed to constantly process a steady flow of information and make good decisions.

"It takes a lot of adjusting just to get in synch with the ocean after being on land for so long, " Shantell explains. "I need to get to where I can mentally see the canoe in the middle of the star compass in the middle of the ocean - so I see the compass points on the horizon. I have to reorient myself to the southern stars, for example, so I don't have to think about where they will come up but I seem to know by instinct".

Most top athletes attain a similar instinct when they're performing at their peak. Basketball players, for example, report having "eyes in the back of their heads." They know what's happening in the court all around them - how other players will move, where the ball will be. "I'm in the zone," they say. Sport psychologists think to enter 'the zone' a top athlete must learn to use both sides of his brain, first mastering the mechanics of the game in the right-hand, rational side of the brain - then switching to the left side, the control center for human artistry, to become truly creative. The process that Shantell describes seems to be similar. She's entering her own version of 'the zone'.

"I'm gradually getting the entire sky in my head, " she says. "I'm getting a good feel for how the waves make the canoe move when we're steering different courses. I need to get in synch with the canoe - to feel in my body when she's pinched too far into the wind or when she's sailing too far off the wind - when she's struggling and when she's free."

"Lack of sleep is no longer a problem. I can be immersed in the navigation, for example, but when we encounter the beginning of a squall I snap right out of it and know exactly what to do. I'm right there. I've been learning about navigation now for six years and this is a chance to apply what I've learned. If I'm successful, the credit goes to my teachers - to Nainoa and to Bruce and Chad. And, really, to all the teachers who inspired me. When I was in elementary school I was too young to understand how important math would be in my life but a lot of navigation is basic math - addition, subtraction, simple trig. Now, when I solve a math problem in my head, I thank all those teachers who were strict with me".

"I can see Hawai'i in my mind and that's a good sign. Nainoa taught me that to find an island, you first have to see it mentally - and that's also what Mau taught him."

February 13th

Dawn reveals a dark slate-gray ocean. The swells are confused, flogged by wind into whitecaps, and the sky is veined with clouds of all descriptions. It's as if Mother Nature dug deep into her laundry bin to hang out every cloud she owns. The canoe sails Naleo/Haka Ko'olau (one and two houses east of north) at 5 knots in a 10 to 15 knot wind from La Ko'olau (one house north of east). This morning, the navigators estimate we're 40 miles to the west of our reference course at 7 degrees 16 minutes south latitude. We continue to deviate from our ideal course. The winds force us to steer off to the west.

"At some point we'll have to make that back," says Shantell Ching, "but we want to continue moving north as efficiently as possible so we're willing to deviate a little from our course line".

During the day yesterday, we sailed 43 miles and during the evening, in spite of many harassing squalls, we traveled 37 additional miles toward Hawai'i.

Road to the Wind
Nainoa Thompson

"Mau taught me to call clouds that look like this "the road to the wind." Imagine at the far horizon there's a factory producing the clouds and, like smoke from a haystack, they follow the wind. This road indicates the wind is coming from the horizon. And because the road is straight, the wind is steady. If you see the road curve, it means that the wind will change direction and the way it curves will tell you the new direction. It's interesting to me that meteorologists call this kind of phenomenon "cloud streets", pretty close to Mau's term "Road to the Wind."

February 13 - 14: Valentine's Day

At sunset, the moon - now half full - presents itself above our masts. The dense clouds following us for the last few days have receded far astern - behind the gently swaying running lights of Kama Hele. The sky dome is clear. The wind is cool. We don tee-shirts and jackets as we go on watch. Tava, leaning against the aft safety rail says, "going to be a nice night."

At 6 p.m., our navigators conclude we are at 6 degrees 22 minutes south latitude and 58 miles west of our course line. Having sailed 54 miles since sunrise, we're now about 1880 miles from Hawai'i. We steer by Mars, setting in Komohana (west); by Jupiter and Saturn, setting in La Ho'olua (one house north of west); and by Venus, rising in 'Aina Malanai (two houses south of east).

During his painstaking observations of the stars in the Bishop Museum Planetarium, Nainoa discovered a variety of star pairs that appear to set simultaneously when the observer is at a specific latitude. He calls this phenomenon "synchronous setting." Tonight, the navigators will pay particular attention to observing two star pairs - Saiph and Betelgeuse, in Orion; and Murzim, a star near Sirius, and Alhena, in Gemini. When either of these two pairs arc down to the horizon at the same time, we are at 6 degrees south latitude.

"We'll be looking carefully at both pairs," Shantell says, "because we think we're approaching 6 south and so if they do set simultaneously, it will confirm our dead reckoning."

Getting a good navigational fix is now particularly important because our navigators have been plotting their position by dead reckoning since departing Tikehau - without a solid celestial observation as a reality check.

"On this voyage you ideally navigate by dead reckoning for about 360 miles," says Nainoa, "but because we've had so much bad weather we've been doing it for more than 750 miles - and that's not comfortable. So I'm looking forward to getting some good celestial clues by the star pairs and also by observing Kochab (Holopuni)."

During this morning's navigator's meeting, shortly after sunrise on Valentine's Day, the navigators report our position is 5 degrees 27 seconds south - 68 miles west of our reference course.

"We observed the star pairs setting at the same time last night," Shantell says, "so we're pretty confident of our latitude. Our dead reckoning estimates are very close to what the stars indicate. That gives us additional confidence in our position."

(begin to weave in the fear that the low pressure area will move over us)

CREW PROFILE - Kahualaulani Mick

When Kahualaulani Mick was only four years old, in 1975, his mother took him to see Aunty Emma DeFries, a descendant of Kamehameha The First and Queen Emma who was Kahu of a well known educational halau specializing in teaching Hawaiian culture.

"It didn't matter to her or not if you had Hawaiian blood," Kahulaulani says, "she would look into the soul of each prospective student to see if they were open to her teaching. Even though I am not Hawaiian - she took me into her halau and now, looking back on it, that was a turning point in my life."

For five years, every Saturday, Kahualaulani met with Aunty Emma and her other students in an apartment at Queen Emma's summer palace where she was a custodian.

"She took us all over the islands and she taught us a lot about Hawaiian culture and history. Although she passed away in 1980 I still talk to her. My decisions in life are still based on her teachings. "Among Aunty Emma's gifts was Kahualaulani's name which she translated as "fruitful branch of Heaven."

After graduating from Kalaheo High School in Kailua in 1989, Kahualaulani went to Colorado State College in Fort Collins to study Animal Sciences. He lasted a year. "It was too damn cold and the surf was terrible," he jokes about it now, but mainly like so many young Hawaiians who travel "away" to school - he missed the islands.

"They put me in a dorm with three other Hawaiians and all we did was talk about home. When people found out we were from Hawaii they always asked us 'why are you here?' After a while I asked the same questions and, when the first year was over, I came home."

The next year he enrolled in the Hawaiian Studies program at the University of Hawaii to "make up for lost time. Being away led me to really appreciate being Hawaiian," he explains, "and I think my decision goes back to the influence of Aunty Emma."

In 1990 Kahualaulani first joined the Protect Kahoolawe `Ohana and since 1992 he has attended every one of the annual Makahiki celebrations there. "Aunty Emma was one of the advisors to Emmet Aluli and George Helm in the early days," Kahualaulani remembers, "and I think she knew I would one day become a member of the `ohana. She had Ike Papalua - foreknowledge. It's hard to explain but even though so many years have passed I feel like she's right here. The day she passed away, a night heron came and perched on a wall at our house in Kailua and so the heron has become a kind of family aumakua. I always associate Aunty Emma with that beautiful bird."

Kahualaulani took the first navigation course taught by Chad and Nainoa and made his first voyage on Hokule`a in October of 1994 on an interisland trip to Moloka`i. In 1995, when Hokule`a went into dry dock, Kahualaulani showed up to help. Later Dennis Kawaharada asked him to be a teacher in PVS's ho`olokahi program.

"That was a really different experience," he recalls, "I was really green. I thought, 'I can't do this, I don't know enough,' but somehow I did - and being a teacher taught me a lot."

For three months that year Kahualaulani virtually lived on the porch of the school at Honaunau on the Big Island - teaching in classrooms some of the time and on the decks of the voyaging canoe E`ala the rest. During 1997, he voyaged aboard Hokule`a for five months during her statewide sail.

"We made connections with so many people. I could see it in their eyes when they came aboard. They all felt the same thing as I did when I first stepped on Hokule`a's deck, a sense of awe - pure and simple - a sense of beauty."

In addition to voyaging aboard Hokule`a, Kahualulani has spent a great deal of time sailing with Makali`i and her `ohana. "I really like being on Makali`i too," he says. "She's a different canoe and I learn a lot being aboard - and the Makali`i family is wonderfully supportive. I'm honored to think I may be a part of it."

"I remember the first day of the navigation class at U.H.," he says looking back to the beginning of his experience with voyaging. "Nainoa came in and told us that navigation was not about sailing - it was about life - about having a vision of where you wanted to go and making good decisions. I knew then that studying navigation and sailing would change my life, and it has."

Now, facing his first long voyage aboard Hokule`a as apprentice navigator, Kahualaulani admits to being "somewhat scared. But I'm going anyway. I've studied for this trip for five years. I've been teaching navigation and now this is my chance for validation - to actually do it, not just talk about it."

Of the five separate legs of the "voyage to Rapa Nui" he feels extremely honored to be on this one. "There are three reasons why I wanted to be on this leg. First- it's an ancient voyaging route; second - it's the trip that all my mentors made when they were just starting out - guys like Nainoa and Snake; and finally, we will be going home to Hawai`i."

February 15 - Weather Watch

Nainoa's view of the sea at sunrise, and what he sees in the shape of the clouds.

"The sky where the sun is rising is very clear - I don't see any smoke (which is caused by strong winds stirring salt into the atmosphere) - so I think the winds will be relatively light today."

"Ahead of us, I see two squalls, but there are no squalls beyond them so we should have good weather once we pass through them

February 16 - 10 days since departure

February 15th, sunset: we're once again steering the canoe around the clock, seeking to pinch up into a wind that keeps shouldering us west of our desired course line. Tava mans the steering sweep. Chad stands next to him carefully assessing Hokule'a's speed. Together, they hunt for the most efficient sailing angle to a wind which blows from Noio Ko'olau, 3 houses north of east. We would much prefer a wind from the east, or better yet south of east, to help us move back toward our reference course. At sunrise yesterday, we were sixty miles west of our course line. At sunrise today, we're about seventy-six miles west of it.

As night falls, the glow of a computer screen perched atop Hokule'a's radio box signals a big change aboard the canoe. On the previous legs of our voyage to Rapa Nui the computer has been on the escort boat. Now, to make it easier for us to carry out our educational programs, we've moved it aboard. Yesterday, the demand was so heavy that the screen remained lit from 8am to 8pm. Chad wrote and sent off a feature article to the Honolulu Advertiser and Bruce sent a complex memo concerning the logistics of Hokule'a's upcoming 25th anniversary celebration. We processed and sent out photos, a daily report and an internet article. The system works well as long as we have clear skies and light seas. In heavy weather, we'll have to cut back on our transmissions.

At about 8 pm, mid-level clouds slide over us, erasing the stars from three-quarters of the sky. "It's a good sign," says Nainoa, " because the clouds are moving from due east so it's possible we'll see the wind shift back east - but its hard to tell when."

During the rest of the evening, however, we struggle to steer into a stubborn wind that flows from a few houses further north than we would like. And we often hear the familiar command "single up" - signifying that we remove the bridles from the sails so they're held in trim by only a single line, called a bronco, ready to be triced in quickly in squalls. It's a command that we've heard countless times in the last eleven days of changeable weather.

At sunrise on February 16th, with the decks sheened by yet another rain squall, we learn that our efforts at the steering sweep have paid off. The navigators report we've only "lost" a mile and a half to the west since sunset.

"We're 723 miles from Tikehau and 1,667 from Hawai'i ," Shantell reports.

Factoring in their dead reckoning estimates and an early morning observation of Holopuni (Kochab) the navigators reckon our latitude to be 2 degrees 58 minutes south.

February 17 - A New Sail Plan

Just before sunset yesterday, Nainoa called a meeting to discuss a new sail plan. For the last three days, we've been struggling to sail the canoe hard into a wind that blows from the east-northeast. But in spite of our best efforts, we're being forced to the west of our reference course. On February 13th, we were 35 miles west. During the next four days the numbers mounted - 58 , 60, 75 and 110 miles. To make up this distance we continually pinch into the wind. We may even have to tack.

"We are west of our course line and getting more so every day," Nainoa told us. "That's not because of bad steering, everyone of you has done an awesome job of holding a course. The northerly wind is pushing us west. The canoe wants to sail free and we've been driving her hard to get back to our course line. We're not doing that anymore. We're going to head directly toward South Point. We're eliminating the safety cushion. It will be difficult - and it will require discipline from all of us - but it's a new challenge. It's exciting."

Ever since the first voyage in 1976, Nainoa's reference course has allowed for a large 'cushion' of error by targeting a point in the ocean 275 miles east of the Big Island (at the mid-latitude of Hawai'i) where he would finally turn down wind to find landfall. But with twenty-five years of experience, the ability of Hokule'a's navigators to find their way during long ocean passages has improved, so a cushion may no longer be needed. Taking that into consideration, along with the fact that Hokule'a's present heading seems destined to bring her directly to Hawai'i's South Point - Nainoa decided to let the canoe run free, to find the most efficient way home by following a route that the winds allow.

"When we sailed to Rapa Nui," Nainoa pointed out, "the canoe seemed to find her own way to landfall. It's difficult to explain. It's the mana of this canoe. When Max said he saw land ahead on the day we found Rapa Nui I was in shock and denial at first. We had been sailing in squalls even worse than we've experienced on this voyage. I stayed back at the navigator's platform. I didn't believe it. Bruce had to come back and tug me to go forward - 'there it is - it's there,' he told me."

"I'm not saying that we had nothing to do with finding Rapa Nui - far from it. We trained hard for two and a half years and we chose a crew of intense, dedicated professionals. We worked every inch of the way. Now I want to do the same thing on this voyage."

"Shantell and the apprentice navigators will continue to plot our position and we will continue with our daily meetings," Nainoa explained, "but now Bruce, Chad and I will also meet to come up with our own positions. We won't tell the students where we think we are. The learning process will continue because education is an extremely important goal of this voyage. So far, the students have done extremely well. I'm sure that will continue. But the precision needed in this new sail plan - without the cushion - requires the senior navigators to take a more active role."

"I'm excited. We have a new challenge. It will test us all and it will give Hokule'a the freedom she needs to find her way home - which seems especially fitting on this voyage which marks her 25th anniversary."

Dawn on February 17th, finds the crew in their slickers after encountering more rain squalls during the evening. The wind has accelerated to 20 knots from the east-northeast ('Aina Ko'olau). The canoe dances over short swells scarred by whitecaps.

"Last night, after we let the canoe run free, the sky cleared and the wind began to accelerate," says Nainoa. "This morning we're making good time - rocketing home - and the canoe feels so good, so smooth and confident."

CREW PROFILE - Kaui Pelekane

Among those called to medicine, it is probably accurate to say that the innermost sanctum of practice is the operating room of a major hospital. A hospital like The Queen's Hospital in Honolulu, Hawai'i's largest, where Kau`i Pelekane has been a surgical nurse for the last four years. Her ascent to this extremely demanding position has not been easy - calling for a complex juggling act in which the needs of a career had to be matched always against those of her two children, Ikaika and Kaimipono, now thirteen and eleven years old.

Kau`i was born in Long Beach, California on January 24, 1965, but was raised in Kailua-Kona by her parents Mike and Monique Pelekane. In 1983 Kau`i graduated from Konawaena high school and enrolled in nursing school at the University of Hawai`i, which she attended for a year before taking time off to marry Tim Mencastre (they are now divorced) and begin having children. To support her family, Kau`i worked for a time at a bank.

"Then I began to consider my life and my responsibility to both myself and my kids and I decided that I didn't want to be a bank teller for the rest of my life," Kauai says. "When I was in high school I worked in a doctor's office as a secretary and when the doctor did minor surgery I occasionally was called on to assist him. I found that I liked helping people and I think that's where I got the idea to become a nurse."

In 1989, pregnant with her second son, Kau`i returned to nursing school, enrolling in a two-year associate degree program which resulted in her qualification as a registered nurse. For three and a half years she worked in the oncology ward and then learned that Queen's was opening a six month surgical training program. Only four applicants would be accepted from many candidates.

"I got in the second time I applied," Kau`i explains, "and now I have been working as a surgical nurse for four years. It's very intense sometimes," she adds, "but I really feel that I am helping people."

Although Kau`i was born on the mainland, she doesn't remember much about her life there because she was so young when she returned to Hawai`i.

"My family on the Big Island were heavily involved in paddling," she remembers, "and they started the Kaiopua canoe club in Kona. I have been paddling since I was ten years old. My dad took me fishing and taught me how to pick `opihi. My family had a catering business so I learned how to cook for a luau. In Hawai`i," she continues, "we had avocado trees and never paid for fish. Vegetables and other fruits came from our neighbors. When I first moved to O`ahu I couldn't get used to buying fish in the market " - here Kau`i pauses for a moment to laugh at herself - "and I refused to pay for fish for about a year."

