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THIS WOMAN NAVIGATED A 3,000-MILE PACIFIC VOYAGE WITHOUT MAPS OR TECHNOLOGY

Polynesian wayfinding has long been a patriarchal tradition. Lehua Kamalu is
breaking the mold—and helping to lead a revival of the ancient skill.

Hōkūle'a, a double-hulled canoe, was designed to replicate Polynesian voyaging
vessels—and to revive the traditional practice of navigating by sun, stars,
waves, and wind.
Courtesy of The Polynesian Voyaging Society
ByJordan Salama
Published May 18, 2022
• 13 min read
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Lehua Kamalu had only a few minutes to talk. She was perched atop a two-hulled
canoe called Hōkūle’a in the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Big Island of
Hawaii where her crew had just set sail. The wind whipped into the phone as she
spoke. An expert sailor and navigator, Kamalu was nearing a crucial moment: At
the start of the voyage, she’d need all her concentration to determine the
course for the long journey ahead. “We’ll make an estimate of how far we are
from the island,” she said. “And we’ll set up on our track to head southeast.”
Soon, she’d have to hang up and there would be no calling back: Hōkūle’a and its
10-person crew were bound for Tahiti, some 3,000 miles and 20 days away.

0:11

Hōkūle'a, sailing here from Tahiti to Hawaii, has launched a renaissance of
traditional Polynesian voyaging.
Video courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) sails on the high seas unaided by modern
navigation technologies. Their spare double-hulled canoes, designed to replicate
the traditional vessels that historically plied the Pacific, have in recent
years crossed oceans and circumnavigated the globe. The sun and the stars are
their compass; the waves and the wind, their maps. “Everything is done
mentally,” said Kamalu, the organization’s voyaging director. “You are tracking
the wind, you’re tracking your cruise speed, you’re adjusting the sails.”

Ancestral pathway

Led by captain and navigator Lehua Kamalu, the crew of Hōkūleʻa

sailed 3,000 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti. On their 20-day journey,

they relied on the stars, sun, wind, and waves to guide them.

Departed Hawaii

April 18, 2022

Honolulu

HAWAII

(U.S)

Tahiti

200 miles traveled on day three

AREA

ENLARGED

April 23

Pacific

Ocean

April 28

May 3

Samoan

Islands

Arrived in Tahiti

May 8

French Polynesia

(France)

300 mi

300 km

Christine Fellenz, NG Staff

Sources: Michael Shintani, Polynesian Voyaging Society; Nakupuna Foundation

Ancestral pathway

Led by captain and navigator Lehua

Kamalu, the crew of Hōkūleʻa sailed

3,000 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti. On

their 20-day journey, they relied on

the stars, sun, wind, and waves to

guide them.

HAWAII

(U.S)

Tahiti

AREA

ENLARGED

Departed Hawaii

April 18, 2022

Honolulu

200 miles traveled on day three

Pacific

Ocean

April 23

April 28

May 3

Arrived in Tahiti

May 8

French Polynesia

(France)

300 mi

300 km

Christine Fellenz, NG Staff

Sources: Michael Shintani, Polynesian Voyaging Society; Nakupuna Foundation

Kamalu is Hōkūle'a’s first female captain and navigator—one of the few women to
lead what’s historically been a patriarchal tradition, passed from grandfather
to grandson. She finds meaning in the story of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of
fire who, as the legend goes, was exiled from Tahiti and made it across the
ocean to Hawaii, opening up an ancestral “sea road” between the two islands—the
same route that Kamalu was sailing when we spoke.

In 2017 Lehua Kamalu, Hōkūle’a’s first female captain and navigator, sailed with
the Polynesian Voyaging Society from the Galapagos Islands to Rapa Nui, known as
Easter Island.
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

“She’s a goddess,” Kamalu said of Pele, “but she’s also a woman who is the first
to truly navigate and open up the pathway from Tahiti to Hawaii. So, even though
we don’t hear the stories of the female figures who came after her, that is a
very, very powerful story to consider and to think about.”

A National Geographic Emerging Explorer, Kamalu became the first known woman to
captain and navigate a long-distance ocean voyage without the aid of modern
navigational technology when she sailed 2,800 miles from Hawaii to California in
2018. That she found her way into voyaging in the first place has, at times,
felt like chance, she said: “But people keep telling me nothing’s by chance
around here.”

