Hōkūleʻa and her crew have arrived in Newport Beach, California, where they will remain for the next couple of days.
The double-hulled canoe continues to attract crowds along the West Coast — some even following Hōkūleʻa to multiple ports.
Molokaʻi native and Hōkūleʻa crew member Jay-R Kaʻawa said the crew got a little boost from the makani, or wind, on its six-hour sail Tuesday from Marina del Rey down to Newport Beach.
"We've been getting a lot of offshore winds when we sailed down, which was nice. We were able to actually open up our sails. The weather has been very kind to us," Kaʻawa said.
Kaʻawa said she’s sailed on the waʻa within the Hawaiian Islands, but this was different.
"You know this being my first time voyaging these waters here in California, I didnʻt know what to expect. We must have been greeted by 30 to 40 waʻa. And to see the love and the aloha that our community here in California has especially for Hōkūleʻa really got me emotional," she said.
She said it was moving to see so many Native Hawaiians from the diaspora come out.
"For whatever reason they’re living here in California, so to be able to bring a little bit of Hawaiʻi to them via Māmā Hōkūleʻa ... and to see their faces light up ... and like I said even tears shed is something that I know I’ll never forget," she said.
Kaʻawa and the crew have even spotted familiar faces at the different port stops.
"So there are others following along even by boat and also by land at the different ports that we stopped at. It’s like 'Eh, we know that person, they were at our last port.'”
When Kaʻawa isn’t on the waʻa, she’s back teaching at Kamehameha Schools on Maui. Despite being away from the classroom, she’s found a way to assign her students homework.
"They’ve been calculating our arrival times at the different ports that we’ve been traveling to. Just doing some simple math calculations. Giving them our departure time, how many nautical miles we’ll be traveling, and our speed in knots," she said.
"So, it’s just a little way to keep them involved in our beautiful Moananuiākea Voyage."
Newport is one of the last port stops before the Polynesian Voyaging Society puts a pause on the Moananuiākea Voyage and brings Hōkūleʻa home.
Take a look at HPR's past coverage of Hōkūleʻa:
