In a nearly four-hour long ceremony Thursday, dozens of navigators and crew members were honored for their contributions to the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa ahead of its 50th anniversary.
Tucked in the back of Niu Valley on Oʻahu, generations of Hōkūleʻa’s crew members, and navigators from the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Micronesia gathered within a large compass under the stars.
The compass not only represents Pacific Islanders navigating the ocean, it symbolizes the lineage of the people taught how to voyage by the late Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug.
“Genealogy is so important,” said Thomas Raffipiy, a pwo navigator from Satawal, an atoll located in the Federated States of Micronesia’s Yap.
He is one of the relatives of Piailug. Yapese navigators and chiefs sat in the center telling the stories of Piailug and even told a few jokes.
“As kids, we always thought that Mau was the meanest father,” Raffipiy said. We always say he was so aloha to everybody else but was the meanest guy to all of us. But he was a good guy.”
Hōkūleʻa, a double-hulled canoe, means “Star of Gladness.” It was built in the 1970s after an effort to revive the tradition of Polynesian navigation.
John Kruse was one of the builders of the canoe in 1974 and helped launch it at Kualoa in Kāne'ohe Bay on March 8, 1975.
“It was like a lightning rod,” he said. “Once that thing touched the water, it changed Hawaiʻi. Then it changed the whole Pacific.”
He was also a crew member of Hōkūleʻa’s first voyage from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti in 1976.
Many of Hōkūleʻa’s crew members have died, but their memories were honored by their family and friends. Of those names, Eddie Aikau was honored. He died when he left the crew to seek help after Hōkūleʻa capsized in 1978 heading to Tahiti.
Kruse said he was on that voyage with him. He said the crew were overloaded and voyaged when there was a storm.
He added that the older generations had to make the mistakes to pass on those lessons to the younger generation.
"The tragic thing is you lost one of the best guys ever,” he said. “With that you learn from those mistakes, even though it was costly.”
When Hōkūleʻa was built, it was the only voyaging canoe in Hawaiʻi. Now half a century later, there are 17 with younger generations aspiring to become part of its voyage.
Nainoa Thompson, pwo navigator and CEO of the nonprofit Polynesian Voyaging Society, looked to the rings of the compass and acknowledged the students who conducted the nearly four-hour event.
“The larger question is going to be, what about the next ring around the students? That next ring. It's going to be huge. It's going to be Pacific-wide. It's going to be global,” he said.
A birthday commemoration for Hōkūleʻa is scheduled Saturday at 8 a.m. at Kualoa Regional Park — where the canoe first launched 50 years ago.
