Nainoa Thompson, 71, has been navigating vast oceans for more than 40 years, but he questioned his purpose after his students' voyage from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti in 2022.
"The storms at sea are easy, but the storms inside are much harder," he said.
It was the first time the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa had sailed since the COVID-19 pandemic. It had its first female captain, and half of the crew were in their 20s with little deep-sea voyaging experience.
Thompson, who was taught by master navigator Mau Piailug of Micronesia, trained his students for that journey. Although Thompson wasn't with the crew, he kept a close eye on the route to Tahiti as they gave him their coordinates.
Despite sailing through a storm, the crew reached Tahiti in 17 days. They even beat Thompson's record, taking nearly half the time he took when he first sailed to the Polynesian island in 1980.
"Honestly, I wasn't celebrating," he said. "I was scared that they're just going to be too good."
Hawaiʻi celebrated 50 years of Hōkūleʻa's history of voyaging on Saturday at Kualoa Regional Park, where the double-hulled canoe first launched.
Many older navigators and crew members face the pressure of passing down their knowledge to the next generation to ensure that voyaging will never go extinct.
Hōkūleʻa, which means "Star of Gladness," first set sail on March 8, 1975, during the Hawaiian Renaissance, which saw a push for the revitalization of Hawaiian culture and language.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society, an Oʻahu-based nonprofit created in 1973 to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods, has thousands of crew members who have been a part of Hōkūleʻa's history.
First woman captain and navigator
Lehua Kamalu, 38, made her mark as Hōkūleʻa's first female captain and navigator. She embarked on that 17-day voyage from Honolulu's Sand Island to Tahiti on the ancient sea route.
She first saw Hōkūleʻa in 1992, when it returned from a voyage to the Cook Islands after the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture.
Growing up in Hawaiʻi, Kamalu was always connected to her culture. She attended Kamehameha Schools and Ke Kula Kaiapuni ʻO Pūʻōhala School in Kāneʻohe.
"Our teachers knew that to be connected to our language, we had to be connected to the culture where these words, these stories and values all came from," she said. "I remember so many opportunities that they would find and make sure we understood where we were going, what Hōkūleʻa was and where she had come from."
While finishing her engineering degree at the University of Hawaiʻi, she volunteered at PVS.
"When I started, I didn't have a lot of experience," she said. "I'd never sailed a canoe before in my life."
She was on a trip to Tahiti in 2014 and sailed back home in 2017.
For her Tahiti trip in 2022, Kamalu said she and the crew meticulously planned and mapped out every voyage scenario. She said that if you ask the crew, they would call her "the crazy checklist lady."
Kamalu underscored that she was most impressed by the younger crew members.
"It was a pretty doozy of a first voyage to take," she said. "It's over 2,000 miles and the first week was very cold, very rough, very wet, very windy, and they just stepped right into it and were so focused."
Kamalu said she gives credit to past navigators who had to make all the mistakes to teach her and more generations to come.
"I think it's a testament to 50 years of constantly trying to raise the bar for ourselves," she said.
Pacific Islanders have been voyaging the Pacific for thousands of years without navigational instruments. Many believe that Hawaiians stopped sailing after settlement in the islands.
Hōkūleʻa was the first voyaging canoe of its kind in more than 600 years. On a recent visit to Hōkūleʻa while docked at Sand Island, a group of charter school students were taught to open and close the ship's sail.
PVS doesn't recruit. Instead, they let Hōkūleʻa draw people to it.
Lucy Lee, 23, first sailed on Hōkūleʻa after graduating from high school in 2019 — and then the pandemic happened.
"It allowed us the unique opportunity to prioritize being around the canoe, but it was something that helped me to maintain a bigger picture of I'm still working towards a goal," she said.
Lee said 50 years is a huge milestone for Hōkūleʻa.
"She was kind of like the lone sailing canoe when she was born 50 years ago," she said. "Now, her family has exponentially grown. There's always the idea of who's going to build a canoe next. So that's been really special."
Passing the torch
When Thompson flew to Tahiti to meet with the crew in 2022, he didn't know how to congratulate them.
"I hid because I didn't know who I am now, given that they're that precise."
Thompson took a one-person canoe and paddled out to Hōkūleʻa. He rubbed the hull, thanking it for carrying the crew safely to Tahiti.
He said his father, who died in 2001, is his navigator. He heard a glimpse of his father's voice telling him to finally give the young voyagers their recognition.
"It's not like I'm transcending to become the teacher. I'm frankly descending to become a student because of what I know," he said. "I need to understand that my dad's correct. Your job is to make them better than you, which allowed me to thank them and allowed me to be so proud of them."
