Bruce Blackenfeld, right, the captain of the voyaging canoe, looks on as crew member Alvin Parker, left, this morning loads crew provisions. JOAQUIN SIOPACK I The Honolulu Advertiser   Alvin Parker embraces his grandson Parker Alejado and his wife Renette Parker at the Hokule'a docking site on Sand Island.

Initially, the crew had planned to leave O'ahu last week, but gale-force winds creating high surf in the 'Alenuihaha Channel between Maui and the Big Island forced a delay to the start of the historic trip.

Hokule'a will make an overnight passage to Kawaihae on the Big Island, where most of the inter-island crew will get off and a new crew will embark.

The vessel will join sister-ship Alingano Maisu, a double-hulled voyager built by the Hawaiian voyaging community as a gift to Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug, who taught non-instrument navigation to Hawaiian canoe sailors. The two canoes will undergo final preparations at Kawaihae, and are scheduled to sail Saturday north to Mahukona, where a final departure ceremony is tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday.

The canoes are to island-hop across the north Pacific to Piailug's island of Satawal, and then sail on through Micronesia.

Alingano Maisu will be home-ported at Yap Island. Hokule'a will then sail on to the islands of southern Japan to commemorate Hawai'i's historical links to the Japanese nation, which date to an 1881 visit by Hawaiian King David Kalakaua to Yokohama.