HONOLULU (CN) - The Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokulea completed the last leg of a historic three-year, round-the-world voyage on Saturday, pulling into port at Oahu’s Magic Island under full sail. Kayaks, paddleboards, surfers and jet skis trailed in its wake—along with the spirits and names of those dreamers who first conceived of the canoe as a champion of Polynesian history.
Tens of thousands of people cheered as the vaka’s (main hull’s) earth-red “crab claw” sails passed. The crowd then fell silent, briefly incredulous, as if the canoe had indeed sailed out of some ancient ocean. It was not, however, the ancestors who debarked the craft, nor the slightly less-grizzled veterans of Hokulea’s maiden voyage down to Tahiti in 1985. The crew that emerged was young, beaming, swaggering and exhausted—carrying with them the torch of indigenous knowledge.
Hokulea had come full circle, conquering both the perils of the sea and of self-doubt. On the first leg of the journey, the canoe had slid down the face of 20- to 30-foot waves, with seven of 13 crew members down with motion sickness. But the canoe went on to sail to Tahiti and across the south Pacific and Indian Oceans. Tethered to escort ship the Gershon, at anchor in a storm near Cape Hope, Hokulea came about as the wind shifted and crashed into the side of the steel-hulled escort, breaking a hole in its own hull.
Polynesian Voyaging Society President Nainoa Thompson says, “Voyaging will put you on your knees, take you to the bone.”
But there were bright spots, too. After patching Hokulea’s hull, the crew met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sailed across the Atlantic to Brazil and up the Eastern Seaboard, where Penobscot Indians in traditional birchbark canoes greeted them in Maine.
“In their canoes with them are their ancestors,” said Captain Bruce Blankenfeld. “Everywhere we went, it’s still alive, still strong. I saw that today with our own children … The Wampanoag of Martha’s Vineyard sent us a quahog necklace as permission to visit, and built a canoe they hadn’t built in 300 years to come out and greet us.”
The Story of Hokulea
The story of Hokulea begins with artist Herb Kane poring over illustrations of canoes made by early European explorers, redrawing them along more seaworthy lines. This ultimately led him to the conceptual design for Hokulea. Later, Kane met anthropologist Ben Finney. Finney’s professors at the University of Hawaii had introduced him to theories that Polynesia had been settled accidentally by voyagers in canoes blown off course.
Kane and Finney, along with sailor Tommy Holmes, founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society in 1973, raising the money within two years to build Hokulea in a traditional style with modern materials. Hokulea was completed in 1975 and launched into Kaneohe Bay.
Kane would introduce current PVS president Nainoa Thompson to the constellations, and Thompson was hooked.