Hokule'a preparing to teach new lessons
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer
The twin hulls of the voyaging canoe Hokule'a will slip back into the Pacific today for the first time in a year.
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The waters are familiar to this canoe, which has traveled to the warm lagoon waters of the Tahitian islands, the rough waters of Rapa Nui, the cold waters of New Zealand and the rocky waters of the Marquesas.
Russell Amimoto, a drydock coordinator, examines one of the twin hulls of the Hokule'a at a warehouse near Sand Island where the canoe is undergoing repairs and refurbishing. Amimoto began as a Hokule'a volunteer in 1995.
Hokule'a, an icon of a generation in Hawai'i, has been rebuilt and strengthened for its expected voyages in 2003 into new waters, with a new mission. After more than a quarter-century in which it has proved the validity of Polynesian non-instrument navigation, and the ability of Polynesian sailing canoes to carry people and cargo safely over vast distances, Hokule'a is heading into the classroom.
Or more correctly, the canoe is becoming a classroom, a vehicle for teaching Hawai'i's young people about their culture, the importance of learning, the environment, and likely many other lessons not yet identified. During the coming year, the canoe's navigators plan a voyage through the Hawaiian Islands, stopping often from the Big Island to Mokumanamana, also known as Necker. A second voyage goes on out the island chain, all the way to Kure Atoll, with scientists and satellite communications equipment on board to communicate with kids in classrooms across the state.
The title of the new mission: "Navigating Change." The vessel needs a new mission because, well, Hokule'a has resoundingly accomplished its original task.
"We had two goals — to experiment with righting a scholarly wrong, and as a focus for cultural revival," said Ben Finney, the retired University of Hawai'i anthropology professor who founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society along with artist Herb Kane and the late canoe historian Tommy Holmes. Over time, other key figures stepped forward, like Wright Bowman Sr., Wally Froiseth, Will Kyselka, Mau Piailug, Kawika Kapahulehua, and importantly, the late Myron "Pinky" Thompson, who stepped into leadership at a critical time, when the program was dispirited after the death of Eddie Aikau. Aikau disappeared after paddling for help after the canoe swamped.
"Hokule'a has done what it set out to do," said Rubellite Johnson, retired professor of Asian and Pacific languages at the University of Hawai'i. "They have helped to recover the canoe-making arts and to test out the wayfinding techniques, and they've inspired the wanting on the part of other Polynesians to revive their own cultures."
The scholarly wrong, Finney said, was the conclusion by historians that Polynesians populated the Pacific Islands by downwind drifting and fortuitous accident. Hokule'a has voyaged 90,000 miles, mostly without the use of instruments, clearly setting aside that proposition.
Thompson's son Nainoa, the first Hawaiian trained traditional navigator of the modern age, said the canoe's accomplishments did much more than the scientific experiment anticipated. Thompson recalls stories of his grandmother, who was beaten for practicing hula, and said the canoe and its voyages have helped restore Hawaiian culture and the pride of Hawaiians in their traditions.
"It fundamentally did two things in its 27 years. It said it's OK to be proud of who we were. And also, for us today, it gives us a meaning and a purpose, a sense of who we are," Nainoa Thompson said. "It helps us define ourselves by our strengths instead of our weaknesses. The next generation — our grandchildren — are going to be looking at who we are very differently than our grandparents."
In a sense, this canoe, made of plywood and fiberglass and milled lumber, is more important than early Polynesian canoes because it has returned Polynesians' history to them, said University of Hawai'i Hawaiian Studies professor Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, a member of the Polynesian Voyaging Society board of directors.
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"We get to walk in the footsteps of the ancestors. Imagine, just using your brain to figure out where you are on the Earth," she said. "There is a whole extrasensory feeling you get from sailing on her. It's fabulous to think about what the ancestors thought about when they were sailing, and the idea that the ocean is a friend and a pathway."
Mike Taylor, painting the hatch of the Hokule'a, says he volunteered to work on the vessel after reading an Advertiser story about the Polynesia Voyaging Society's call for help to refurbish the voyaging canoe. Taylor has contributed both his time and money.
For many, the sense of achievement goes beyond the 60-foot catamaran, called a wa'a kaulua in Hawaiian.
"Hokule'a represents a major achievement, not just for Hawaiians, but for man, for humans," said University of Hawai'i ethnobotanist Isabella Abbott.
But for Native Hawaiians, it is special.
"Maybe my vision is clouded by being proud of those early Polynesians who discovered the Hawaiian Islands.
"Hokule'a is the single, consuming, unifying, unarguable symbol" of the Hawaiian renaissance, she said.
But the canoe was part of a movement in the Islands, a movement that included the struggle to stop the bombing on Kaho'olawe, revival of the Hawaiian language, new interest in hula, expanded participation in outrigger canoe paddling, in the Hawaiian martial art called lua and much more.
"They were happening, wonderfully, at the same time," said H.K. Bruss Keppeler, past president of the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs. "But the canoe was remarkable in its instant support. Right from the start, people were blown away by it, and it had a huge impact on the revival of culture and especially voyaging, in the whole Pacific."
Hokule'a went into drydock early this year for what was expected to be a few months of work, but a marine survey found its hulls had been seriously compromised by rot.
"She was never expected to go this long," said Pat Duarte, director of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. "I guess they expected her to go on the one voyage to Tahiti and then be put in a museum."
Dozens of volunteers work on her each weekend — people who hope some day to sail on Hokule'a and are paying their dues, and ones who just want to be a part of the mission. One of them, Mike Taylor, is a sailor and retired Army officer, and shows up several days a week to help out.
"I do most everything. Sanding, grinding, painting, varnishing, lashing, splicing, whatever it takes," he said. "I had known about Hokule'a from articles in National Geographic or documentaries, and I was interested. I'd love to sail on her one day."
They work under the direction of Russell Amimoto, Jerry Ongies, Froiseth, Jay Dowsett and others. During this drydock session, they have cut out the rot in the hull and replaced it with fiberglass, removed the bow and stern covers — called many — and strengthened them, replaced some decking, raised the gunwales and much more.
"The feeling is that after this restoration, she's probably in the best shape she's ever been in," Duarte said.
Nainoa Thompson agreed: "She's lighter, structurally stronger and she will sail better than ever."
It has been an expensive process for the program — close to $100,000, Duarte said. The Polynesian Voyaging Society is raising money to keep her afloat and sailing.
"Funding for a nonprofit organization is always an issue," Duarte said.
Thompson said he believes the canoe can help bring the relevance of learning to a lot of Hawai'i children.
"We're losing a lot of the kids in our schools. Maybe the canoe can create interest in learning. Maybe we can use those special things about voyaging to define what is special in Hawai'i and to support and enhance the disciplines they are going to use in school anyway.
"We're becoming a support system to our educational system," Thompson said.
But the most basic value of the canoe and the culture that has grown up around it involves pride, according to one Hawaiian leader after another.
"It's a beacon — not the only one — that shines for Hawaiians as an example of what we were, and what we can be," said Ilei Beniamina, a Ni'ihau native and professor at Kaua'i Community College.
