ABOVE: Hokulea sails past fresh lava flows on Hawaii Island in 2013.
Five decades ago this March, a bold experiment—a replica of a traditional Hawaiian voyaging canoe—slid across the sands of a Windward Oahu beach and into the waters of destiny. Few could have dreamed then that Hokulea would still be sailing fifty years and some 275,000 nautical miles later—farther than the distance to the moon—let alone having sparked a cultural reawakening across the Pacific and eventually circling the globe as an icon of planetary healing.
Designed from descriptions of great oceangoing canoes seen by early visitors to the Islands, the sixty-two-foot, double-hulled craft was given the Hawaiian name for Arcturus, the "star of gladness" that guides traditional voyagers to Hawaii. The founders of the Polynesian Voyaging Society had built Hokulea to prove a point: that the ancestral mariners of the Pacific had the ability to purposefully voyage across vast distances of the world's largest ocean, guided only by their inherited knowledge of the stars, wind and waves.
But in Hawaii the art of wayfinding had long since been lost. To relearn it, the budding voyagers turned to one of the last traditional navigators left in the Pacific: Pius "Mau" Piailug, from the tiny Micronesian island of Satawal. In the spring of 1976, under "Papa" Mau's guidance, Hokulea retraced an ancient migration route between Hawaii and Tahiti, where she was received by ecstatic crowds of Polynesian cousins.
Though originally intended only for that voyage, Hokulea has kept sailing ever since, voyaging throughout the Pacific and around the globe and spawning other vaa (canoe) communities across Oceania. Under the leadership of Mau's Hawaiian protege Nainoa Thompson, some two thousand aspiring voyagers have trained with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and untold others around the world have been called to action by the canoe's mission.
And the journey continues. Soon after celebrating her birthday in early March, Hoku will again depart for Tahiti, this time to resume her multiyear Moananuiakea voyage circling the Pacific, which was paused for a time in the wake of the tragic Lahaina wildfire. "This voyage is not just about the oceans, but about choices and actions to help build a future that is healthy for our children," Thompson said in announcing the effort. "We're trying to reclaim our relationship to the Earth."
Hokulea's launch ceremony, March 8, 1975. About two thousand people watched the canoe slide down a coconut-log ramp into the placid waters of Kaneohe Bay, accompanied by traditional offerings and chanting. COURTESY OF POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY
Crowds greet Hokulea on her return to Honolulu in July 1976 from her groundbreaking maiden voyage to Tahiti, which demonstrated that early Polynesians could travel the 2,500 miles across the equator between the two island groups without the use of navigational instruments.
Over the past five decades, Hokulea has navigated to every corner of the Polynesian Triangle, which covers some ten million square miles between Hawaii, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Samoa. "What had begun as a scientific experiment to prove a theory about the settlement of Polynesia has touched a deep root of cultural pride in Polynesian people," says Thompson.
In 1999, dancers welcomed Hoku to Rapa Nui at Polynesia's eastern edge. The voyage there was considered the ultimate test of the Pacific ancestors' ability to navigate to the farthest reaches of their oceanic homeland, even against prevailing winds. As it turned out, the canoe was blessed with favorable winds and finished the trip in far less time than expected.
In 2007, Papa Mau welcomed his senior students to Satawal for a special initiation, called pwo. The ceremony bestowed on the senior navigators the honor and responsibility of carrying on Mau's teachings. "If there are conflicts, the navigator must resolve them," Thompson says. "If there is sickness, the navigator's responsibility is to heal. If there is damage, the navigator must repair it. Their kuleana [duty] is to sail beyond the horizon and return safely to their home island."
To honor Mau, a canoe community on Hawaii Island, which he frequently visited, built and delivered a new canoe to him on Satawal for the ceremony. Its name, Alingano Maisu, refers to breadfruit that has fallen to the ground, which by custom on Satawal is free for anyone to take. In the same way, Mau said, anyone may learn the formerly secret arts of navigation aboard his canoe.
Following the ceremony, Hokulea continued on to Japan (seen also on the facing page), the canoe's first visit to Asia. The voyage, dubbed Ku Holo La Komohana ("Sail on to the Western Sun"), honored the strong cultural ties between Japan and Hawaii, starting with King Kalakaua's visit to the Emperor Meiji in 1881. Hopscotching her way from Okinawa to Yokohama, the canoe visited areas from which many had emigrated to work on Hawaii's sugar plantations. One of those places was Hiroshima, where the canoe paid tribute to the city's quest for world peace.
Members of a tribal dance group warm up for the grand Celebration of Friendship welcoming the canoe to Cape Town. At the ceremony, Tutu's daughter Mpho said that Hokulea's visit "reconnects us with each other on a primal level. ... Even though Polynesia is so far away, if you go far enough back, you will find African blood."
In 2014, Hokulea embarked upon her most ambitious journey yet, a voyage around the globe to promote the concept of malama honua, or caring for our Earth. By the time Hoku returned home three years later, she had sailed more than forty thousand miles and visited 150 ports in twenty-three countries and territories—including the farthest point in the voyage, South Africa, which lies almost exactly on the opposite side of the planet from Hawaii. Sailing down the length of the country's east coast to Cape Town, the crew visited local tribes and met with peace icon Bishop Desmond Tutu, a longtime friend of the canoe.
After rounding the cape, Hokulea made her way past the soaring cliffline known as the Twelve Apostles. From the start, planners had considered this leg—notorious for its shipwrecks and home to the mythical ghost ship the Flying Dutchman—to be among the riskiest of the entire Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage.
Hoku was graced with fine weather as she rounded South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, an infamously dangerous passage for sailors traversing between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Near the cape, which is also home to many unique and highly endangered ecosystems, crew members visited a cave containing some of the oldest artifacts of human intelligence yet found, dating back more than 160,000 years. "It's an amazing moment," said Thompson, "when one of the youngest native cultures comes to see the place of the oldest."
Hokulea crew member Maleko Lorenzo, draped in a bear-claw lei gifted to him by a tribal elder, blows the canoe's pu (shell trumpet) in answer to the bellowing of sea lions basking along southern Alaska's glacier-lined Inside Passage. COURTESY OF PHILAMER FELICITAS / POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY
In June 2023, Hokulea journeyed to Alaska to launch her latest voyage, which will circle the entire Pacific. Dubbed Moananuiakea ("The Great, Expansive Sea"), the epic "voyage for the planet" will cover even more distance than her sojourn around the globe, with a rotating roster of some four hundred crew members. Following a spectacular launch ceremony in Juneau with local Alaska Native communities, Hoku sailed down the west coast of the continent to San Diego before pausing the voyage to return home after the Lahaina fire. This spring, the effort will resume with a crossing to Tahiti.
With planned stops in more than three hundred ports, Moananuiakea aims to mobilize millions of "planetary navigators" to work together for a better collective future. According to senior navigator Bruce Blankenfeld, who led the initial legs of the voyage, it is also intended to establish a "new paradigm of voyaging, one that expands the idea of our voyaging family in the Pacific to reach across all of its shores and Indigenous cultures."
For information about the March 8-11 events celebrating Hokulea's fiftieth anniversary visit Hokulea.com.