Today, Kau`i and her two children live in Kailua and she paddles for the Hui Nalu canoe club where she first met Nainoa.

"I have always known about Hokule`a," she remembers, "but I never dreamed that I would ever sail aboard her. Then, late in 1998, Nainoa asked me if I would be willing to be the medic on board for the last leg of the Rapa Nui voyage. How could I say no? Even though I had big reservations about it - taking on such a large responsibility - I said 'yes, I'll go."

Kau`i was not only concerned about being responsible for the health of the crew during a voyage far from land, she also worried about her two young children. How would they deal with her absence for such a long time and could she endure the separation herself?

"I spent about a year preparing them - maybe I should say preparing us - for the voyage. We talked about how important it was. I told them that I would be safe. They said, 'Okay.' Then they asked, 'How long?' I told them five weeks."

Here Kau`i pauses for a moment considering her children, obviously missing them.

"It's difficult. I know they are being well cared for and I know they understand the meaning of the voyage. They were in the immersion program for a long time and so maybe they even understand it better than I do. But I just can't help worrying about them."

To prepare for her anticipated role as both Hokule`a's only health care provider and as a crew member, Kau`i stepped up her regular regime of paddling and read about the medical problems she was likely to encounter aboard the canoe - heat stroke, dehydration, common illnesses and various psychological issues which she subsumes under the heading of "cabin fever." She now feels well prepared for any eventuality but, as it turned out, the responsibility of caring for Hokule`a's crew will not be hers alone. A few months ago, Dr. Ming-Lei Tim Sing also joined the crew.

"That was actually a great relief for me," Kau`i says. "We make a great team and I'm much more secure now that we can handle any problems we might encounter."

In January, 1999, Kau`i remembers attending the first meeting for crew members at the Maritime Center.

"Bruce and Chad explained the goals of the voyage and of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and I became even more excited about going. They talked about the opportunity for them to pass on the knowledge they have gained to the next generation of sailors and to do something that our ancestors had done centuries ago. And then I thought about my own children. I realized that I'm not making the voyage just for myself but also for them. When I come home, I will certainly have learned something that I can pass on to them."

Feb. 20 - 15 days: aita pea pea

Just before sunrise yesterday, in a pattern now familiar, we caught fish - an aku and an ono, each about 20 pounds. Bruce sliced into the ono, removing the liver and the heart. Tava cut up the heart, added lime juice, and offered it around. Suddenly, I had something important to accomplish elsewhere on the canoe.

A highlight yesterday afternoon was our crossing-the-line ceremony presented by Ming's halau of newly minted shellbacks - Kahualaulani, Joey, Kona, Kau'i, and Ka'iulani. In the evening, like clockwork, rows of cumulus clouds assembled on the horizon - pink at the tips and dark underneath. Under clear skies, we continued to sail north at about six knots. The winds were east-northeast at 25 knots, gusting to 30, churning white caps and froth on the wave tops. Nainoa observed the North Star near the horizon ahead of us - a certain sign we have crossed the equator. The night watches experienced calm weather, with no bothersome squalls.

At dawn this morning, we caught a large alele (needle nosed sailfish) and yet another aku. Even though we share our catch with Kama Hele, we now have too much fish - so Mike, Tava and Snake fashion drying racks outboard of the navigator's platforms.

Today, the northeast swell abates, to be replaced by swells from the east, with gentle faces, widely separated. The canoe's motion smoothes out.

The night is jagged. Sparks rage across the horizon under dark folded cloud. The constant wind is gone. Now it flutters as if beneath the wings of a giant noio perching in flight for a steep ocean-piercing dive. They have sailed deep into the distant horizon beneath new stars - a strange sky becoming known because he has watched it so carefully - mapping each new light deep in the folds of memory - the way back clear - the homeland seen always behind him floating under the familiar sky there. The sureness of that place drove him deeper into the new one, following the words of the meles, poems of ancestors, flowing now to him across the ancient sea paths even as the ocean became angry and rose up over the bows of the canoe and the dark line of wind closed off the light and swept down upon him.

The Doldrums and Na'au - Flashback - March 15, 1980
Almost twenty years ago, Nainoa sets out on his first voyage.

After training for three years with Will Kyselka and Mau Piailug, Nainoa boarded Hokule'a as the first Hawaiian navigator in centuries to set out for Tahiti. In spite of all his preparation, he struggled with deep anxieties about the voyage. He felt responsible for the safety of his crew. He felt the weight of constant public scrutiny - of television cameras and news interviews. Mau had lived with the sea and the stars all his life, how could he expect to emulate even a part of his genius? And in the midst of a renaissance of pride among Polynesians, his success - or failure - took on new dimensions.

I was afraid every day that I was in Hilo waiting to go. I constantly rehearsed everything that could go wrong - instead of focusing on how to make it work. I felt responsible for the crew's safety and also for the whole public arena, for doing well.

The day we finally left the Hilo breakwater stands out powerfully in my mind, because all of a sudden I felt much better. Now I focused on making the journey, not worrying about it. But I was still worried about staying awake. Mau never sleeps at sea. He can stay up all night, for weeks on end. I thought, "how in the world am I going to do that?" Not sleeping was part of Mau's magic, not part of mine.

Mau told me that the mind doesn't need much rest, but the physical body does. So when the navigator is on the canoe, the crew does the physical work. "When you are tired," he said, "you close your eyes." He told me that even though his eyes were closed, he is always awake in his heart. And when I sailed with him, I saw that was true. Preparing for the voyage, I tried to figure out how Mau stayed awake. I forced myself to stay up for a day or so but then I collapsed. I couldn't do it. So when we left Hilo I felt like I was voyaging both into an unknown ocean and into unknown regions of my own potential.

It was ten thirty at night. Tumor was rising, Maui's fishhook. I thought, "it's pretty late and I had better get some rest or I will be a basket case tomorrow."

I lay down and closed my eyes. I thought, "how stupid you are. You are not prepared to go to sleep. You cannot sleep." So I got up and from then on I slept only two to three hours a day. When I became so exhausted that I couldn't think, I lay down. I slept until I dreamed. Then I got up. I slept maybe ten or fifteen minutes at a time and that was enough. My mind was refreshed. I learned to do that for a month. It was a whole new reality.

As the voyage progressed and Hokule'a neared the equator, Nainoa worried about what would happen when the canoe entered the doldrums where hot air ascends from a three hundred mile wide belt of ocean. Here the constant northeast trades winds die off to be replaced by long periods of calm, followed by severe buffeting squalls, then windless days once more. It's a navigator's nightmare. Which way is the current taking me? How fast? From what direction did the wind blow in that last squall? In what direction did it push us? How far? Where am I?

"I dreaded the doldrums. I had no confidence that I could get through it. I thought that I could only accurately navigate if I had visual celestial clues, and that when I got into the doldrums there would be a hundred percent cloud cover. I would be blind. And that's what happened. When we arrived n the doldrums, the sky went black. It was solid rain. The wind was strong - about 25 knots - and it was switching around. We were moving fast. That's the worst thing that can happen - you are going fast and you don't know where you're going. I couldn't tell the steersmen where to steer. I was very, very tense. I knew that I had to avoid fatigue - I couldn't allow myself to get physically tense. But I couldn't help it. I just couldn't stop myself.

I was so exhausted that I backed up against the rail to rest. Then something strange happened. When I gave up fighting to find a clue in the sky and I settled down, then, all of a sudden, a warmth came over me. All of a sudden, I knew where the moon was. But I couldn't see the moon - it was so black."

"The feeling of warmth and the image of the moon gave me a strong sense of confidence. I knew where to go. I directed the canoe on a new course and then - just for a moment - there was a hole in the clouds and the light of the moon shone through - just where I expected it to be. I can't explain it, but that was one of the most precious moments in all my sailing experience. I realized there was a deep connection between something in my abilities and my senses that goes beyond the analytical, beyond seeing with my eyes. It was something very deep inside. And now I seek out those experiences. I can't always do it. I have to be in the right frame of mind. I can't conjure up those experiences consciously. But they are coming more often now. It just happens. I don't want to analyze it too much. I just want to make it happen more often."

"Before that happened, I tended to rely totally on math and science because it was so much easier to explain things that way. I didn't know how to trust my instincts. My instincts were not trained enough to be trusted. Now I know that there are certain levels of navigation that are realms of the spirit. Hawaiians call it na'au - knowing through your instincts, your feelings, rather than your mind, your intellect.

Weather Analysis - February 20th
Nainoa Thompson

PIX
Normal trade wind clouds and sea state on February 20, 2000.

"On the horizon you see what we call zone-based tradewind cumulus clouds. There's little vertical development, meaning no high clouds, and no squalls are visible. These clouds suggest to me a stable weather pattern. The wind is clean and predictable, blowing 20-25 knots. I judge the wind speed by the feel of the wind against my body, also by the fact there are a lot of white caps and wind streaks on the ocean surface, AND BY the size of the swells which are about ten feet high.

Feb. 20 - 15 days since departure: Sailing on the Edge

"He ho'okele wa'a no ka la 'ino"
"A canoe steersman for a stormy night."
Said of a courageous person.

During the afternoon yesterday, the wind piped up to 25 knots and began to shift east-northeast. The swells became steep, faceted, and dark. As the sun sank lower, the sound of the wind increased in pitch and volume. We were pleased with the increase in Hokule'a's speed but concerned about her course - now even more to the west. At sunset, Nainoa briefs the crew.

"We're in an interesting situation. We can't keep losing ground to the west, so we're going to have to steer close to the wind. But we can't lose speed, because we're in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). We don't know when the doldrums might reassert themselves so we've got to get out of here as fast as possible. We may have to tack to make up for the ground we've lost to the west, but I don't want to tack in the ITCZ - not until we get to 10 degrees north. Steering close to the wind will be a lot of work but if we do it right, we should be in Hawaiian waters in a little more than a week.

Later that night, after dodging some squalls and enduring others, the clouds dissipated and we saw the north star ahead, about five degrees above the horizon, indicating we're at five degrees north latitude. The wind increased. The sea humped up and we manned the steering paddle to hold the canoe on the edge of the wind. This time, the dance was not delicate. The paddle kicked and bucked as we struggled to control it.

"With the back sail hauled in tight and a small jib, the canoe is not well balanced," Nainoa explains. "The canoe wants to turn into the wind, so your job is to let her do that until she's ready to come into irons, then put in the paddle and steer downwind, but not too much."

"Sailing close to the wind without stalling requires a delicate touch and sensitivity to the natural environment. To go into the wind, the sails are strapped down tight to make them efficient airfoils. We have 800 feet of canvas up there so the wind pressure on them is intense. If you turn downwind, the canoe presents more canvas to the wind and she speeds up. That feels good to an inexperienced helmsman. We're going fast - but we're going in the wrong direction. We're heading too far west. So you have to correct quickly"

Nainoa calls these conditions "sailing on the edge." To do it properly, a helmsman must become attuned to a number of signs. Is the windward rigging taut or slightly loose? Is the canoe heeling to leeward or running flat? Are the sails straining with pressure or relaxed? Are they luffing? What does the wind sound like?

"You know you're too far off the wind when the wind sound increases, the canoe accelerates, and the pressure in the sails causes her to heel over onto her leeward hull. Also look at the windward rigging - it will be as taut as piano wire. So put the paddle up and bring her into the wind until you're still going fast, but the canoe is no longer heeling - she feels flat in the water - and the windward shrouds are a little loose. Hold it right there. If you steer too high into the wind, the speed drops off and the sails begin to luff. That's already too late, put the paddle down and steer off. The trick is to avoid zigzagging. Going up to far, over-correcting, then going down too far. The goal is to maintain a steady course - on the edge."

To make this easier, Nainoa trims the sails and moves weight fore and aft to balance the canoe. Haul in the back sail and the canoe wants to turn into the wind - creating what sailors call a weather helm. Loosen the back sail and the canoe wants to turn downwind - a condition known as lee helm. Move weight forward and the canoe turns up; move weight back and the canoe turns down. When we get it right, we tie down the steering paddle and allow Hokule'a to steer herself for a time. But the balance is so delicate that when a crew member leaves her puka forward and walks aft to take a bath, the canoe may come a few degrees off the wind.

This refined tuning of crew and canoe on the edge of the wind is necessary because the wind conditions are so unusual. The northeast trades, usually found in the northern hemisphere, have crossed over into the southern hemisphere. In one sense, this is good - because instead of encountering fickle winds or no winds in the ITCZ, we have strong winds.

"It looks like Hokule'a will set a speed record for the ITCZ," says Nainoa, "and that's good . But instead of southeast trades, we're getting wind from the northeast and that has forced us way west of our ideal course line."

"I could tack east now, but I'm going to wait until we get through the ITCZ and we're at ten degrees north and then decide. We have to be ready to take advantage of a wind shift. If the wind shifts slightly east or south of east we may be able to go straight on. If it shifts to the north, we'll tack to the east to make up the distance we've lost."

In the last few days, Nainoa has been pondering alternate strategies for finding Hawaii - taking into consideration what the wind may be when we pass through the ITCZ.

"The winds are now northeast to north-northeast at 25 knots so we're steering northwest - we're not even aiming at the Hawaiian chain. We can make Hawaii if we can steer two houses west of north, but now we're steering three houses west."

Buffeted by unfavorable winds, we've not only lost our cushion - but it's now possible that we may sail past the Hawaiian Islands altogether.

"If we arrive at about twenty degrees north latitude (the center of the Hawaiian chain) and we haven't seen the Islands, what then?" Nainoa asks. "Are the islands to the east or west? With our original sail plan, and the cushion it provided, we would know we were to the west. But without that cushion we can't be sure. So we would have to turn east, against the wind, and tack in a search pattern."

Nainoa pauses for a moment, then says, "I guess in ancient times, if you were west of the islands and turned down wind, you were dead. I still ask myself how did our ancestors ever colonize such a vast ocean? Twenty-five years ago I had no intelligent way to answer the question. Now, even though I know a lot more, I still don't have the answer."

Chad Baybayan - Wayfinding

Chad Baybayan stands about five feet eight inches. He has a swimmer's body, suggesting a capability of delivering powerful strokes and a strong finishing kick. He is dark both by genetic makeup (he is part Hawaiian, part Filipino) and because he spends a lot of time in the sun attending to his duties as one of Hokule'a's navigators. Chad will readily tell you that voyaging aboard the canoe has been the seminal experience of his life - accounting for the fact that he is about to receive a master's degree in education, for his happy marriage and fatherhood, for his inner sense of confidence.

"When I first saw Hokule'a in 1975, it just grabbed my heart. I knew that if there was anything in my life that I wanted to do it was sail on her."

For a time, it appeared that Chad's wish might not happen. Chad was too young for the 1976 voyage to Tahiti. In 1978, when the canoe swamped on a second journey, it looked like voyaging might end. But shortly thereafter, new management took over the Polynesian Voyaging Society and Baybayan spent countless hours working with sandpaper and paintbrush, helping to overhaul the canoe for another voyage. In 1980 he made his first ocean passage to Tahiti as the "youngest member of the crew" and began to study navigation by "asking Nainoa Thompson (the canoe's navigator) a lot of questions." During the next nineteen years he spent as much time as he could afford aboard the canoe, eventually working his way up the informal hierarchy to full fledged navigator.

Among Hokule'a's navigators (there are three other fully qualified ones - Nainoa Thompson, Shorty Bertelmann, Bruce Blankenfeld) Chad may be the most charismatic, and it is for this reason that he is often chosen to be the Voyaging Society's spokesman. So it was that one evening in May of 1999 (98?), Chad stepped forward to talk to crew candidates for the upcoming voyage between Hawaii and Rapa Nui. The men and women assembled before him were about to go through a final four day training session that would include an open ocean swim of nearly two miles, a sail aboard Hokule'a, and many hours of testing their navigation and seamanship skills. They all knew each other well. Most of them, excluding a few young rookies, had sailed on previous voyages during the canoe's twenty-five year career.

"You are all here because you share a powerful vision for Hawaii," Baybayan told them. "And that vision joins you together across differences in ethnicity and race and where you may have been born and raised. You share a common desire to make this world better."

Baybayan's notion of ethnic and racial unity was not always a part of the voyaging consciousness. The early 1970s marked a cultural revival among Hawaiians that inspired not only pride but also renewed painful memories of a history marked by near genocide, loss of land, and culture. The times were ripe for sectarianism. On the first voyage to Tahiti in 1976 - a near mutiny was inspired by some crewmembers who felt that only authentic Hawaiians, as they defined it, should be allowed aboard the canoe. But now, almost twenty-five years later, seated before Baybayan were men and women of many extractions - Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, German, English, American. They had shared hundreds of hours working together during which potential differences between them had come to mean not a whit.

Confronting the sea on long voyages, Chad has had much time to integrate all that he has learned and he has done so by bundling an astonishing number of lessons into a general philosophy that he (and the other sailors and navigators as well) calls "wayfinding."

Chad distinguishes wayfinding from navigation - the technical art of finding land without the use of instruments or charts. He will tell you that wayfinding is "a way of organizing the world." He has also said that it's "a way of leading," "of finding a vision," "a set of values," "how to take care of the earth," and, in general, "a model for living my life."

Chad's vision of wayfinding eventually evolved to contain principals that appear astonishingly universal and timeless, while, at the same time, being rooted in values that Hawaiians have come to recognize as inherent in their own unique history. Values like vision, for example.

