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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Majuro Atoll welcomes voyaging vessels in style

 •  Hokule'a 2007 voyages to Micronesia and Japan
Follow the Hokule'a as they sail to Micronesia and Japan in our special report.

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer

The voyaging canoe Alingano Maisu, with its mainsail reduced for strong winds, approaches Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Maisu and Hokule'a reached the island late Sunday after battling stormy weather late last week.

Polynesian Voyaging Society

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The voyaging canoes Hokule'a and Alingano Maisu, and their escort vessel Kama Hele, were moved yesterday to the Majuro Atoll dock at Uliga after spending Sunday night anchored off palm-filled Aneko Island on the atoll's northern coast.

Majuro's president and other officials greeted the canoes at the dock with midday festivities, said Kirtley Pinho, former head of the local visitors bureau and an unofficial Majuro ambassador. Pinho towed Alingano Maisu with his aluminum landing craft while Kama Hele towed Hokule'a from Aneko to Uliga.

He said the crews and their supporters were to be feted last night at a dinner sponsored by the president, and one this evening sponsored by Matson.

The vessels were to reprovision and to make a small number of crew changes before proceeding.

Pinho said the canoes were expected to remain at Majuro until tomorrow Hawai'i time. The departure is on Thursday in Majuro because it is on the opposite side of the International Date Line from Hawai'i. The Polynesian Voyaging Society is using Hawai'i time throughout the voyage to avoid confusion.

The vessels will island-hop through Micronesia to reach Satawal, where the Hawaiian voyaging community will present the Alingano Maisu as a gift to master navigator Mau Piailug. The gift is in thanks for Piailug's gesture three decades ago of teaching noninstrument navigation to Hawaiians. Thereafter, the vessels will travel on to Palau, then to Yap, where Alingano Maisu will remain. Hokule'a will proceed from there to Japan for a goodwill mission to several Japanese islands.

The canoes on this voyage have used the tools Piailug provided to navigate without instruments, first from the Big Island to Johnston Atoll, and then from there to Majuro, an overall distance of roughly 2,400 miles. Hokule'a captain Bruce Blankenfeld was lead navigator for the first half of the voyage, and Maisu navigator Chadd Paishon for the second portion.

Paishon led the boats to within viewing distance of the atoll Sunday afternoon Hawai'i time, and brought them into the lagoon the same afternoon, which was Monday Majuro time.

For Paishon, the last days of the journey were particularly challenging. Late last week, the canoes entered an area of stormy weather that denied Paishon a view of the stars.

"The weather intensified to the point of gale-force winds, and all three vessels had to take down their sails and wait through the night," the Polynesian Voyaging Society said in a release.

Paishon spotted Hoku Pa'a, or the North Star, Saturday morning and was able to determine that the canoes were too far north. He turned them on a south-southwesterly course. The crews were reporting seeing flocks of seabirds known as manu o Ku, or white terns, which confirmed that they were near islands.

Navigators use these birds to identify the direction to land, since they return each evening to the island on which they roost. But for Majuro, the issue was not as simple as following any white tern, said Nainoa Thompson, Polynesian Voyaging Society president.

"The Marshall Islands is a whole nest of islands. ... One of the difficulties is because there are so many islands, the birds are sometimes hard to read, because they fly to and from the islands from multiple directions," Thompson said in a voyaging society release.

Paishon managed to slip between the islands of Aur and Arno to sight Majuro first.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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