(inspiring piano music)
- Hawai`i is one of the remote places on the planet.
And in the open ocean, there are no landmarks.
So Hawai`i was discovered by canoes,
with no GPS, no motors, no electronics.
Just pure nature, and that's what we're doing today
to celebrate that.
(water crashing)
So we're on Hokulea,
she is a replica of a Polynesian voyaging canoe.
They were the mode of transportation for discovering
the Hawaiian Islands.
- There's no metal, there's no screws, there's no nails,
there's no braces that hold the canoe together.
It's nothing but lashings and of rope.
There's no motors on board,
there's no navigation equipment that we use
to go across the ocean.
We started in Hawai`i in end of May, 2014.
We embarked on this worldwide voyage
which first ended up going towards Tahiti,
through our ancestral routes,
and now we're here in Martha's Vineyard.
(ship bell ringing)
- A big part of this voyage, right,
Malama Honua, is to train a whole cadre
of young navigators and captains.
Well wait, now we leave the back sail,
let's get the 23 out.
The big foresail.
(intense music)
Kaleo Wong is one of the apprentice navigators.
I've done four voyages with him,
and he was on his own across the Atlantic Ocean,
and he was brilliant.
I mean, he was just so successful, you know, after traveling like 1,200 miles,
finding just little islands in the middle of nowhere.
You're talking like thousands of hours
of observation at sea.
- When we are navigating the open ocean,
our biggest clue that tells us where we are
and where we're going is the sun.
The sun, as we know, rises in the east,
and sets in the west,
so if we just know where one point of is,
then we know where everything else is.
The stars do us the same thing,
just like the compass in the sky.
We memorize close to 200 stars and know where they rise
and where they set and how they move across the skies.
- The sun and the stars and everything work in conjunction
with the swells, so in the absence of the sun,
then you maintain the orientation of the crew
into the swell patterns.
That's a very difficult thing.
The Hokulea was built with the express purpose
of proving that navigation by the ancient way
was very viable, that these canoes could be guided
over 2,000 miles and long distances.
They proved that on their very first voyage in 1976.
What it means is continuation.
Kaleo and these others, they're just like a pinch of salt
as far as the people who know how to do
this type of navigation.