"Our ancestors began all of their voyages with a vision," Baybayan explained during his talk to the assembled crew. "They could see another island over the horizon and they set out to find these islands for a thousand years, eventually moving from one island stepping stone to another across a space that is larger than all of the continents of Europe combined."

"After many years, I began to understand that wayfinding was really a model for living," Chad continued. "Once you have the vision of a landfall over the horizon, you need to develop a plan to get there, how you are going to navigate, how much food you need. You must evaluate the kinds of skills you need to carry out the plan and then you must train yourself to get those skills. You need discipline to train. Then, when you leave land, you must have a cohesive crew - a team - and that requires aloha - a deep respect for each other. The key to wayfinding is to employ all these values. You are talking about running a ship, getting everybody on board to support the intent of the voyage, and getting everybody to work together. So it's all there - vision, planning, training, discipline and aloha for others. After a while, if you apply all those values, it becomes a way of life."

Chad Baybayan's concept of wayfinding is not exclusive to him. It is, in fact, a voyaging subculture shared by everyone who is attracted to the canoe and who sticks around long enough to learn the lessons it has to teach.
In the last decade or so, the philosophy of wayfinding has "moved ashore" so to speak. New words have entered the wayfinding vocabulary, "stewardship" for example, or "sustainable environments." Lessons learned at sea are now being applied to the land. The ancient philosophy of wayfinding is now merging with the new world view of environmentalism, as Chad explains: "To be a wayfinder, you need certain skills - a strong background in ocean sciences, oceanography, meteorology, environmental sciences - so that you have a strong grounding in how the environment works. When you voyage, you become much more attuned to nature. You begin to see the canoe as nothing more than a tiny island surrounded by the sea. We have everything aboard the canoe that we need to survive as long as we marshal those resources well. We have learned to do that. Now we have to look at our islands, and eventually the planet, in the same way. We need to learn to be good stewards."

This new vision is at the core of the Voyaging Society's "Malama Hawaii" program which we celebrate on this voyage home.

"At the beginning of this new millennium, we honor the first 25 years of Hokule'a's life and the achievements we've all realized working together," Nainoa writes in an open letter on this web site. "Since 1975, the canoe has sailed more than 90,000 miles, taking us to each of the points of the Polynesian Triangle. We've learned a lot during these voyages - the power behind shared vision, the energy generated through collaboration, the continuing thrill of exploration and discovery and the joy of kinship."
"But by far, the most compelling lesson we've learned in all of our travels has to do with home. We've come to appreciate anew, the uniqueness of Hawaii and her people and our responsibility to work together to maintain that uniqueness."

"Learning to live well on islands is a microcosm of learning to live well everywhere. Here in Hawaii we are surrounded by the world's largest ocean, but Earth itself is also a kind of island, surrounded by an ocean of space. In the end, every single one of us - no matter what our ethnic background or nationality - is native to this planet. As the native community of Earth we should all ensure that the next century is the century of pono - of balance - between all people, all living things and the resources of our planet."

February 21 - 16 days: Will the wind ever shift to the East?

(add photo of 140 pound ahi caught today)

On Feb. 20th, we sail into the evening surrounded by dusky fair weather cumulus clouds. At sunset, the wind abates to about 15-20 knots and the sea moderates.

"The wind will come around to the east," says Nainoa.

And sure enough - when the clouds ahead part to reveal the North Star, it's on the port bow of the canoe.

"We're steering Haka Ko'olau (N by E - check)," says Shantell Ching, "and that's good. Maybe we can gain some easting."

With this news, the mood aboard the canoe lightens considerably. Later, Shantell and Ka'iulani meet at the bow to measure the altitude of the North Star

"We're at 6.5 degrees north - 390 miles north of the equator," they tell us, "and 700 miles from Ka Lae, the southernmost land of Hawai'i."

The moon rises off our starboard beam, an orange disk behind the clouds, and bathes the canoe in silver as it climbs higher. Overhead, a long strand of cloud drifts across the Dog, the constellation Canis Major - obscuring his tail, his hind quarter, and his shiny nose; then it passes on to the west, blocking out Orion, then Taurus, then the Pleiades.

It's amazing how pleasant this evening is, particularly in comparison to those of the last four or five days. The canoe glides forward gracefully. The constellations wheel overhead. A boobie bird lofts in lazy figure-eights over the mizzen mast, intrigued by the wind-wash over our sails.

During the evening, the wind blows from nearly due east. With the steering paddle tied up, Hokule'a leans into the breeze and heads haka Ko'olau, one house east of north. She continues straight on throughout the night.

"If we keep this heading," says Bruce, "we can make up our easting and the danger of sailing to the west of Hawaii will disappear."

Looking out over the swells to starboard, clearly etched in the slanting rays of the rising sun, the navigators see the dominant swell continuing from the northeast. But now, a minor swell builds from the east - defining our hope for the future. If it grows, it will signal the coming of an easterly wind - just what we need to sail home without tacking.

February 22 - 17 days since departure: A gift

Yesterday, the gift of a favorable east wind continued all day and on into the evening. Hokule'a sailed due north. As a result, Shantell, Kahualaulani and Ka'iulani estimate we crossed our reference course at sunset. We have now made up all the distance lost to the west. We're back on course.

At 9 degrees north latitude, our new reference course turns Haka Hoo'lua (N by W check 1 house west of east?) to intersect an imaginary point at 20.5 degrees north latitude and - a slight cushion - about 60 miles east of the Big Island's cape Kumukahi. Here, the canoe will turn west toward home.

"I think we reached 9 degrees at 2 p.m yesterday," Shantell says, "but we decided to continue north for another 12 hours to gain more easting in case the wind turns fickle again."

"If the wind continues in this direction, we're in good shape," says Nainoa. "I want you guys to know that I'm smiling inside. You're doing very well - your estimated position and mine are not far off."

But some difficulties remain. During the first nine days of the voyage, Nainoa suffered from the flu and the canoe was beset by squalls.

"I'm a little worried about my dead reckoning," says Nainoa, "because my illness and the squally weather could have made my navigation less accurate. But I'm not too worried because we've been conservative in judging how much westing we made, and with this wind I know we won't end up west of Hawai'i. I agree with Shantell - let's keep going north for another twelve hours to be sure we stay east of the islands. I want you guys to know that I'm smiling inside. You're doing very well. Your estimated position and mine are not that far off"

During the night, the wind shifts north about one and a half houses. At 9 a.m. this morning, Hokule'a sails haka ho'olua (N by W) at six knots - directly on course for Hawai'i.

February 23 - 18 days: Heavy Weather

Early afternoon, February 22nd - -the woman Papa, our female 'aumakua, rides the port manu aft. She rolls from side to side, then rockets upward high above the horizon and plunges back - accompanied by a geyser of spray as the port catwalk meets a heavy roller passing under Hokule'a.

High on the back of a swell, our view of the world expands. We look out over a vast conveyor belt of water rolling toward the southwest. To starboard, we see white caps, froth, and wind streaks scarring the face of swells as they roll ponderously toward us. Then we drop into a trough. The world contracts within a fold of ocean. Our view now features a washed-out blue sky and cloud fields topped by wind-whipped mid-level stratus - probably the outflow of a thunderstorm to the east of us. Occasionally, Hokule'a takes a swell hard on her bow and ships whitewater, or endures the indignity of a breaking wave slapping her hindquarters. But mostly, she maintains her composure, slicing through the swells, riding over them, heading Haka Ho'olua - straight toward our rendezvous with the Big Island.

During the evening watches, all hands dress in their Patatgonias against the chill wind and tendrils of spray curling over our deck. We speed through the swells at about 6 knots. The North Star appears about 12 degrees above the horizon to the right of our mast. At about 10 p.m., squalls march across our path out of the east and we trice in all sails. The last three days of heavy seas and the many thousands of miles Hokule'a has traveled on this voyage to Rapa Nui has exacted a toll on sails and rigging. With the moon illuminating our decks, we drop the mizzenmast spar and lash it down, rigging a storm sail in its place. Hokule'a balances herself more easily now. We proceed with noticeably less pounding. After sunrise, we lower the front mast and retie the sail to the spar.

By mid-morning, the winds rise to gale force and Hokule'a rockets into seas now streaked with wind lines. Because safety is always paramount, Nainoa meets with senior crew to consider his options.

"If the wind continues to blow this hard," he says, "I'm worried about the rigging and the chafe on our sails. And don't forget the fatigue factor. We've been up all night, working hard - and when you're tired, you're not safe."

Thinking ahead to a worst case scenario - a decision is made. If the wind continues, it will pose a threat to safety. We will either heave-to or make directly to the nearest port - Hilo.

After lunch, all hands are called on deck to permanently lash the mizzen spar to the starboard rail. In these winds, it seems unlikely that we'll use any but the storm sail. After we stow all gear for heavy weather, Nainoa and the two captains - Chad and Bruce - call us to a meeting.

"The winds are blowing 30 to 35 knots," says Nainoa, "which is strong enough to concern me. We changed to the smaller mizzen staysail last night because with the larger sail Hokule'a was launching off the swells to about half her length. With the storm sail, we're riding much more smoothly."

"We have three scenarios. First, continue as before and get into port when we get in. That's unacceptable because the longer we're at sea the more we're exposed to risk. Second, take our GPS out of the hold and go directly to Hilo. We're not yet at that level of risk so we don't have to choose that option - but I will, the moment it becomes evident that we should. The last option, which we've decided on, is to continue to navigate traditionally but under safety parameters that won't expose us to any more than a single extra day at sea as compared to heading directly into Hilo. Later tonight, Bruce and I - in consultation with Shantell, Kahualaulani and Kaiulani - will determine our position and our course to the Big Island. Meanwhile, Chad and Mike will get the GPS out of the hold and plot our actual position. If the course Bruce and I select will take us within 120 miles of Kumukahi and 30 miles of Manuka, we will continue navigating traditionally. If we're not within those safety parameters, we'll proceed directly to Hilo using GPS."

February 24 - 19 days

Although the winds continued hard out of the east all day and into the night yesterday, they moderated sufficiently to ease Nainoa's concern for our safety. During the night, we steer north but heavy clouds prevent our navigators from obtaining an accurate latitude fix. At sunset, Shantell, Kahualaulani and Ka'iulani estimate we're at 13 degrees 52 minutes north and 73 miles east of the reference line. After an uncomfortable evening, dawn finds us sailing one house west of north, at 5 to 6 knots under altostratus clouds moving from the southeast. The winds are now about 20 knots and the seas are calming, but the deck is cold and wet, and those of us off watch are in our pukas trying to stay warm and dry.

CHECK THIIS OUT.... BELOW - WHAT A DISCREPANCY

Feb. 25: Entering the Search Area. The navigators have been measuring the altitudes of Hokupa'a and stars crossing the meridian near the horizon at night to determine their latitude. The estimate for Feb. 24 p.m. near midnight was 17 degrees 30' from a measurement of Miaplacidus, which was less than 3 degrees above the horizon; actual latitude was 17 degrees 09'; so the latitude estimate of the navigators in training (Shantell, Kahualaulani, and Ka'iulani) was within 21 miles of their actual latitude after almost 2000 miles of sailing and navigating. Winds are forecasted to be at 15-25 knots as the canoe approaches Hawai'i.

February 25th - 20 days: Approaching the Search Area

At sunrise this morning, the winds and seas are noticeably calmer. We proceed along our course line toward our rendezvous with 20.5 degrees north - possibly as early as tomorrow - when we will turn west.

"This is the exciting part of any voyage," Nainoa says, "landfall is imminent. Now we all have to be very alert."

Yesterday was the first warm day in several. How great it is to be warm and dry! Chad Baybayan and I sleep in the two aftmost pukas on the port side. During the last two nights, our sleeping pads have been awash with seawater, which enters though growing holes in the canvas half-tents. We sleep fully clothed in our foul weather gear.

"I'll tell you what," says Chad, "they're having canoe races in my puka, and I don't want to disturb them, so I'm sleeping top-side tonight."

The winds have abated since they reached near gale force on Wednesday, and the canoe now rides smoothly, although the swells are still formidable. At a sunset crew meeting last night, Nainoa tells us we are now entering the search area for the Hawaiian Islands.

"We're in a really good place to begin to search for the Hawaiian Islands. Tomorrow will be the first day that we might see land. It's unlikely, but it's possible, so you should all be alert."

At sunset yesterday, Shantell estimated our position to be 16 degrees 7 minute north, 31 miles east of our course line. Later, the navigators took the altitude of Hokupa'a, the North Star, and came up with latitude estimates ranging from 16 to 17 degrees north - not a really significant variation because Polaris has risen so high in the sky that it's difficult to estimate its altitude. Later, the navigators measured the altitude of Miaplacidus in the south, a star crossing the meridian very low to the horizon - hence providing a more accurate latitude estimate than Hokupa'a.

"I got a latitude of 17 degrees 30 minutes north from Miaplacidus," says Ka'iulani Murphy.

"Now that we are approaching the search area, it is important that we all get accurate latitude fixes," Nainoa tells the students. "You must always assume the worse - that the skies will be cloudy tomorrow night and we'll be forced to dead reckon from tonight's fix. So get the best position possible."

Theoretically, we could make Hawaiian landfall very soon, because South Point is only 18 degrees 55 minutes north - a scant 85 miles from our Miaplacidus fix. But Nainoa thinks we're too far enough to the east to see it. We will follow our reference course to 20.5 degrees north and then turn west to begin searching for land. Now that we're within the Hawaiian search area, we must steer very accurately. So the sweep is put in the water and a navigator is stationed nearby to help us stay on course.

We steer 'Akau, North, but with the current and wind pushing us westward, we make Haka Ho'olua (one house to the west of Akau). We guide the canoe by Hokupa'a, the North Star. When smudges of cloud block the star, we use the pointers of Na Hiku, the Big Dipper, to stay on course.

During the 6-10 watch, the sky is clear. Our southern companions - the Southern Cross, the False Cross and Canis Major - have now slipped behind us noticeably to arc much lower across the sky. Na Hiku, the big dipper, rises high off our starboard bow - her handle rotating out of the sea. The constellation's pointers - the two stars at the lip of her cup - aim at Hokupa'a, our constant steering guide. Tava mans the sweep - the trusted steersman, wrestling with a weather helm. The canoe wants to turn into the wind. She bucks in the wash of swells passing beneath her hull. But with Tava at the sweep, Hokupa'a remains steadfast just to starboard of Hokule'a's mast.

Crew Profile - Tava Taupu

On April 6, 1945,Tava was born in Taiohae on Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands. His father worked on a sailboat that made interisland trips carrying passengers. As a young man, Tava went to Tahiti to learn to carve wooden tikis from his uncle Joseph Kimitete. Pape'ete, the capital, was a place where young Tahtitians like to rough up boys from the outlying islands, so Tava learned to box.

"When I went boxing, I got proud," he recalls. "I was amateur, six rounds. I won't drink anymore. I exercise, forget kid stuff, no more smoking cigarettes." What Tava doesn't tell you is that he boxed so well he earned the title of lightweight champion of French Polynesia.

"I first learned about Tava's boxing when I was on a voyage with him in 1980," recalls Chad Baybayan. "We were going to go out on the town and Tava began to get dressed up. Then he stood in front of the mirror and began shadowboxing. It was scary. I always knew him as an extremely gentle person, and now I was seeing his wild side. When we went into the bars, he would walk in the door like a superstar. People came up to talk to him. I was surprised how many people knew him in Pape'ete."

In 1970 Tava came to Hawai'i on a visa arranged by Kimitete's son. He worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center in La'ie building traditional houses and carving tikis - in general carrying on the traditional arts of the Marquesas. In 1975, he saw Hokule'a for the first time.

"When I saw Hokule'a, I think 'what is this big canoe?' I never see big canoe like this in the Marquesas. We have 30-foot canoes with outriggers, single canoe, not double canoes. I am excited. It all comes back to me - my ancestors. I feel my ancestors all around me. I wonder how they sail this canoe? how they survive on the ocean? Right after seeing her, I began to work on her. I work at my job all week and go spend weekends working on the canoe."

In 1975 Tava sailed on Hokule'a interisland. Later he learned from Mau Piailug how to build canoes in the traditional Pacific Island way, with sennit for lashing and coconut husk and breadfruit sap for caulking. At about the same time, he met Nainoa, who was just beginning to study the stars.

"I met Nainoa at Ala Wai. He is a very quiet guy because there is something he is learning by himself - the stars. I see him looking at the sky. I never know what he is looking at. 'What you looking?' I ask. He say, 'I looking at stars. I learning navigation, to be a navigator.' I try speaking Tahitian to him but he no understand me. He look at me and say, 'Sorry I can't understand.' He was really quiet, and I very quiet too. I ask him what he looking at and he point to the sky. 'You see that star over there?' he says. He tells me navigator star. I don't know which one. I say to myself, 'What's that 'navigator star?' I keep quiet but I thinking, what's that navigator star?'"

Since meeting Nainoa and beginning to voyage aboard Hokule'a, Tava has sailed at least one leg on each major voyage. "I always ask Tava to come with me," Nainoa says. "Tava loves the canoe and what it stands for. He gives the canoe his life, and the canoe gives him her life. Tava takes care of me while I am at sea and he provides a net of security around the entire crew. He makes it comfortable for me to concentrate on navigation."

