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Deep Sea Voyaging Canoe Hōkūalaka‘i
Fundamental to sailing deep-sea voyaging canoes is the practice of navigating without instruments. As evidenced by the many islands they settled, Polynesians had a keen sense of navigation through understanding the rising and setting patterns of stars, movements of swells and wind, and being able to locate remote islands based upon the flight patterns of local bird life. There exists however no record of the exact techniques employed by these ancient navigators. Today’s new breed of Polynesian navigator uses a composite system reengineered by combining what is known about non-instrument navigation from famed Micronesian navigator Mau Pialug and the application of techniques learned through the academic sciences of astronomy, mathematics, oceanography, meteorology, and is then experimented, practiced, and applied at sea. The many successful attempts of voyaging and navigating without instruments by the double hulled canoe Hōkūle‘a since 1976 throughout the Pacific Ocean leave a clear record that those techniques work while the growing number of new students and deep sea canoes demonstrate that the art is a dynamic part of today’s Polynesian culture.