The first voyage of the Hokule`a helped to spark a native Hawaiian cultural renaissance and a deep interest in the ancient voyaging tradition (a similar interest was ignited in Tahiti). However, some Hawaiians felt that a crucial element had been missing: although the canoe had been designed, captained, and largely crewed by Hawaiians, a Hawaiian had not navigated the canoe.

Nainoa Thompson, a young Hawaiian, set out to remedy this. While sailing back from Tahiti in 1976 as part of the canoe crew, Nainoa, who at the time knew nothing about traditional or modern navigation, started to wonder how Mau was able to navigate without instruments. Thompson started observing the heavens and the sea, looking for the signs Mau had used to guide the canoe over thousands of miles of open ocean. After returning to Hawai`i, he spent thousands of hours over the next four years studying the night sky on his own or under dome of the Bishop Museum planetarium with astronomer and writer Will Kyselka; he also spent months with Mau learning the techniques of wayfinding.

Thompson developed a system of wayfinding using celestial bodies and ocean swells. He combined some of Mau's Micronesian techniques with some unique methods of observing the stars he had worked out for himself. (See "The Art of Wayfinding" for a description of some of Thompson's techniques.)

In the summer of 1980 Thompson successfully applied his wayfinding system to guide Hokule`a from Hawai`i to Tahiti and back. The canoe left Hilo on March 15, 1980 and arrived in Tahiti 33 days later on April 17, 1980. The canoe sailed back to Hawai`i on May 13, 1980, and arrived 26 days later on June 8, 1980.

In replicating Mau's feat of navigating the canoe to Tahiti, then going beyond that feat to guide the canoe without instruments back to Hawai`i, Thompson was able to validate and extend the results of the 1976 navigational experiment. That he was the first Hawaiian to accomplish this feat since the legendary voyages of the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. confirmed to Hawaiians (and other Polynesians) that their ancestors had the tremendous intellectual discipline and the immense knowledge of the ocean and the heavens required by wayfinding.

(Adapted from Ben Finney's "Voyaging into Polynesia's Past" in From Sea to Space, Palmerston North, New Zealand: Massey Press 1992.)

CREW MEMBERS: HAWAI`I-TAHITI, 1980

Nainoa Thompson-Navigator

Pat Aiu
Chad Baybayan
Shorty Bertelmann
Harry Ho
Sam Ka`ai
Buddv McGuire
Marion Lyman-Mersereau
Mau Piailug
Gordon Pi`ianai`a
Steve Somsen
Jo-Anne Sterling
Leon Sterling
Tava Taupu

CREW MEMBERS: TAHITI-HAWAI`I, 1980

Nainoa Thompson-Navigator

Snake Ah Hee
Wedemeyer Au
Chad Baybayan
Bruce Blankenfeld
John Kruse
Kainoa Lee
Kimo Lyman
Gordon Pi`ianai`a
Mau Piailug
Steve Somsen
Leon Sterling
Michael Tongg
Nathan Wong