During one voyage, an important piece of equipment went overboard, and Nainoa impulsively went in after it. When he finally got back on board, he was shivering uncontrollably - near hypothermia. "I was just sitting there on deck unable to get warm and Tava came up from behind me and hugged me; he shared his warmth so his friend would not be cold."

Tava's personality emerges from what others say about him:

"First impressions of Tava can be off-putting - his head is shaven and he is clearly a strong man. If you saw him in a dark alley, you would surely turn around and walk the other way. That impression is rapidly dispelled when you meet him. There is a firm welcoming hand shake and a smile so genuine that it warms the room."

"He's genuinely kind. He lives by the standards he learned as a child growing up in the Marquesas."

"He bridges the gap between the old and the new, between traditional and modern society. If you see him being greeted by the older people throughout Polynesia, you see the respect he is given."

"He is powerfully intelligent, yet clear and direct in his thoughts and expression. He is clear about his role on this canoe."

"He has a pure spirit and puts me at ease when I'm with him."

"He sees what needs to be done and does it. He makes himself an integral part of doing any task. There is no work too hard for him."

"He is a quiet, caring and gentle person, always there when you need him."

"One of the most loving human beings I have ever met."

"To look at him, you would be scared. Who is this guy - bald headed and mean looking? But he is a kind, kind man."

It was surely the warm, loving side of Tava that his wife Cheryl saw in 1980 when they first met. Tava and Cheryl have two children - Rio, 18, and Helena, 6. Today when Tava is not sailing, he works for the National Park Service at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, as a cultural expert, demonstrating wood carving and canoe making.

"I like working there. Sometimes I work in the halau, sometimes I work on the roof, sometimes carving, or building a stone wall."

Over the last 25 years Tava has become so integral to Hokule'a that to see her without him standing on her deck at the forward manu, dressed in his bright red malo would be like seeing the canoe with only one mast - or with some other key part of her missing. Yet this trip back from Tahiti may be his last.

"It's time for retirement. I am 55 years old. I like see my wife on the land. I like build my house now. I am excited."

Even so, in conversation with him on this voyage, it is clear that what Nainoa says of Tava is true - that he gives life to the canoe and receives life from her. When he leaves Hokule'a he will leave an important part of his life behind. "I will be sad because I am used to voyaging. But better for me to stay on land. I feel like crying, but I no cry. That is my rule - always show a smile to the canoe."

It's not that he will ever leave the canoe or her family completely, because he plans to make interisland voyages aboard her and because he knows he has left a part of himself behind with the new younger crew members.

"I come on the canoe when I am young, and now I am looking. Maybe some of the young people are like me. It's time to leave the canoe, so the young people can learn. You have to learn to sail by hand - how to steer, how to trice, how to look at other people, how to behave. The canoe's mana means all the crew take care of the canoe and the canoe take care of the crew. The canoe take you all the way home."

"When I no sail, I no feel bad if I have trained other people. It is for you now, like Chad, like Bruce, like Shantell, like other young people. It's your turn."

The sea fills his skull. Memories are sharp teeth. Are pulled up like sweet water over smooth rocks - pool behind his eyes. Remain. As unalloyed as a deep pond, and as unfathomable. What to make of them? He struggles with reason. Mathematics. Physics. Like pickaxes for paddles, they are no help. The true instruments lie deeper - in genes, not ganglia. Fire spreads across his forehead. He stands alone, shivering. The immensity and the smoothness of the sea passes by, glimmering, shining, a rhythm played by the mind across a distance known only to god - akua - conjuring shapes within that will be revealed only by time.

February 26 - 20 days: Almost Home

Yesterday, a few hours before sunset, Nainoa, Kahualaulani, and Shantell scan the horizon ahead.

"I'm looking for edges," Nainoa says, "sharp lines that cannot be clouds. For a while I was watching a dark area on the horizon but all the masses were moving. If the island is there, I can't see it."

Yesterday morning we passed through a series of gentle rain squalls which closed off the world and washed the decks clean of salt. By noon we were sailing in brisk easterly winds, heading Haka Ho'olua (N by W) and making Na Leo Ho'olua (NNW). The skies had cleared and the horizon was peppered with fair weather cumulus clouds.

At 2 a.m. this morning, the navigators gather aft to make a final observation of the altitude of Ka Mole Honua ( Acrux) the bottom star in the Southern Cross. The verdict is seven degrees above the horizon - we've arrived at 20 degrees north latitude.

"That's it," says Nainoa, "Let's turn downwind and sail west."

We dowse the jib and turn Hokule'a to her new course. With the wind behind us, the canoe races down the faces of long, easy swells. Running in a following sea is tricky. Swells rise up behind us, crest, and race beneath the canoe, causing her to turn upwind - then down. To prevent Hokule'a from broaching, three of us steer. Bruce mans the center sweep, Kahualaulani is on the port sweep and Snake handles the one to starboard. To turn to port, Snake puts his paddle in the water; to go to starboard, Kahualaulani puts his sweep down. Together, they control the canoe's swaying motion by the synchronized movement of their sweeps.

Bruce, Mike and Snake run up the big genoa jib to enfold the power of the following wind. Nanamua and Nanahope (Castor and Pollux) set ahead. Hokupa'a (The North Star) is to starboard and the Southern Cross to port. The moon glides through a ragged belly of swirling cumulus clouds. Behind us, the ruby and emerald lights of Kama Hele mirror our own port and starboard running lights, which have been turned on for the first time in three weeks. We're now in shipping lanes - broad ocean highways followed by massive freighters and tankers bound between Hawai'i and the West Coast. A little after 2:30 a.m., we see Hokule'a high in the sky, less than an hour from its zenith - a certain sign that we're in Hawaiian waters.

At dawn, as the sun breaks the horizon behind us, Kahualaulani, Nainoa, Shantell, Chad, and Kau'i scan the sea to port for signs of land. They see nothing, but we're convinced that the Big Island is near. The sun warms Hokule'a's deck, Pomaikalani prepares breakfast, and we all enjoy the canoe's easy motion as we race toward home.

February 27 - 22 days: Home

Eia Hawai'i, he moku, he kanaka
He kanaka Hawai'i, e-
He kanaka Hawai'i
He kama na Kahiki
He pua ali'i mai Kapa'ahu
Mai Moa'ulanuiakea Kanaloa
He mo'opuna na Kahiko, laua o Kapulanakehau
Na papa i hanau
Na ke kamawahine a Kukalani'ehu, laua me Kahakauakoko
Na pulapula 'aina i paekahi
I nonoho like i ka Hikina, Komohana
Pae like ka moku i lalani
I hui aku, hui mai me Holani

[Behold Hawai'i, an island, a man,
A man is Hawai'i
A man is Hawai'i
A child of Kahiki
A royal bud from Kapa'ahu
From Moa'ulanuiakea Kanaloa
A descendant of Kahiko and Kapulanakehau
Born of Papa,
The daughter of Kukalani'ehu and Kahakauakoko
Sprouts of land in a line
Placed alike to the East, to the West
Arranged evenly in a line
Joined to, joined from Holani...
From an ancient chant by Kamahualele, priest of the chief Mo'ikeha, celebrating arrival in Hawai'i after a voyage from Tahiti.]

Just after sunrise, on February 27th, the base of a volcano emerges from a long strand of cloud and mist. It's dark green where the early rays of the sun are interrupted by clouds, and emerald where the sun shines through. Vents poke through the volcano's skin, smoothed by eons of rain. The sea is calm. The wind from the east. The land is Maui, more specifically, Hana, birthplace of Ka'ahumanu, Kamehameha's favorite wife, and once the ahupua'a of Pi'ilani, whose heiau stands clear on a large slash of lava rimmed by ivory surf.

Our view from the sea would have been familiar to 'Umi, the great ali'i who unified the Big Island and led her warriors here to battle with the chiefs of Maui. Today, we share 'Umi's visual perspective as Hokule'a coasts along the island's eastern shore. The 2-6 watch is on deck, steering in a quartering sea. Pomai is preparing breakfast, perhaps for the last time, and the rest of us - quiet and pensive - watch the ancient coastline slip across our western horizon. We're finally in home waters after a passage of 22 days.
****
February 26th. At sunrise, with 2400 miles of ocean behind us - the familiar ancestral seapath between Tahiti and Hawai'i - we sail toward a dark cloud mass ahead. The navigators keep a silent vigil ahead. The wind is on our starboard quarter. We feel only a hint of breeze from astern. The sun makes us drowsy. At about 10 a.m., Nainoa sees indications of land in the clouds. But then a series of gentle rain squalls pass over the canoe and obscure his view ahead.

All day we continue on toward the cloud mass which remains stationary off our bows. We strain for a sighting of land. What Nainoa calls edges - the sharp borders of island against sky - seem to appear, only to fade in the cloud swirl. Illusions of land. Our eyes tire. Our imaginations take over. Chad, Bruce, and Nainoa have seen something that remains illusive to the rest of us. Fatigue sets in.

"It will be a long day," Nainoa says. "There's still a long way to go, even if Hawai'i is dead ahead. So get rest."

Except for those of us on watch the deck is mostly empty. We lie in our bunks and drift into a light sleep. Darkness seeps under the cloud bases and slowly blankets the sky to the east, revealing pin pricks of light, the brightest of stars.

Except for a few catnaps, Nainoa has been constantly on watch. This has been his habit during the entire voyage - staring out into what seemed to me an empty ocean. Most of my photographs show him sitting on the navigator's platform with his back to the camera looking outboard - as he's doing today - or standing on the rail with his hand wrapped around a shroud for balance, which means something is about to happen - either a squall is looming or there's some sign to indicate land is near.

During the voyage, I was careful not to interrupt his thoughts, waiting until his vision had refocused on something aboard the canoe before talking to him. I could see his mind working. I saw him willing himself back a few thousand years to an era when Polynesian navigators sailed across similar expanses of ocean.

Nainoa is now certain that land lies ahead - and he thinks he knows precisely what land it is. In the movement of the squalls passing over us he has discerned a pattern.

"The squalls to the north and south of us seem to continue over the horizon, but those moving in front of us impact something and stall there. They sit there like fog or dark mist inside the cloud. That makes me think there's land in front of us."

There's also the matter of the wind, which flukes about a little, then shifts east-southeast so we cannot keep the sails full without changing course to starboard. For those of us manning the sweeps, the wind shift is a slight annoyance, but for Nainoa, it's another sign of land.

"The trade winds cannot rise over 7000 feet, and Mauna Kea is over 13,000 feet high so when the winds encounter the volcano they split at Laupahoehoe to flow around it. One branch blows southwest down the Puna coast, the other flows northwest along Hamakua. When our winds, which were originally from the east, veered to the east- southeast, it's an indication we are north of Hilo."

As the sky darkened and the sun descended, Nainoa watched more closely for land signs he had observed on other voyages - a slight shift in the density of light and the color of the sky ahead.

"Off to the left I saw a brightness on the horizon. Looking to the right it went dark, until farther right, off the starboard bow, it became light again - like an opening on the horizon there. As the sun went down, I saw colors in the opening which I think is the sunlight refracting in the atmosphere. Where it's dark, there is land breaking the rays of the sunset. I think the opening to the right is the 'Alenuihaha Channel."

To explain better our exact position, Nainoa places his two open palms in front of his body and joins them to form a "V", one hand pointing to the opening on the left, the other to the opening on the right.

"You can roughly triangulate our position like this," he says. "My left hand points to the opening on the south, my right hand to the opening on the north, where my two hands join is where we are. I think that we're to the northeast of Hilo, maybe 20-25 miles away, and heading toward the 'Alenuihaha Channel. I could be wrong, but that's what I think."

So we go over to a starboard tack to parallel a line that still exists only in Nainoa's mind. The Hamakua Coast, if it's there, is lost in the dark mist to port.

"Waipi'o to Pololu is a rocky, dangerous coast with few lights," Nainoa explains, "so it would be a mistake to approach too closely."

We continue on. Now, all of us are aware that something large lies to port, partly as a result of Nainoa's explanation, but also by a kind of latent instinct. We can feel something. What is it? The looming darkness, certainly, but also a kind of vibration - a pressure of some sort. The feeling draws us to the port rail, where we all stand peering into the darkness.

We see first a hairline crack in the clouds - a brightening - then, a few minutes later, twinkling lights. First to appear is the sparkle of Hilo off the beam. Then the loom of the lighthouse at Cape Kumukahi sweeps the horizon off our port quarter. Pin pricks of light sprinkle the coastline ahead of us and we see the bright node of the small town of Honoka'a. The lights reveal a landscape that uncannily matches the one that Nainoa had described only a few moments earlier. There are exclamations from the crew, and a muted clapping, followed by embraces. Speaking for all of us, Nainoa says simply, "We're home." Almost simultaneously, the wind picks up and Hokule'a accelerates into the darkness. Now, instead of steering by the stars, we guide our canoe by the lights of Hilo and Honoka'a as we head for the north side of Maui.

The first light of morning finds us coasting toward Hana amidst the sparkle of sun on muted blue swells. While last night's electric lights conveyed an intellectual understanding that we had arrived in Hawai'i, it's the sloping emerald land of Hana that provides the gut feeling of arrival. We are indeed home.

We meet as a crew, perhaps for the last time, on Hokule'a's aft deck. We join hands. Pomai provides the gift of a pule, uniting us in thanksgiving for our safe arrival.

"Thank you Lord for giving us the strength and wisdom to follow the path of our ancestors home, and please give us the wisdom to continue to aloha each other, to learn from each other, and to appreciate what you have created for us in these special islands, which we are lucky and privileged to call home."

At the close of the meeting Nainoa tells us: "Hokule'a is coming home to celebrate her 25th anniversary - to celebrate the rebirth of our Polynesian values. In my youth, Hawaiian spirituality was not widely recognized. Now look at us - what a change! When we voyaged to Rapa Nui, the mana of this canoe was clear. We did not really guide her there - she guided us. Over the last 25 years, as we learned through experience, she also learned. Hokule'a's mana comes from a union of so many of us with her - the care we have given to her and the care she has given to us. I know in my heart that she can feel Tava's hand on her steering sweep. She knows that it's him."

"On this voyage, I chose to step away from the rigid mental preparation that has characterized all my other voyages. I went more on my instincts and a deep trust in the canoe. She sailed herself through the doldrums on our fastest passage ever, and she would have brought us home even faster, if we had not tried to force her to the east. Her mana sleeps when she is tied up at the pier, but it awakens when her crew comes aboard with a vision and a challenge they have accepted and lets go the mooring lines. We are bringing her home now to a celebration that will honor her and recognize the mana she has given to us all."

We begin preparing Hokule'a for port. There's much to do - cleaning up the clutter of personal gear in our pukas, washing down Hokule'a's decks, striking the storm sail, putting up the mizzen spar, resetting the tan-bark sail, and breaking out anchors and dock lines.

The wind freshens from behind us and Hokule'a sets a course for Moloka'i, surfing the swells at 8 knots.

February 27 - Kaunakakai, Moloka'i
Cat Fuller

Hiki mai
Hiki mai e ka La e
Aloha wale ka la e kau nei
Arriving
Arriving is the sun
The sun shining down only has love for us

Aia ma lalo Kawaihoa
I ka lalo o Kaua'i
O Lehua, o Lehua e

Even as it sets there below at Kawaihoa
Below Kaua'i
And below Lehua

On a beautiful Moloka`i Sunday, word of Hokule`a's arrival was passed from person to person along with smiles and greetings. At Take's, the Friendly Market and the Chevron station, the question was, "When?" and the answer, "Between six and seven tonight." Preparations were already in progress, but there were signs to be painted, flowers to be gathered and strung into leis as well as a welcome home meal to prepare. Anxious eyes that had spent the last twenty-two days scanning the internet now turned to the ancient task of scouting the horizon for the shape of a sail among the ferocious wind swells. With each succeeding internet report, the actual position of the canoe moved into familiar waters, and closer to home and loved ones.

At 4:15 in the afternoon, Myrna Ah Hee, wife of crew member Snake Ah Hee, was visiting Donna Paoa at home, when something made her look out at the horizon. There, distant off the Kawela shoreline was Hokule`a's sail. As word spreads, Myrna's excitement is contagious. Soon there are cars and trucks full of family and supporters cruising the coastline to see for themselves. In true Moloka`i style, the reports come house-to-house down the coastline, "They dropped the front sail"..."they dropped the jib"..."now they're riding the waves bare-masted..."

At Kaunakakai, the crowd begins to swell. In the raging winds, it is obvious that even without sails, Hokule`a has made the last few miles of this eight and a half month journey in record time.

It's as if she feels that home is near and it's time to return. A half mile out of the Kaunakakai pier, she turns and waits; a small snag has occurred, as the barge is still docked. Soon, the tug hauls it out of sight, and Hokule`a, along with her escort boat Kama Hele, triumphantly turn down the channel, towards the waiting crowd. As the last of the sun's rays light the sky, the two vessels slip in easily to the dock, where eager hands catch docking lines and secure them, finally, to Hawaiian soil.

