Encounter 12 · 12 of 42 · 1 May – 4 June 1976
Without instruments
On 1 May 1976 a canoe left Honolua Bay for Tahiti. The navigator had never sailed that ocean. Wayfinding was living on Satawal. In Hawaiʻi it had been interrupted.
Honolua Bay, Maui
The plate offers water and sky. Where would you put east?
Honolua Bay, Mauiending not yet
What they knew
- Departure: 1 May 1976, Honolua Bay, Maui. No compass. No sextant.
- Mau had not previously navigated in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Wayfinding was living on Satawal. In Hawaiʻi it had been interrupted.
What they could not know
- Whether the old way still worked on this road.
- Whether a reconstructed canoe would survive the crossing.
- What the voyage would mean to people ashore if it failed.
The situation
The Polynesian Voyaging Society had built Hōkūleʻa, a performance-accurate double-hulled canoe. Hawaiians had not, for centuries, navigated long ocean roads without instruments. Mau Piailug, a master navigator from Satawal in Micronesia, agreed to steer the first voyage to Tahiti by stars, wind, swell, birds, and cloud.
- 01Honolua Bay, Maui1 May 1976. Hōkūleʻa leaves. No compass. No sextant. Mau Piailug, from Satawal, has not steered this southern road before.
- 02Open waterStars, wind, swell, birds, cloud. A reconstructed canoe. A crew willing to be students. The ocean is not a symbol.
- 03Mataiva, TuamotusLandfall 1 June 1976. The old way still worked on this road, this time.
- 04Papeʻete Harbor4 June 1976. A crowd later numbered in the tens of thousands. The 1976 crew did not know the later life of the canoe.
Mau’s office was a trained art, living on Satawal. The canoe was a reconstruction. Kapahulehua was the captain. One crossing is not a proof of how the Pacific was settled. It is a road that still worked, this time.
1976
The crossing
They sailed without instruments. They arrived. Success is not a charm.
1978
The channel
Eddie Aikau left on a surfboard for help and was not found.Another encounter in this Guide. Not a sequel the 1976 crossing secretly contained.
1976 is not spent as if it had purchased 1978, or the reverse.
What was at stake
Crew lives. A cultural wager that was not a game. If they were lost, the loss would not be a metaphor.
The next move
They sailed without compass or sextant. Stars, wind, swell, birds, cloud.
What they had
- A canoe
- A teacher who still held the art
- A crew willing to be students on water
- The ocean itself, which is not a symbol
What happened
Tahiti. Then a revival of wayfinding that is still moving. The 1976 crew did not know that sentence.
Where would you put east, if the plate offered only water and sky?
Private. No one else will see it.