Family members wait anxiously, yet with the kind of patience that comes from voyaging experience, for their loved ones. Judy Mick is there to surprise her son Kahualaulani. Judy says, "I don't fly...what does it take to get me on a plane?" Her son's arrival. The crew is formally greeted by both ancient and modern traditions. John Ka'imikaua's Halau performs, followed by an enchanting group of young girls. Their performance is in contrast to the immigrations and customs officials who also appear at the dock to administer their official duties. Finally, the crew is released and they eagerly come ashore to the things they have missed over the last twenty-two days: family, friends, beer and ice cream. A journey of twenty-two days, a journey of eight-and-a-half months and a journey of twenty-five years all end on this night. Yet, as crew members gather to compare stories, the predominant question is "When do we sail again?"

A Sea of Islands - essay

The problem of seeing the Pacific as ancient Polynesians must have is a bit like the problem of perceiving solid and voids in the art of M.C. Escher. When you first look at his work you see the solids in the composition. Then, blinking, the voids between the solids pop into view - a different perception, crafted by Escher just as clinical psychologists conjure optical illusions to test human perception - the simple but perplexing difference between foreground and background.

Continental people, looking down on the Hawaiian Islands from an airplane, see tiny islands in an immense ocean. When they deplane and travel around, the landscape seems tinier still. Some, who come with plans to settle, get a malady called "island fever" and depart hastily. Of the total composition constructed from land and ocean, they see merely the foreground. But Polynesians, I think, saw the whole picture, foreground and background, land and ocean, as a single unified composition. From this vantage point Polynesia is huge - larger than all the continents of Europe combined - and it is composed of islands joined, not separated, by ocean.

Thoughts like these have come to Nainoa unbidden during his lifetime of sailing and finding land and thinking about the process he calls wayfinding, a larger concept than navigation that embodies, as he once said simply, "a way of life." Which is to say a way of looking at the world - what anthropologists call "culture" and what philosophers call "cosmology."

"I think that how people make a living, how they survive, and how their culture evolves are all interrelated," Nainoa once said. "Pacific Islanders are ocean people and they are very tied to the ocean. They know how to live within that ocean environment and to survive in it. I think that people who for generations almost without end have evolved in an ocean world evolved a much different way of seeing the world than did people who lived in large land masses like continents."

Pondering the difference between the perceptions of continental people and Pacific islanders, Nainoa's reasoning goes something like this: survival is the engine of world view; Pacific people had to sail to survive: whenever they sailed out from their home islands, they found new ones. Therefore even though the islands they lived on may have been small, Nainoa reasoned, to his ancestors of long ago the sea and the islands it contained must have seemed infinite.

"Maybe our ancestors didn't think of the ocean as having boundaries. We simply don't know. If we look at their oral histories and study their genealogies, we find evidence of long ocean voyages and we find connections between different families living on islands a great distance apart. That tells me that my ancestors considered their world to be very large, an immense undefined ocean world. I think that's a much different view of the world than the one I imagine a continental people might have. I think that people who lived on large land masses saw their world as much more finite and bounded."

This is a thought that is interesting enough in itself (it is always edifying to journey around in the minds of people from distinct cultures) but it is also a thought that has political implications among scholars who are rethinking the role of Pacific peoples in the future of the planet - Professor Epeli Hau'ofa, for example, a sociologist at the University of the South Pacific. For years, Hau'ofa had accepted the view that Pacific islands, as he puts it, "are much too small, too poorly endowed with resources, and too isolated from the centers of economic growth for their inhabitants ever to rise above their present condition of dependence on the largesse of wealthy nations." Being a Pacific Islander himself, It was a view of the world that did not please him. As a teacher he became more and more disillusioned the more he propagated this hopeless sense of the world to his students: "the faces of my students continued to haunt me mercilessly," he wrote in an article published in The Contemporary Pacific - A Journal of Island Affairs. "I began asking questions of myself. What kind of teaching is it to stand if front of young people from your own region who have come to the university with high hopes for the future, and you tell them that our countries are hopeless?" Hau'ofa began to think he might be a part of the problem rather than the part of the solution and this thought caused him to rummage around in the history of his own people. He came to conclusions similar to the ones that Nainoa was pondering a few thousand miles away in Hawaii.

Pacific Islanders today consider themselves inhabitants of tiny, remote and resource poor islands largely because of recent boundaries drawn around them by European colonizers in the 19th and 20th centuries. The French and English, for example, created an arbitrary border between French Polynesia (Tahiti and her sister islands) and the Cooks and New Zealand - alienating a Pacific people who had for centuries exchanged goods and genes with one another. Hawaii, Easter Island, Tonga, Samoa and Fiji were likewise partitioned into tiny colonial states. Eventually, all of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia suffered the same fate. Dominated by continental nations, islanders began to think of their once infinite watery world as did their colonial masters. "When those who hail from continents see a Polynesian or Micronesia island," Hau'ofa wrote, "they naturally pronounce it small or tiny. Their calculation is based entirely on the extent of the land surfaces they see."

"But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, and the cosmologies of the peoples of Oceania," Hau'ofa continued, "it becomes evident that they did not conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions. Their universe comprised not only land surfaces, but the surrounding ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-controlling and earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens above with their powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people could count on to guide their ways across the seas. Their world was anything but tiny. They thought big and recounted their deeds in epic proportions." "Smallness," Hau'ofa later wrote, "is a state of mind." It's a powerful state of mind, though. One that continues to give people from the "mainlands" of the world difficulty when confronting the big thoughts now forming in the imagination of Pacific peoples. Thoughts of sovereignty in Hawaii and other islands that were once nations or confederacies of nations. Thoughts, even, that the oceanic "sea of nations" might provide a model for the rest of the world.

"There are no people on earth," Hau'ofa writes, "more suited to be guardians of the world's largest ocean than those for whom in has been home for generations."

March 12 - Kualoa Welcome
Article for Wooden Boat Magazine

On the horizon's razor edge at dawn, where a platinum ocean meets a brightening sky, I first see the sails - dark swaths filled by the northeast trade winds. Then four canoes take shape, the big ocean spanning ones - Hokule'a' (star of gladness), Makali'i (eyes of the chief) and Hawai'iloa (named for a famous Hawaiian chief) - and the small coastal canoe mo'olelo, all replicas of vessels a millennia old in design. It is March 12 and I await their arrival at Kualoa on the island of Oahu standing within a charmed circle of men and women who have sailed aboard these vessels, surrounded by kahuna (priests) in flowing robes garlanded with sweet smelling maile leis. Behind us stand dozens of hula troupes, singers and chanters, waiting to perform traditional ceremonies of welcome that will continue into the evening under torches. Among those gathered in reverential silence are Polynesians from Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Marquess, Tahiti - from all the corners of the great Polynesian Triangle - ten million square miles of ocean sprinkled with islands like tiny stars in a vast watery firmament. All these people have come to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of these canoes - Hokule'a' - an event that has inspired perhaps the most far reaching cultural revival in history. It is a story that begins in tragedy on the big island of Hawaii more than 200 yeas ago.

On the morning of January 18, 1778, Captain James Cook became the first white man to visit the Hawaiian Islands. In his wake came missionaries bringing a new religion, whale ships bringing disease, businessmen bringing a foreign concept of capitalistic self-interest and the politicians they would ally with to steal Hawaiian lands. As a result, a population of almost 800,000 pure-blooded Hawaiians in Cook's time was reduced to 80,000 a hundred years later and only a few thousand today. This appalling die-off of the Hawaiian people was accompanied by an almost complete loss of their culture. By the middle of the 20th century, dancers who once performed hula and chants to honor proud chiefs now wiggled in ersatz shows for Kodak toting tourists and a nation of great seafarers had been reduced to a motley collection of beach boys. But if Cook can be blamed for initiating this catastrophic cultural death he also left behind a question that would one day inspire its renaissance. Having already traveled through much of Polynesia, Cook recognized the Hawaiians to be of the same race as the people of Tahiti and New Zealand thousands of ocean miles away. "How shall we account for this nation having spread itself to so many detached islands?" he wondered.

In 1973, three men formed the Polynesian Voyaging Society to find out. There was Hawaiian artist Herb Kane, anthropologist Ben Finney and renown water-man Tommy Holmes. They had a theory, supported by extensive scientific search, that the Polynesians had peopled the vast pacific by long, intentional voyages of colonization and exploration. To prove it they decided to build Hokule'a - a replica of an ancient voyaging canoe - and sail it on a 5,000 mile round trip between Hawaii and Tahiti. They knew that ancient canoes were fashioned from hollowed out logs caulked with breadfruit sap and fastened with coconut fibers, but the knowledge to build such vessels had long since been lost in Hawaii. So they built a 'performance replica,' a canoe accurate in every detail but fabricated from modern materials

When Hokule'a was launched at Kualoa On March 8, 1975, Nainoa Thompson - then a 21 year old Hawaiian crew member - attended the ceremonies. "It was the first time that I had heard an ancient chant in my own language," he remembers, "or seen a classic style hula. My grandmother grew up in a time when Hawaiians were beaten in school if they spoke Hawaiian and they were ashamed to be dark skinned. Ever since the arrival of Captain Cook we have been increasingly disconnected from who we are. But when I watched Hokule'a slip into the sea it kindled in me something that I only partially understood but felt instinctively - pride in my heritage."

The canoe rapidly proved her mettle in sea trials, but one key element for the voyage to Tahiti was still missing - a navigator to guide her without instruments or charts. Such knowledge existed only among a handful of men called palu who still sailed outrigger canoes among the islands of Micronesia, finding their way by natural clues to direction - the arc of stars, flight of birds and curl of ocean swells. So from the tiny island of Satawal came Mau Piailug (see article about Puluwat, sister island to Satawal, in this Wooden Boat Edition). He would navigate Hokule'a on her first voyage. Nainoa Thompson flew to Tahiti to sail on the return trip and he remembers the moment of Hokule'a's arrival vividly. "Seventeen thousand people came down, over half the population of the island. So many kids got on back that they sank the stern. People couldn't see so they climbed trees. It was a spontaneous innate reaction by a people who had maintained their language and their genealogy, who understood who their great navigators were. They knew about the great canoes but they didn't have such a canoe. So when Hokule'a' entered the bay she was a powerful symbol that reminded them of the greatness of their culture and their heritage - and therefore themselves."

After returning to Hawaii aboard Hokule'a Nainoa found it difficult to go back to normal life. "The whole sailing experience was so powerful that getting off the canoe left a huge void," he remembers, "I had to continue." Working with his father Myron "Pinkie" Thompson who had taken over as president of PVS, Nainoa planned another trip to Tahiti. In 1978 Mau Piailug returned to Hawaii to teach him the secrets of navigation. ""Mau trained us like his grandfather had trained him," Nainoa says, "he took us on the sea like children, becoming our father and mother on the ocean. We had very few formal lessons: the learning really came by being close to him - looking at the things he looks at, feeling the things he feels."

During his training of Nainoa, Mau opened a woven mat and placed thirty two lumps of coral upon it. Arranged in a circle to represent the horizon - they were a star compass. Each lump was a "house" from which stars rose and set - clues to direction. At sea, Nainoa learned to recognize predominant swells stirred by long lasting winds and smaller ones kicked up by local weather patterns. These too were keys to direction. With Mau and with another teacher, Will Kyselka of the Bishop Museum's Planetarium, Nainoa learned to use the altitude of stars at their meridian to determine latitude. And over time, he discovered ways to keep track of the canoe's speed and course by dead reckoning - his only clue to longitude. Finally, after two years of rigorous training, Mau proclaimed his young Hawaiian student ready to navigate by himself.

In 1980, Nainoa became the first Hawaiian to navigate the ancient sea route to Tahiti in perhaps a thousand years. This success added fuel to a growing Hawaiian cultural revival which now included dance, chant, medical practices, architecture and religion. "Hokule'a was the spaceship of our ancestors," as one Hawaiian put it, "she was the highest achievement of our technology. She kindled our pride. And she taught us that as a people we could do anything we set our minds to."

What Nainoa and his Polynesian brothers and sisters set their minds to in the following twenty years of voyaging was nothing less than stitching together all the islands of Polynesia. Successful voyages followed one another. In 1985 Hokule'a sailed to the Society Islands, the Cooks, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and back to Hawaii via Aitutaki, Tahiti and Rangiroa in the Tuamotu Archipelago. In 1992 she voyaged to the Pacific Arts Festival in Rarotonga. And in 1995 she returned to Tahiti to join a fleet of Polynesian sail for an epic voyage to Hawaii via the Marquesas called Na 'Ohana Holo Moana - the Voyaging Family of the Vast Ocean. The family now included seven seagoing canoes - from Tahiti came Tahitinui, from the Cook Islands came Takitumu and Te Au Tonga, from Aoteroa (New Zealand) came Te Aurere, and from Hawaii two new canoes - Makali'i and Hawai'iloa - joined Hokule'a.

"We call Hokule'a the 'mother canoe'", says Te Aurere's Maori captain, Hector Busby, who had come to Kualoa to attend the canoe's 25th anniversary. "She inspired us all to achieve something no one considered possible, building a canoe of our own to rediscover our ancestral heritage as a seafaring people - and through that the rediscovery of ourselves."

By 1995, when all the canoes had completed the voyage to Hawaii and returned safely to their home islands, Hokule'a had sailed more than 75,000 nautical miles and had visited all the frontiers of the Polynesian triangle except one - the eastern most - which is occupied by a single island in an immense sea - Rapa Nui, or as it is called by Europeans, Easter Island. So in June of 1999 she set out once again, this time to 'close the triangle' by visiting this last frontier. It was a voyage in which I was a crew member. As I stood in the throng at Kualoa awaiting the canoes' arrival, my mind flashed back to days of cold stinging winds and nights of crystalline beauty filled with planets as bright as tiny moons and the swirling Magellenic Clouds.

"This voyage will test us," Nainoa had told the crew before departure, "It will in many ways be the most difficult of all."

We anticipated thirty says at sea, tacking against constant Southeast Trade Winds, but instead we encountered miracle winds from almost every other direction which carried us in only sixteen days across 1500 miles of ocean from our jump-off point on Mangareva Island. But on the 17th day we faced the supreme test. Navigating without instruments, we thought that Rapa Nui was near, but could we find it? All the other islands that Nainoa had sailed to were part of a chain of islands that provided a kind of 'navigational safety net.' Tahiti, for example, was nestled among a chain that stretched 400 miles across a canoe's path from Hawaii. But Rapa Nui stood alone in the empty sea - 14 miles by 20 wide - and even a minor navigational error would carry us past without seeing it. As we made our final approach to the island we were concerned because 2 days of storms had prevented our navigators from seeing the stars upon which they depended for latitude fixes. We were seeking landfall by dead reckoning alone. Yet, on the morning of he 17th day, there it was - dead ahead. On October 9th, we touched land. Hokule'a had finally 'stitched up' all the islands in the triangle.

A burst of sound from a dozen conch shells beaks my reverie. Hokule'a has touched ashore at Kualoa. The welcoming ceremonies have begun. "Famous are the voyages of Hokule'a in the long seas, in the short seas, in the choppy seas of Kanaloa, O Kanaloa, e Kanaloa of the long seas," proclaimed one of the chanters in impeccable Hawaiian, reverently intoning the blessing of Kanaloa, the Hawaiian god of the sea. Hula troupes garlanded with leis performed classic dances that have not been seen for many generations. In song, oratory, chant and dance Polynesians from the far frontier of the triangle demonstrated what Hokule'a has accomplished in her 25 years of voyaging, the full expression of a renewed culture.

Hokule'a revives pride in being Hawaiian; 3,000 welcome canoe
By Walter Wright
Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer

Hokule'a, the voyaging canoe whose courageous crews have sailed into the heart of Polynesia and the hearts of Hawaiians, came home yesterday to cheering, chanting, hula and a choir of conch shells.

"Kaulana e ka holo a Hokule'a" - famous are the voyages of Hokule'a - sang hundreds, as more than 100 past and present crew members were seated on the beach at Kualoa for ceremonies on the 25th anniversary of the canoe's first trip to Tahiti.

It also marked the end of the canoe's ninth successful voyage, the most difficult of all, from Hilo on June 15 to the last corner of the Polynesian triangle, Rapa Nui, where it arrived Oct. 8.

The canoe arrived home Feb. 27 on Molokai, after 9,000 miles and eight months at sea.

A flotilla of about 50 small craft accompanied Hokule'a and three other voyaging canoes to their landing at Kualoa Regional Park on Windward Oahu where an estimated 3,000 waited on shore.

Mau Piailug, 68, the Micronesian wayfinder who first taught modern Hawaiians how their ancestors had found these islands navigating by sea signs, wind and stars, was the first to receive the coconut shell cup of awa, and the leaf-wrapped laulau, in a ritual of ho'ala'a to ease crew members' spiritual transition from life on the sea to life on land.

The canoe is "the instrument that brought so many people together," said senior navigator Nainoa Thompson. "We need the instruments that pull our people together, not apart."

U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye saluted the occasion as a renewal of Hawaiian spirit, especially in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision that declared that non-Hawaiians are eligible to vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which many Hawaiians have seen as an affront to their efforts to achieve self-determination.

"This is an important time for them, when one considers that just a few weeks ago a decision was rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States which under ordinary circumstances would have been a great damper for this ceremony.

"But I think that people have responded well," Inouye said. "It has brought them together, for one thing," said Inouye, referring to widespread calls for unity in an effort to gain some recognition of sovereignty for Hawaiian people.

As for the famous and aging canoe, the senator said, "Hokule'a will continue forever because I am convinced it is so important to the culture here.

"For one thing, it has made Hawaiian men and women stand taller, and made their hearts beat with pride.

"And this is what any people need, self esteem and pride."

Sam Ka'ai of Maui, wearing a grass rain cape, sounded the conch shell to signal the beginning of the eating ritual.

"Famous are the voyages of Hokule'a in the long seas, in the short seas, in the choppy seas of Kanaloa, O Kanaloa, e Kanaloa of the long seas," the dancers sang to an ocean ancestor god.

"Hokule'a the canoe was born in Hawaii, was given life in Hawaii, traveled the eight seas from Hawaii to Niihau where the sun sets."

The canoe slid toward shore on glassy swells under misty clouds that hugged the mountains, the same "godly weather" that greeted Hokule'a on the last leg of its Tahitian voyage, said one-time crew member and columnist Bob Krauss.

A ho'olaule'a with games, food and music followed the ceremonies.

"It was awesome, history in the making," said Richard Nakagawa of Kaneohe, a moving company truck driver, as he enjoyed chicken laulau, lomi salmon, rice and haupia from a food stand at the park.

Nakagawa was among those who launched their boats before dawn at Heeia Kea pier to accompany Hokule'a.

"I love it," said Jerry Brown, a member of the Salishan-Kootenai tribes from the Flathead Reservation in Western Montana.

Both Native Americans and Hawaiians have found their ways by the stars with astronomical skills superior to those of whites, said Brown. "That hole in the top of the teepee was not just to let smoke out," but served as an observatory to map the skies, he said.

"And a lot of Native Americans feel we are one people with the Polynesians as well," he said.

Charisse Adaro of Kahaluu and her 5-year-old daughter Charity came bearing leis made by children at Waihole Elementary School. According to Adaro, "we came to welcome them home."

Voyages guided many back to culture
By Beverly Creamer
Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer

With little left to prove, will Hawaii's most famous seagoing vessel sail again? In what way will the Hokule'a - "star of gladness" - continue to guide the Hawaiian Renaissance that she helped start?

"When I grew up, things Hawaiian and being Hawaiian didn't have value in our society," said senior navigator Nainoa Thompson. "If you look at the day she was launched, it was a day when native language was sleeping with no sense of value. The taro fields were quiet. There were questions being asked about why they were bombing a sacred island, Kaho'olawe. There was disconnect and frustration by the native Hawaiian people and no place to put that anger. And that was true for me.

"And then Hokule'a was born. And it was a conduit for the opportunity to take that anger and place it in a way that could be a contribution to the growth of Hawaiian culture and to Hawaii as a whole."

Since 1975, the canoe has sailed 90,000 miles using stars, moon, sun, wind and waves as guiding forces. It has proven ancient Polynesians sailed with intent into the wind; that their feats of navigation equaled or surpassed those of Europeans as they brought language, culture and bloodlines across the Pacific.

And it has given a new sense of pride to people often estranged from their roots.

Just a few days ago, an elderly man with tears in his eyes approached Thompson as the younger man ate breakfast at Zippy's. "Because of the canoe, I feel proud to be Hawaiian," the man said.

"It's measurable that the strength of one's immune system is tied to self-worth," Thompson said. "When we raise our children to be proud of what they are, we are going to shift the negative health statistics to the positive side." While Thompson said this is a "benchmark" year to celebrate accomplishments, it's also a crossroads. For the canoe and how it is used. For him, personally.

"I need a year to slow down ... to spend hanging out with our schools and understanding education in Hawaii," he said. "I want to talk to people and learn and grow and have time to think. And then I want to dream again and start to work with others to shape a vision that will tell us where to go in the next 25 years."

Hokule'a, still gleaming after an overhaul last year in preparation for the Rapa Nui voyages, will continue its strong role in education, something inspired years ago when one navigator freely gave his knowledge to this new generation of navigators and asked only that they keep it alive.

"I told them when they take this from me, then they give to the young kids because I don't like it stay lost again," said Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug, 68.

"In my home, I've started to teach the young boys, because Micronesia is almost like here. Almost lost."

In the next eight months, Hokule'a is expected to sail to 31 communities throughout the state to thank the thousands who have made the last 25 years possible.

Thompson envisions the canoe becoming a moveable laboratory or classroom for students, inspiring both their dreams and their consciousness of the need to protect Hawaii's fragile coastal environment.

"The canoe has some kind of power, man, to carry messages," said Penny Rawlins Martin, a Molokai educator and outreach counselor who sailed on the first voyage home from Tahiti in 1976. "So I see the next 25 years as Hokule'a being a message-carrier.

"Twenty-five years ago, I remember hanging down at the pier and having a few drinks and throwing the bottles in the water. Now if I see someone doing that I stop my car and say "What are you doing?' The canoe has done that."

It's been suggested Hokule'a become a roving "monitor" of the health of Hawaii's reefs and shorelines, with students helping set parameters of how to protect their home state.

"That's the hope," said Aulani Wilhelm, public information officer for the State Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Wilhelm is one of those helping formulate ideas around Malama Hawaii, a loosely-knit group of agencies inspired by voyaging and now looking for concrete ways to protect and teach about Hawaii's unique environment.

Hokule'a "has a lot to teach us about how we live successfully on islands," said Maura O'Connor of the Moanalua Gardens Foundation, who helped create a "Let's Go Voyaging" curriculum. "About how we treat the vessel - the island - and how we treat one another."

Pearl City Highlands 4th graders created their own book about ways to care for the environment, turned it into a play, and shared it with younger grades. Students at Waiakeawaena Elementary in Hilo have monitored water quality at a local beach since 1992, providing crucial data on such things as levels of E. coli bacteria.

Thompson's dream is two-fold:

Create an Ocean Learning Center in partnership with other groups, teach about and monitor the ocean.

Build another deep-ocean catamaran, this one high-tech, to offer children the future along with the past.

"We need to look far back into history and as far ahead as we can imagine to live certain values to protect this place," said Thompson. "With the two vessels, we have the symbolism on both sides of the time spectrum."

But voyaging isn't over. Though many vessels are ready for retirement at age 25, Hokule'a is more seaworthy than ever, said Thompson. "She needs to sail and she should sail," he said. "Hokule'a's mana sleeps when she's tied up."

Planning for the next voyage may begin as early as next year, with thoughts now of reaching beyond Polynesia - to Micronesia, Piailug's home. And then perhaps another trip to Asia from where so many of Hawaii's immigrants have come.

Because of the cost of making such ambitious sail plans, some have suggested shipping - rather than sailing - the canoe to the coastal waters of Japan, from where it could sail and go on display.

New direction will come from many, including Thompson, the Polynesian Voyaging Society board, and Bishop Museum and the Hawaii Maritime Center, which own and house the canoe near Aloha Tower.

Thompson tells of how the voyage home from Tautira began. Lightning struck so close to Hokule'a that those holding lines of the back sail "felt it in their feet" before it swept up a valley and set a mountainside on fire.

He recalled how it ended, with the crew tying up the steering sweep and letting Hokule'a sail halfway home virtually unguided.

"We kept fighting her to get up into the wind, afraid we would end up west of Hawaii," he said. "Then somewhere around the equator the senior guys got together and said "Let's stop making her go someplace she doesn't want to go and just let her sail. We've just got to let her go.'"

Trimming the sails, balancing the weight, and tying the steering sweep in place, they let the canoe take the lead. "We had to trust she would go home," said Thompson.

She did.

The voyage to Rapa Nui has formally come to an end, but the mission of Hokule'a continues. Today, the thousands who turned out to welcome home the canoe yesterday are gone, replaced by 150 fourth-graders on a field trip who were to board Hokule'a.

In a speech during the formal ceremonies at Kualoa Regional Park yesterday, master navigator Nainoa Thompson said that in the 25 years since Hokule'a's launching, the canoe has helped to educate a generation about Hawaiian culture.

"In 1976 it was just trying to see if we could make it," he said, referring to Hokule'a's first voyage. "Now it's about our young people, and it's about education."

Hokule'a's birth in 1975 contributed to the rebirth of the Hawaiian culture and rekindled pride within Hawaiians, Thompson said.

By George F. Lee
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society have encouraged young people to gain voyaging experience.

"I want children to be great explorers, to deal with their fears," Thompson said. And if their beliefs are strong enough, they should go, he added.

"It's not just a canoe; it's a symbol of our rich heritage," said Kauwila Hanchett, 20, who paddled a canoe that shuttled to the beach guests from Hokule'a and the other canoes.

"When I was out on the canoe, I closed my eyes, and I was a thousand years in the past," said the Windward Community College student.

Ben Finney, co-founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, suggested the next voyage could be from Rapa Nui to Chile to prove a theory that the sweet potato originated in South America.

"That would be an easy trip because the canoe's got so much mana," Thompson said. "If the intent outweighs the risk, she would get there. But that would not have been said 25 years ago."

Finney dreamed up the idea of sailing a Polynesian canoe to Tahiti in 1966, "laying to rest the insulting theory that Hawaiians were only castaways blown out here by accident."

"Now Nainoa can retire and there are people who can pick it up," he said. "It's got a good chance of being self-sustaining."

The ceremonies yesterday emphasized how far the canoe has come since the first voyage to Tahiti. Its return from Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, meant the canoe has traveled to all points of the Polynesian Triangle.

Chanting and blowing of conch shells marked Hokule'a's arrival at 9 a.m. at Hakipuu, at the far end of the park, yesterday. The canoes Mo'olele, Makali'i and Hawai'iloa followed, carrying members of previous Hokule'a crews and other honored guests.

Proper protocol to receive the canoes included a solemn 'awa ceremony and sharing of food with honored guests before an ahu, or altar.

Mau Piailug, the Micronesian navigator who taught Thompson and other Hawaiian navigators the traditional method of using the stars to steer the canoe, was among those at yesterday's ceremonies. He said those who travel on the Hokule'a need to pass on what they have learned.

"Never hold it. Better to share. I don't like if lost again. Share to young people."

Island peoples pay tribute to voyagers
Visitors bring gifts and tons of aloha to the huge Hawaii party
By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

They spoke eloquently of kings and gods, of celestial wonders and revelations. They pointed to the mountains and seas as they sang praises and offered gifts.

They did it in many languages. But all understood.

Because yesterday celebrated not only Hawaiians, but all the people of the Pacific. And they rejoiced in the bond that made them one.

Islanders from New Zealand to Rapa Nui came yesterday to celebrate the 25th birthday of the Hokule'a - a quarter century proving the feats of the ancient Polynesian navigators who populated every inhabitable island in the vast Pacific.

The Hokule'a helped Polynesians "remember the family ties which bind us from one place to other places in this Pacific Ocean," said Tua Pittman of the Cook Islands, who became a traditional navigator himself after sailing the Hokule'a. "I come here as a friend, as a brother."

Hawaii's three traditional canoes triggered a renaissance of Polynesian cultures, creating a stronger sense of identity and direction among Pacific island people.

"The Hokule'a made me the man I am today," Pittman said. And that man has "a soul that feels it is part of Hawaii."

Hawaii's voyaging canoes - the Hokule'a, Hawai'iloa and Makali'i - have been greeted with outpourings of affection from Pacific islanders who share the same "canoe ancestors." The ancient navigators were the only deep-sea sailors in the world for at least 2,000 years, starting their explorations of the Pacific in the second millennium B.C. The first sail to Tahiti in 1976 drew 17,000 islanders, more than half Tahiti's population.

Yesterday's celebration drew native people of Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Samoa, Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, Rapa Nui and Alaska.

Wearing feathers and shells, T-shirts and baseball caps, they thanked the Hawaiians who had sailed thousands of miles to visit, relying only on the stars and maps in their minds.

Hector Busby, a Maori from New Zealand, said if it weren't for Hokule'a navigator Nainoa Thompson's trip there in 1983, his people would never have built their own voyaging canoe. "It changed my life," he said. "We thought we would never get the art of navigating by the elements back. Thanks to Mau (Piailug, who taught Hawaiians traditional navigation) and Nainoa, we are well on the way."

The Hokule'a has made six voyages since it was first launched on March 8, 1975, at Hakipu'u in the Kualoa Regional Park, site of yesterday's celebration.

Nikko Haoa, an elder from Rapa Nui, appreciates the difficulty of those voyages. The tiny Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is the most remote island in the Polynesian Triangle. The Hokule'a arrived there in October, the final destination of the century. Thompson "was the first one who came close to my island," Haoa said through his interpreter, daughter Kihi Haoa. "I believe in the Hokule'a."

Explorer Thor Heyerdahl believed the ancestors of Rapa Nui and the rest of the Pacific islands floated from South America with the easterly tradewinds. But researchers in Hawaii believed the ancestors spread from Southeast Asia using seasonal westerly winds to discover new islands and easterly winds to take them back. The Hokule'a helped prove the Hawaii theory.

Master Navigator Mau Piailug of Satawal in Micronesia traveled here 25 years ago to teach Hawaiians the ancestral navigational skills. Last year the canoe Makali'i sailed Piailug back to Satawal to honor him. "We make a big family," Piailug said yesterday about the bonds star navigation rebuilt.

It includes native Alaskans, who gave two logs to Hawaiians to build the voyaging canoe Hawai'iloa. "There is this powerful community among the Pacific that was latent," Byron Mallott of the Tlingit tribe said yesterday. "We gave you wood, you gave us a dream."

Samoans presented two stones to native Hawaiians yesterday that U.S. Congressman Faleomavaega Eni of American Samoa carried with him on the plane.

'Now it's about our young people, and it's about education,' its navigator says.

Island peoples pay tribute to voyagers
By Leila Fujimori
Star-Bulletin

The voyage to Rapa Nui has formally come to an end, but the mission of Hokule'a continues. Today, the thousands who turned out to welcome home the canoe yesterday are gone, replaced by 150 fourth-graders on a field trip who were to board Hokule'a.

In a speech during the formal ceremonies at Kualoa Regional Park yesterday, master navigator Nainoa Thompson said that in the 25 years since Hokule'a's launching, the canoe has helped to educate a generation about Hawaiian culture.

"In 1976 it was just trying to see if we could make it," he said, referring to Hokule'a's first voyage. "Now it's about our young people, and it's about education."

Hokule'a's birth in 1975 contributed to the rebirth of the Hawaiian culture and rekindled pride within Hawaiians, Thompson said.

By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin

Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society have encouraged young people to gain voyaging experience.

"I want children to be great explorers, to deal with their fears," Thompson said. And if their beliefs are strong enough, they should go, he added.

"It's not just a canoe; it's a symbol of our rich heritage," said Kauwila Hanchett, 20, who paddled a canoe that shuttled to the beach guests from Hokule'a and the other canoes.

"When I was out on the canoe, I closed my eyes, and I was a thousand years in the past," said the Windward Community College student.

Ben Finney, co-founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, suggested the next voyage could be from Rapa Nui to Chile to prove a theory that the sweet potato originated in South America.

"That would be an easy trip because the canoe's got so much mana," Thompson said. "If the intent outweighs the risk, she would get there. But that would not have been said 25 years ago."

Finney dreamed up the idea of sailing a Polynesian canoe to Tahiti in 1966, "laying to rest the insulting theory that Hawaiians were only castaways blown out here by accident."

"Now Nainoa can retire and there are people who can pick it up," he said. "It's got a good chance of being self-sustaining."

The ceremonies yesterday emphasized how far the canoe has come since the first voyage to Tahiti. Its return from Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, meant the canoe has traveled to all points of the Polynesian Triangle.

Chanting and blowing of conch shells marked Hokule'a's arrival at 9 a.m. at Hakipuu, at the far end of the park, yesterday. The canoes Mo'olele, Makali'i and Hawai'iloa followed, carrying members of previous Hokule'a crews and other honored guests.

Proper protocol to receive the canoes included a solemn 'awa ceremony and sharing of food with honored guests before an ahu, or altar.

Mau Piailug, the Micronesian navigator who taught Thompson and other Hawaiian navigators the traditional method of using the stars to steer the canoe, was among those at yesterday's ceremonies. He said those who travel on the Hokule'a need to pass on what they have learned.

"Never hold it. Better to share. I don't like if lost again. Share to young people."

Sacred Forests Chapter 1 - The Search

In 1990, the Polynesian Voyaging Society decided to create a new canoe, to be called Hawai'iloa after a famous Tahitian navigator. Hawai'iloa would be built of traditional materials - lauhala for the sails, olana for the lashings, koa for the hulls, ohia for crossbeams to connect the hulls, and hau for stanchions, decks and steering paddles.

"Hokule'a was built quickly, of modern materials mostly," Nainoa Thompson recalls, "and then we went right into sailing - it was an ocean project - the emphasis was on sailing her, not building her. But when our ancestors built and sailed voyaging canoes, it required the labor and arts of the entire community, everyone working together - some collecting the materials in the forest, others weaving the sails, carving the hulls, lashing, preparing food for the voyage, practicing rituals to protect the crew at sea. So we thought that building a canoe of traditional materials would bring our entire community together, not just the sailors, but the craftspeople, artists, chanters, dancers and carvers. The Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts Program was set up to build not just a canoe - but a sense of community - by recreating Hawaiian culture."

Nainoa hoped they could find traditional materials to build the canoe in Hawaii. He was particularly concerned about finding two large koa logs for the hulls. For nine months, almost every weekend, teams of Koa hunters fanned out through Hawaii's forests. They walked over hundreds of square miles on Molokai, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii. They followed tips from foresters, naturalists, game wardens and hunters. Once they discovered an extremely large and promising tree but it was rotten. It had probably died fifty earlier. As the days passed without success, Nainoa worried. If they did not find the trees the dream of building Hawai'iloa of native Hawaiian wood, after years of planning and soaring hopes, would certainly fail. Time was running out.

On a weekend in the middle of March, 1991, Nainoa and Tava Taupu searched the remains of a once dense Koa forest on the flanks of Kilauea volcano on the Big Island. They scanned the trees around them, measuring the trunks visually, looking for one large enough to carve into the 60 foot hull of a voyaging canoe.

"We searched that weekend with a large team and found nothing," Nainoa says. "Everyone had to go back to work on Monday but Tava and I stayed up in the forest and we decided that Tuesday, March 18th, was our last chance. At that point I was very sad and depressed by the difference between what I imagined the forest to look like and what it actually looked like."
"All around us were alien species and ferns uprooted by feral pigs. I saw a layer of vines twisted in the canopy from one tree to another, choking the trees. The fence line between the Kilauea forest and Keahou ranch created a stark contrast. How small the reserve seemed when compared to the ranch. How much had been cut down."

"'There's a fenceline up ahead about a half mile,' I told Tava, 'I'll go up slope and we'll work towards it together to cover more ground. We'll meet at the fence. If we don't find anything, that will be it.' We knew that it was probably a futile attempt, but it was our last chance."

It was getting cold as the two men neared the fenceline. Mist sifted through the trees and collected on Nainoa's fleece jacket. He raised the collar and hunkered into its warmth. Reaching the fence, he joined Tava and they continued together downslope toward the sea. They came to a place where prairie grass lapped at their legs with a swishing sound like the ocean on a sheltered beach. The view opened out to wide expanses of ranch land with cattle in the far distance. They headed toward a four wheel drive truck parked in grass up to its hubcaps.

"I saw Tava and he saw me but we didn't say anything. We each knew that the other had not found a tree. There was nothing to say, because there was nothing good to say. We did not even walk on the same side of the road and Tava walked behind me, as if we were repelled by each other. We were very depressed. We did not achieve what we so much wanted to achieve. But beyond that, I think the erosion of the forest was eroding something inside of us. We didn't want to mess with each other. I walked ahead. He walked behind."

A single alternative remained. Nainoa did not want to accept it but he knew that it was the only way that Hawai'iloa could be built.

Sacred Forests Chapter 2 - A New Friend to the Rescue

A year earlier, Nainoa had driven into Honolulu to a restaurant called Fisherman's Wharf - a place with a maritime motif, a motley collection of binnacles, steering wheels and curved ship's ventilators - to have lunch with Herb Kane and a friend of his from Alaska. The meeting was inspired by an event that took place more than two centuries earlier when Captain George Vancouver visited the island of Maui. While there, he measured a large canoe and found it to be over 108 feet long. It was fabricated, as he later wrote in his ship's log, "of the finest pine." Vancouver knew that pine did not grow in Hawaii.

"Where did the wood come from?" he asked the chief who owned the canoe.

"It was a gift from the gods," the chief replied.

Pressing the matter, Vancouver learned that a pine log had drifted ashore. Hawaiians had never seen such wood before so they assumed it was a divine gift; but Vancouver had seen pines growing on the northwest coast of the great American continent, so he guessed it had drifted from there to Hawaii.

Reflecting back on this incident, Herb Kane thought of building Hawai'iloa of Alaskan spruce. So he called an old friend, Judson Brown, who was then the chairman of the SeaAlaska Foundation, an offshoot of the SeaAlaska Corporation that managed a huge area of forest won by Native Alaskans in one of the most successful land claims in American history.

When Nainoa arrived at Fisherman's Wharf the air was thick with cigarette smoke and lilting lunchtime conversation. Herb introduced him to Judson Brown.

"Judson was a large man," Nainoa remembers. "He had a deep strong voice and a kind smile. He was quiet but welcoming. His eyes had seen a lot. I didn't know anything about him. I Only knew that among his people he was a respected elder."

Judson Brown was born in 1905 in Kluckwan, a tiny village 40 miles up the Chilkat river from Haines, Alaska - the seaport terminus for a huge wilderness north of Juneau. Among his people, the eagle moiety of the killer whale clan of the Tlingit nation, Judson is known as Gushklane, which translates roughly as "Big Fin." During Judson's childhood, the early 1900s, there was little opportunity for formal schooling, until Congress finally passed an act to establish schools for the education of Native Alaskans. Judson was one of the first from his village to be sent away to such a school. There, he learned to read and write in English, to recite the pledge of allegiance and such other skills that Congress, in its wisdom, thought would help him make his way in the white man's world.

"Judson's history is fascinating," Nainoa explains. "He began working when he was a teenager for the betterment of his people. The abuse that went on in Alaska was like the abuse that went on over here. They rounded up children from different tribes and sent them away to school. The schools were like prisons. The children were taken from their families and that destroyed many families."

"Native Alaskans were not allowed to vote," Nainoa continues, "until congress was finally forced to give them the right. But there was a catch, to register you had to recite the pledge of allegiance in English and be able to sign your name. When they had the first election, no one in Kluckwan voted because no one could speak English. Judson was still in high school then but he knew how to speak and write English, so he went at night with a lantern to every household in the village and he taught the people how to mimic the pledge of allegiance and to make their signature. Within one year, someone from his tribe won the mayor's race. Judson was a teenager when he did that."

When Judson graduated from high school he joined with other native activists to sue the United States for claims to their land which eventually resulted in a settlement that returned millions of acres to Alaskan native peoples. The government considered the land to be virtually worthless - a distant wilderness with few roads to extract the resources of timber and fisheries that existed there. But in the early seventies, oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. The best way to get the oil to the continental United States was a pipeline across the land. The wilderness had all of a sudden become extremely valuable.

"Judson was a member of the group that filed the first land claims suit," Nainoa recalls. "He was that kind of guy - very visionary."

During lunch, Herb and Nainoa explained the Hawai'iloa project to Judson. If they could not find koa trees in their forest, would Judson help them?

"He was very quiet and patient. He listened. After we explained the whole project he simply quietly said: 'we will give you the trees so you can build the canoe to carry your culture.' He understood fully what we were trying to do. It was about reviving our culture. He knew the trees would be the tools."

"The relationship between my people and all that is in the forest and the sea is one of interdependence," Judson told Nainoa. "The resources from the sea and forest have allowed our people to survive over all these centuries. Because of that relationship we treat everything in the forest and the sea as family. Giving you two trees is like giving you our children. So we will not cut the trees until you let us know exactly what you need and we will go into the woods and find the trees and then you must come and inspect them before we cut them."

"Judson's wisdom came from his kupunas," Nainoa explains. "It is their guiding values. It's the kind of wisdom we always seek in the older generation. What he told me was extremely powerful. I was in charge of building a canoe and that was my narrow focus, but around it were all these layers of values that I did not clearly see. I understood them, I felt them, but I did not articulate them clearly. I was too busy thinking of deadlines and logistics. Judson brought in a new set of values. Judson also clearly saw a bridge being constructed between his people and ours. He saw it from the very beginning."

"After talking with Judson, I knew we had a second source of trees," Nainoa continues, "but I didn't want to make that choice. I wanted to find the trees in our own forests because it would demonstrate that our ecosystem was still healthy. So we spent a year searching for the trees all over Hawaii. When we didn't find them I was depressed. I felt guilty. But I didn't completely understand these feelings. There were ten trillion other things that had to be done to keep the canoe project going. I didn't have the time to think out what was truly troubling me."

About a year after meeting Judson and a few days after coming out of the Kilauea forest, Nainoa called Judson Brown. The conversation was cordial but short. "We need the trees," said Nainoa. "Come to Alaska, they will be ready for you," was the reply.

Sacred Forests Chapter 3 - A Flight to Alaska

On the flight to Alaska, Nainoa looked down on vast tracts of uninhabited land. He was stunned by the country's unspoiled beauty, unlike anything he had seen before in his life. His plane landed at the airport which was on a small island separated from the town of Ketchikan by a rapidly flowing channel. The water appeared cold and gray - uninviting, even dangerous. He took a small ferry across the river to Ketchikan, a fishing village that had expanded over the years to a small town of perhaps 10,000 people and a cannery.

"That night I met Ernie Hillman, the chief forester for the SeaAlaska Corporation," Nainoa recalls. "He was a quiet man - a native Alaskan - fair and tall, with a long face and strong features. He was in good shape. He looked like he had been outdoors a lot. He had white hair and I guessed he was in his sixties. When you look at him you know he knows his work. I remember I was in small hotel room and he came in and sat down and in a strong voice he introduced himself. There was a real sense of security about Ernie. I felt like I could depend on him."

"He said, 'you have to come to inspect the trees. We're ready for you.'"

The next day, Nainoa and Ernie boarded a DeHaviland Twin Otter on floats. The plane climbed out over the town of Ketchekan and set a course west over the fjord-like Tongass narrows, over Gravina island crenellated with peaks still bearing a skim of snow and out over Clarence Strait which shimmered in the early morning light. Nainoa sat up front, behind the pilots. Ernie Hillman sat next to him. Although he was a native Alaskan, Hillman's Caucasian genes were predominant. He was lanky and deeply tanned. His movements were purposeful and precise. His glance was friendly - if somewhat guarded.

"I think he was genuinely puzzled about why he was sitting next to a guy from Hawaii on a trip to look at two large trees," Nainoa remembers.
The plane droned on over vast stretches of untrammeled wilderness. Though Nainoa and Ernie sat shoulder to shoulder in the small aircraft, an intimacy enforced by the cramped cockpit, they said nothing. Their silence was based on the men's' complementary natures.

"We are similar I think, because we are both shy people,' Nainoa explains. "I take time to build relationships. I like to listen before I say anything. And I think Ernie is the same way. It wasn't that I felt uncomfortable with Ernie. Just the opposite. He is a proud man. Self confident. He gets things done, but he doesn't say a lot."

Circling over Soda Bay, the aircraft descended toward Schelikoff Island. They passed over an Alaskan brown bear swimming in the channel between the island and the mainland. Craning his neck, Nainoa watched the bear's progress until he lost sight of it behind the Twin Otter's rear stabilizer. The bay was sullied by white caps. The pilot throttled back, the plane skimmed the water and settled deeply into it. The propellers thumped languidly. There was a slight bump as the floats touched land.
The men drove in a SeaAlaska truck along a narrow logging road cut through tall stands of timber. To Nainoa, the trees seemed huge beyond imagining.

"I was starting to get this instinctual sense of how powerful Alaska is. There was something so very different about it, something alluring, just one of those places. It was very spiritual, and that makes me quiet and humble. The place is so wild and so clean and still so natural. I was beginning to face up to the reckless changes taking place in Hawaii, especially on Oahu, and not being able to do anything about it. When I was a kid I felt very lucky to be born in Hawaii - and I still do - but the reefs in Maonalua bay were still alive then, now they are dead."

"In Alaska I got a sense of youth - everything is so young and clean and healthy," Nainoa continues. "I thought about the difference between Alaska and Hawaii - the size, the resources, and how people treated the resources. I thought about why I felt so attracted to this place. I love Alaska. It's a place of rejuvenation for me."

For six weeks, Ernie Hillman had searched the immense forest for two unusually large spruce trees. Hillman's job as forest manager was to balance the cutting of trees - and the impact their loss might have on the environment - with the financial return. So enamored was he of his forest that some of his colleagues called him a "conservationist." The word was not a complement among most Alaskans, and it missed its mark. Ernie knew the forest had to be cut, he understood well the basic economics of his profession. But before each cutting, he aimed to be certain the need balanced the loss. Now, accompanying this young Hawaiian to a spot he had discovered a week earlier, he was puzzled. What were the trees for? Why did they have to be so large?

After descending a slight hill, the truck jolted to a stop. The men got out and walked about three hundred yards with Ernie leading the way through what appeared to Nainoa an arboreal maze. Presently, Hillman halted before two trees that towered over the others.

"We came to a place about a mile from the floatplane." Nainoa says. "I could see the water all around us. Ernie had the specifications in his hand, the size of the trees we needed. We wanted them to be seventy-two feet long, eight feet in diameter at the base, and six feet at the top. The trees he had selected were 220 feet tall. I had never seen trees like that before, giant evergreens. They were breathtaking. Ernie was very proud of being able to complete his task. He was very task oriented. Give him a job and he will do it, and do it well - in his own way and at his own pace."

"He said: 'Shall we cut them?'"

"I saw the trees and I didn't say anything," Nainoa continues. "I didn't want to cut the trees down. Something was wrong. There were just too many of them. They were too beautiful. They were too full of life. I started to weigh the value of our project and the value of the life of the trees. When Ernie asked if we should cut the trees down, I didn't answer him. Virtually, I told him "no" but I didn't give him an answer. I was just too troubled. It was a tough time for me. Ernie got real quiet."

"I was very conflicted. The trees were so magnificent and beautiful. You stand next to one of them and look up. I was not ready to be responsible to cut down those trees. It was my choice. If I said yes, they would have cut them down. We got in the airplane and flew back. We didn't talk. There was nothing to talk about."

Sacred Forests Chapter 4 - Byron Mallott

On the same day that he came out of the forest, troubled by complex feelings and unable to give the order to cut the trees, Nainoa flew to Juneau to meet with Byron Mallott, the CEO of SeaAlaska Corporation and a colleague of Judson Brown.

"I flew to Juneau," Nainoa recalls. "I stayed in an old hotel on the slopes of a mountain overlooking the city. The room was dimly lit, and I called home that night. I was troubled. I don't remember what I said. The next morning, I had an early lunch with Byron."

"Byron was a quiet man," Nainoa continues. "He was dressed in a plaid long sleeve shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. He appeared to be intense - a lot of things were on his mind. He understood what our project was about - otherwise he would not have supported it. He knew there was a risk. He was responsible to his shareholders. Byron told me he was born in a village called Yakutat, another cannery town. His mom was pure native Alaskan and his dad was a non-native from the West Coast of the U.S. Later I learned that he was on just about every single board there was to be on. He was head of The Nature Conservancy. He was made CEO of SeaAlaska at age 34 - all these huge accomplishments. But he had not even finished college because had to take care of his dad when he got sick."

Ironically, Nainoa and Byron had both appeared in separate National Geographic Magazine articles in 1976 - though they were not aware of it at the time. Nainoa was featured as a young sailor aboard Hokule'a and Byron as an Alaskan firebrand looking out for the rights of his people.
"I learned that there is a very powerful drive in Byron that you would not normally see because he is so quiet. It is inside of him. As a child he saw the pain of what happened to his people, the abuse of his people, the alcoholism, the spouse and child abuse that went on in families in the villages. And he really wanted to make a change, so he stood up and took a stand. He was very young, in his late twenties, but he was very vocal about his beliefs."

"Byron told me about one of the most important turning points in his life," Nainoa continues. "It happened at a meeting when the governor of Alaska stepped forward and said, 'OK, Mr. Mallott, you have all these accusations about how bad we are treating your community. But how do you know?'"
"Byron said, 'What do you mean - how do I know?'"

"'There are many separate communities all through Alaska, have you been to all of them?'" the governor asked him.

"Byron said, 'No.'"

"'Well then,' the governor told him, 'you ought to go see them.'"

"So the Governor sponsored Byron as part of his staff to visit every single community in Alaska for two years," Nainoa explains. "That was an enormous turning point. He was sent to all these communities to observe and learn. Alaska is huge, very diverse - there are Eskimos and Athapaskans and Aleuts, Tlingits, and Haidas - many tribes. That two years of travelling really opened Byron's eyes."

"When we first met," Nainoa continues, "I wasn't prepared to share what I was thinking and feeling because I wasn't sure what it was. Here's the man that's giving us the trees. I had never met him before. And he's quiet, too. I am the kind of person that, if I don't know you, I'm not going to say anything unless you ask me. That's my nature. I didn't know Byron. Byron didn't know me. Maybe he was expecting me to ask him about the trees and since I didn't there wasn't much to talk about. That's my guess. We had a very quiet lunch. He asked me what I felt about Alaska and that's all that I remember about the conversation. We didn't even talk specifically about the trees."

A few days later, still troubled by his confused reaction to cutting down the trees, Nainoa flew back to Hawaii.

Sacred Forests Chapter 5 - Advice from a Kupuna

Shortly after Nainoa returned from Alaska, the board of directors of the Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts Program, the official sponsors of the Hawai'iloa project, met at the Bishop Museum.

"I gave my report and the board was puzzled by it," Nainoa remembers. "Here I had accomplished my mission. We had the trees just for the asking, all our problems were solved. Accepting the trees followed historical precedent, Vancouver had reported a canoe made of pine, and it was an opportunity to join with another native group that wanted to share with us. I understood all that. I understood that what we had set out to do we did very well. We obtained the trees that we knew would keep the project going, but I just wasn't OK with it."

Among the board members attending the meeting at the Bishop Museum was John Dominis Holt. Holt was a kamaaina - a member of an old family with deep ties to the islands.

"John knew that I was troubled about cutting the trees," says Nainoa. "It wasn't so much what I said but what I didn't say and how I acted - no excitement. It was not my nature. I didn't say, 'Hey, we accomplished our mission. It's all set up.' None of that. I just gave a quiet uncommitted report back to the board. After that, John came up to me and said, 'why don't you come to my house for lunch?'"

A few days after the board meeting, Nainoa drove up a long driveway in the Pacific Heights neighborhood - an enclave of expensive old homes overlooking Honolulu. The driveway was lined with groves of mock orange and tall Banyan trees gnarled with age and it arced through manicured lawns that would have done credit to a golf course.

"The house was old style," Nainoa remembers, "with big windows all around and views through them of Honolulu. There were a lot of paintings and there were maids and gardeners."

John Dominis Holt was a tall man, a little heavy set, fair, with white hair. He had a deserved reputation as an elegant public speaker who wove wit and humor into his presentations. He took pride in dressing well.

"He stood very erect and when he spoke he gazed upward at the ceiling," Nainoa recalls. "He talked to you very personally, but he always looked away."

"John was an interesting man," Nainoa continues, " a writer and a publisher. He had a great passion and love for Hawaii and its people. He really cared, but he came from a very affluent life so in some ways his contributions, I think, were made in a kind of isolation from the community - not that the community didn't like him - but the community didn't really know how to relate to him. That's my sense. He was a wonderful, kind, kind man. He had a passionate regard for Hawaii and its people. John Dominis Holt was of a different era. He was the end of that era."

John Holt expressed his affection for Hawaii as a writer and publisher of books on Hawaiian subjects including, in 1964, a volume entitled "On Being Hawaiian" and a reminiscence of early childhood summers in Waimea, on the Big Island.

"We sat down to lunch - very prim and proper. It was very different than I would normally have lunch, you have to worry a little about how to behave. We made small talk and then John turned to me all of a sudden and he asked me, 'Nainoa, tell me your dreams.'"

Nainoa was surprised by the question but he realized that it came from a deep place in John Holt's understanding of Hawaiian culture. "It came from John Holt's aloha for everything around him," Nainoa explains. "He was trying to find out what was the real reason I couldn't cut the trees down. Because I couldn't answer rationally, John was trying to get to a deeper level. Asking about the dream was his avenue to the unconscious."
"I think every single one of us who is Hawaiian, finds an instinct way deep within us - the Na'ao - not the intellectual, but the more spiritual part of who we are. We are still very connected to the earth because of who we were," Nainoa continues, "and we have been disconnected because of this overwhelming change that came with the new order, the new Western world, with depopulation. And it has put to sleep that powerful connection to mother earth. It's instinctual, not intellectual - what is right by our instincts and our soul - which is very much a part of Hawaiian decision making."
Nainoa paused for a moment to think before answering the question. He had, in fact, experienced a recurring dream. It was a replay of the search for koa with Tava in the Kilauea Forest. In the dream, as the men come out of the forest, Nainoa feels a heavy pain in his shoulder, a pain so severe that it always caused him to wake up, startled and confused. Taking his time, Nainoa carefully told Mr. Holt the details.

Now it was time for John Dominis Holt to pause and carefully consider what he had heard. He looked up at the ceiling, then focused his gaze carefully upon Nainoa, looking deeply into his eyes.

"He told me that to understand the dream I had to realize that it was all about the pain that I felt on leaving the forest," Nainoa remembers. "John was very precise in his words. He was a very articulate speaker. He said, 'You know Nainoa, everything that you need to do is in front of you. It is very close to you. But you are just not able to see it. Not only are the problems there, but also the solutions.' He said to me, 'I know that you know the answer.'"

Sacred Forests Chapter 6 - Understanding the Dream

After speaking with John Dominis Holt, Nainoa returned home to his Grandmother's house in Niu Valley, pondering what he had been told as he drove along the Kalanianaole highway. The answer was in the pain, Mr. Holt had explained, and it was very close - so close that Nainoa could not see it. What did that mean? Parking his car in the driveway, Nainoa walked up into the pasture behind his grandmother's house to think.

"In those days my dad was on the Board of Trustees of the Bishop Estate," Nainoa recalls. "Back in 1977 there was a movement by The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii to get the Federal Government to condemn the Kilauea Forest and to give it to them for conservation. My dad was angry about that because it was an effort to take land away from the estate, but he also recognized there was a need for a response. He studied the problem and discovered that the forest was in bad shape. So he started a reforestation program. I think the first tree planting started in 1977."

Nainoa's father - the forest - the pain - the replanting program; could these be clues to the meaning of the dream?

"I think that's what John meant when he said the answer was close,' Nainoa explains, "it was in my family history. When Tava and I were searching the forest, we passed the area that had been replanted with koa. I didn't think of that when we walked through the forest, but all the answers were there. All the pieces of the puzzle were right in front of me - I just never saw it."

"We were not just searching for Koa trees in the forest," Nainoa continues, "we were searching for a sense of hope. When you step inside the koa forest it feels quiet and sacred - but it has been very abused. I think in searching the koa forest we created a spiritual relationship to that place and way down deep inside that connection was painful. But the solution to the pain was not clear. When Tava and I walked out of the Kilauea Reserve I was too focussed on managing a voyaging canoe project. It wasn't until the confrontation with Ernie that I recognized that here was something more import then that. If that were the highest priority then we would have cut down the trees."

At the time, Nainoa's family - his grandmother Clorinda Lucas, his parents Pinky and Laura, his brother Myron, his sister Lita and her husband Bruce Blankenfeld - lived in three houses on a common plot of land at the head of a deep valley in Niu, under the shadow of Kulepemoa Ridge. Driving into the family compound, a visitor encountered first the canoe house of the Hui Nalu Canoe Club where a half dozen or so racing canoes were stored and where you almost always found club members laboring over a canoe, or meeting, or just hanging around in quiet comradeship. It's a scene out of a more ancient way of life in Hawaii. Perhaps with a minor stretch of the imagination you could say it was a mini-ahupua'a - a place containing almost all that was needed, a supportive family and an extended ohana of friends and relatives. During a week or so of thinking about his dream and its meaning, Nainoa consulted informally with his ohana. Gradually, the answer to the problem of cutting down the trees in Alaska emerged.

"Even though we did not directly cause the abuse of our forest ," Nainoa recalls, "we needed to take responsibility for it if we cared for the land. Our culture flourishes from that caring. So gradually the answer became clear, we needed to plant tees in our own forest before we cut any down in Alaska."

Sacred Forests Chapter 7 - Healing Our Souls

On (date), just about where Nainoa had felt the pain in his dream - at the fenceline separating the Kilauea Forest Reserve and the Keahou Ranch - a circle of about a hundred people joined hands for a prayer. They had spent most of the day replanting koa trees, now it was time to ask the akua to bless their work.

"When it became clear that we needed a step in between going to Alaska and cutting the tress down I felt a deep sense of relief and freedom," Nainoa recalls. "We knew what we had to do to restore the balance - to be pono. We held the ceremony on the edge of the forest, on the fence line, just outside the reserve on the slope of Kailua."

The circle of men and women joining in the prayer and the renewal of the forest was in some ways a microcosm of a new way of life that was emerging then in Hawaii - a way of life that combined keiki and kupuna, activists who worked on the front lines for the renewal of Hawaiian culture and those who worked quietly behind the scenes, cowboys and sailors, men and women of all races - an ohana of people created out of a common vision. Randy Fong was there from Kamehameha School to help conduct the ceremony. Kalana Silva, who was instrumental in Hawaiian language immersion, was there; also Robert Kekealani from Puuwaawaa, a well known kupuna of the ranch and forest; and Ricky Tavares, who had been the ranch manager for Keahou Ranch and who helped guide Nainoa through the reserve to look for the trees. Also in the circle were many members of Hokule'a's crew - Tava Taupu, Shorty Bertleman, Clay Bertleman, Chad Baybayan and others. Nainoa's parents were there along with Agnes Cope and other board members of the Native Culture and Arts program. And there also to join hands was John Dominis Holt.
"John knew that I had to search for the answer at a level that was much deeper than the intellectual," Nainoa explains. "I could not cut the trees down because it felt wrong for the environment, but it was deeper than that. When we put our thoughts about the environment over here and we put our feeling of na'ao over there and we have no link between them, we feel disconnected. Our sense of balance is destroyed. Walking out of the forest with Tava was painful because we had destroyed that very sacred place, our koa forest, and that hurt at a very deep level. It was much more than an environmental issue. We hoped the replanting would send a message about replacing abuse with renewal. It was symbolic of making choices that we all felt very good about. All of us. It laid the groundwork for a new emphasis within the Polynesian Voyaging Society - a new program that we call Malama Hawaii - an opportunity for caring and making the right kind of changes in our island environment."

"Among that group at the replanting were members of the board of directors from SeaAlaska - including Byron and Judson. It was a diverse group, a sense of growing community. What started as a project of artisans and people within the Hawaiian voyaging culture now extended out as far away as Alaska."

Byron Mallot spoke during the ceremony - presenting his vision of the healing of abuse and the renewal of a native culture in both Alaska and Hawaii. And near the end of the ceremony, Judson Brown rose to speak. As he walked to the center of the circle the silence was profound. Nainoa remembers hearing only the soft flow of wind up the mountain.

"I will never forget his words," Nainoa explains. "He said, 'have no fear when you take your voyage because we will always be with you. When the north wind blows take a moment and realize that the wind is our people joining you on your voyage.' Judson was the spiritual link between his people and ours. He was clear about the canoe we would build and about the voyages we would make. It wasn't about navigation. It wasn't about building a canoe. It wasn't about the stars. It was about bringing people together. He always saw Hawai'iloa as a celebration of native culture."

The sun was beginning to set by the time the ceremonies were finished. As the men and women of the ohana made their way to their cars, the slanting light picked out the leaves of the new koa seedlings in the dappled shade of the forest. For a moment, Nainoa remembers, they seemed infinitely delicate in the fading light. "But then I remembered the image of children and grandchildren putting their hands in the earth," he says, "and I saw what the seedlings meant. As we were healing the earth we were also healing our souls."

Sacred Forests Chapter 8 - The Soul of the Forest

On the day that Nainoa and the delegation from Hawaii traveled to Schelikoff Island in Alaska to receive the gift of spruce trees, the forest was dense with life. There were flights of raven and Canada geese, solitary rufous hummingbirds and bald eagles, Sitka black tailed deer, moose and brown bear. But for all this, it was the trees themselves that astonished the Hawaiians - colonnades of trees that shadowed the landscape all around so that little grew beneath the tall canopy, producing a feeling that the land had been swept clean by some unknowable and fastidious spirit.

"There were representatives from SeaAlaska and the Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts Program," Nainoa recalls. "Wright Bowman, our master builder who would make Hawai'iloa from the trees was there. A Kupuna named Keli'i Tau'a conducted the Hawaiian chants alongside Paul Marks who came to chant for the Tlingit people and Sylvester Peele who chanted for the Haida people. My mother and father were there. Judson and Byron were there. When we walked down to the trees from where we parked the trucks everyone was talking, it was so beautiful and invigorating, but when we got there and looked up at the trees it became very quiet."

"We thanked the spirit of the forest for the gift of the trees," Nainoa continues. "First we thanked them in Hawaiian and then we thanked them in the Tlingit language. We were two very different cultures, from two very different lands, but it seemed to me that we gave thanks in a way that was very similar. We were two people separated by a great distance and by history, but we thought about the spirit of the land in a way that was very similar."

When the ceremony was finished, Ernie Hillman and his crew moved forward. Nainoa remembers the sound of chain saws reverberated through the forest, a sound that seemed for a time to sever a still place deep inside him. He appreciated the expertise of the foresters - how they knew exactly where to make a wedge-shaped cut to aim the trees' descent and how they left a hinge of wood at a precise point in the cut to slow the rate of fall. Yet for many of the Hawaiians who watched, it also felt as if they saws were cutting into living flesh. They had never seen such trees before, and they had certainly never participated in the death of such a massive life form.

"I couldn't watch," Nainoa remembers. "Out of respect for the gift and for Ernie and his men, we had to stay while the trees were cut. But when the final moment came, I had to look down at the ground. I only looked up when the first tree had finally fallen but I will never forget the sound it made. It was like a scream of agony from the very soul of the forest."

Shortly after Nainoa returned from Alaska he received an envelope postmarked Juneau. Inside was a letter from Byron Mallot, a response to a question Nainoa, deeply shaken by the cutting of the trees, had asked him on the way back to Ketchekan - "do you think personally that we should have the trees?"

"Both the reality and the symbolism of the (Hawaii'iloa) project," Byron wrote, "brings hope and inspiration to all peoples seeking to maintain their traditions, heritage and culture. In a society that does not place a high priority on such things - except when they may touch a nerve - you help nurture shared values through an expression of such vision, initiative and sheer innate beauty and strength that all can feel ennobled by it. The voyaging project is that kind of expression. You do it for the Hawaiian people but it reaches far beyond. In your canoe you carry all of us who share your vision and aspirations for a people to live and prosper with their future firmly built on a knowledge of their heritage and traditions."

On July 24, 1993, Hawai'iloa was finally launched. A few weeks later, sea trials began. Byron Mallot flew in from Juneau to stay with Nainoa for a week and to take a voyage aboard the canoe.

"Byron came to Hawaii for one of the original sea trials of Hawai'iloa," Nainoa remembers, "and when he walked on board the crew members didn't really know who he was. They knew he gave us the trees, but they didn't know the man. He is a very quiet and private man and when he came aboard he didn't say much. It was not like him to give a speech."

"When we were sailing, I saw him climb into one of the hulls. He was fiddling around there but I didn't pay much attention to it. Then suddenly he called out my name - pretty loudly. I thought that something must have happened, so I ran over and I looked down at him and there were tears flowing down his face. He looked up at me and he said, 'Hawaii Loa is alive. These trees are alive.'"

Sacred Forests Chapter 9 - The True Wealth

In February of 1995 a large group of people gathered at the Nani Loa hotel in downtown Hilo for the departure of Hawai'iloa on her first maiden long distance voyage. The canoe would sail with Hokule'a to Tahiti where she would join with two canoes from the Cook Islands, two from Tahiti and one from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to begin a return trip back to Hawaii via the Marquesas. It was the first time in a thousand years that a fleet of Polynesian canoes had sailed together over an ancient voyaging route. There were many chants. There was classic Polynesian hula. Pinky Thompson, President of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, spoke to thank the Alaskan people for their gift of the two giant spruce trees that now lived again as Hawai'iloa's twin hulls. Finally, Judson Brown rose to speak.

"He got up in front of a large crowd of people," Nainoa recalls, "and he said: 'I am very grateful that the Hawaiian people would thank us for what the Alaskan people have done. But in truth, all we did was give you trees from our forest. What you gave was far more important - you gave us dreams.'"

"Everyone was absolutely silent. Think about what he said. He clearly understood that we were building a bridge between native people. His role was critical - not just in getting the trees - but in the celebration of our culture. Even though Hawaiians and Alaskans were different people - defined by their environment, language and culture - in the end Hawai'iloa was embraced by Native Alaskans as their own. Judson was so proud. He truly loved Hawaii."

In xx, 19xx, having completed her voyage to Tahiti and back through the Marquesas, Hawai'iloa was shipped aboard a freighter. Landing in Seattle, she began a xx mile voyage of thanksgiving up the coast and inland waterways of Alaska. Byron Mallot was often aboard and Ernie Hillman, captaining his fishing boat, escorted the canoe through Alaskan waters during her entire visit. In Haines, Alaska, Hawai'iloa's crew were greeted in a uniquely Alaskan ceremony - a potlatch.

"We went to Haines and we were taken into a small building by a river, a simple and humble place with a wooden floor," Nainoa remembers. "We sat on the floor and the people gave us a potlatch. They heaped gifts before us. I was embarrassed. I saw an elderly lady sitting against the wall in the back of the room. There was a young boy with her, her grandson I supposed. Toward the end of the gift giving I saw her hand to him a small package. She seemed kind of embarrassed about the gift, almost ashamed. The young boy walked quietly up to the front of the room and put the package on the pile of gifts. It was composed of hundred dollar bills. I was shocked."

"I turned to Judson Brown and said, 'I don't know how to respond to this kindness.'"

"Our idea of wealth," he told me, "is not about accumulating but giving away. We have survived as a people for centuries by caring for our natural environment and by sharing with each other."

On (date) Judson Brown passed away. He is buried in his native village of Kluckwon where, over sixty years ago, by the light of a flickering kerosene lantern, he first began teaching his people about their rights. Judson had lived a life expressive of his Tlingit name, Gushklane - Big Fin - the one who has guided his people with wisdom and with a deep belief in the values of not only his ancestors, but the traditional values of all people.

"Judson Brown is still with us because the bridge between the people of Hawaii and the people of Alaska that he built is still strong," Nainoa says. "After Judson's death, his people carved two totem poles. They brought one to Hawaii with fifty people to celebrate the union between our people in the Bishop Museum's Hall of Discovery. At the ceremony there was another elder, Alan Williams, who said: 'we are doing this as our contribution to keeping alive the bond between Hawaiians and Native Alaskans.'"

"They set up the other totem pole in Juneau, Alaska," Nainoa continues, "and that is the anchor for the bridge that Judson envisioned - one that will always connect our two people and our common values of preserving and sharing the wealth of our natural environment and our cultures."