Since its inaugural voyage in 1976, Hōkūle'a has crossed the Pacific many times,
including this 2017 voyage from Tahiti to Hawaii.
Courtesy of The Polynesian Voyaging Society
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

'ONE OF THE GREAT STORIES OF HUMAN HISTORY’

Scholars now widely agree that seafarers settled the Pacific several thousand
years ago through navigation skills grounded in close attention to the natural
world and passed down from one generation to the next. But during the centuries
of European colonial rule, “accidental drift” narratives prevailed, suggesting
that the Indigenous islanders had made it there by chance. Ignoring widespread
oral traditions, the theory’s proponents dismissed “communities where this is
part of the culture and the genealogy,” Kamalu said. Over time, and with the
influx of Western navigation technologies, the ancestral skill of traditional
wayfinding gradually vanished from many parts of the Pacific, including Hawaii.

0:23

On the first day of their recent voyage to Tahiti, crew members make quick work
of unfurling a sail.
Video courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

In 1973, a group made up of anthropologist Ben Finney, artist and historian Herb
Kawainui Kāne, and sailor Charles “Tommy” Holmes sought to revive it. They
founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society with the goal of reclaiming what little
wayfinding knowledge was left, and testing the counterhypothesis of deliberate
navigation.

In search of living experts in Micronesia, the PVS founders encountered master
navigator Mau Piailug on the remote atoll of Satawal. One of the last surviving
traditional navigators, Piailug had learned the skill from his
grandfather—receiving the sacred initiation ritual of pwo, in keeping with
Micronesian tradition. He was willing to share his knowledge with the Hawaiian
and broader Polynesian community.

Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Left: A crew member wields the hoe uli, or steering paddle, on a voyage from
Bali to Mauritius during Hōkūle'a’s 2014-2017 circumnavigation of the globe.
Right: Crew members work together to guide the ship on a voyage from Mauritius
to South Africa.
Courtesy of The Polynesian Voyaging Society

0:11

Hōkūle'a encounters rough seas on a sail from Florida to Panama in 2017.
Video courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

With a National Geographic film crew aboard, PVS launched its inaugural voyage
in 1976 in the newly crafted Hōkūle'a (the same canoe Lehua Kamalu now
captains). Sailing from Hawaii to Tahiti with only the traditional knowledge of
Piailug and his apprentices to guide them, the crew made it in 34 days—and was
welcomed by some 17,000 exultant revelers. A traditional vessel hadn’t made that
voyage in at least 200 years, likely much longer.

Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Drawings made by Ludwig Choris in 1822 show traditional rowing boats used by the
people of the Ratak islands (left), a chain within the present-day nation of the
Marshall Islands, and Hawaii (right), then known to Europeans and Americans as
the Sandwich Islands.
M. Seemuller, DeA Picture Library/ Bridgeman Images

Hōkūle'a’s successful first journey launched a renaissance of traditional
Polynesian voyaging and a movement of historical and cultural reclamation that
is still underway. Nearly five decades later, PVS has trained thousands of young
navigators and voyagers. Their work, which is based on ancestral knowledge,
archival research, and more recent learning and innovation, has since reached
members of island communities across the Pacific eager to learn the closest
thing possible to the ancient wayfaring techniques of the past.

0:17

Crew members use the stars as a compass during a voyage from Tahiti to Hawaii.
Video courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

“The Polynesian migrations are one of the great stories of human history,” said
Christina Thompson, author of the book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. “For
people to be aware of that charged and powerful history on a global scale is so
important.”

The beginnings of Hōkūle'a sprang up amid a larger decolonization and
reclamation movement in the Pacific during the 1970s, and specifically grew out
of a movement to revive the study of other aspects of Hawaiian language and
history, the author continued. “It’s a story of power, it’s a story of
achievement, it’s a story of success and incredible accomplishment. That’s what
the voyaging symbolizes.”

RESPECT FOR THE SEA

“I can see the point now,” Kamalu said over the wind. “It’s coming up on the
horizon.” Our time on the phone was running short. Soon Hōkūle'a would reach the
start of the ancestral pathway, the ancient sea route between Hawaii and Tahiti
that’s marked by a combination of trade winds and currents, “on-ramps” and
“off-ramps.” They make the journey a rather pleasant one, voyagers say, if you
can keep a good sense of where you are.

An illustration from British explorer James Cook’s 1773 journals depicts
Tahitian islanders using ocean-going vessels of all kinds, from voyaging canoes
to short-excursion boats and rafts.
Photograph via Bridgeman Images
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.

Each island community has its particular history, Kamalu explained. The
reclamation process nearly always involves “a revival of culture, a remembrance
of language, a wanting to look back and remember old ways.” But there are also
new ways, especially since 2008, when Piailug gave PVS president Nainoa Thompson
permission to break the patriarchal boundaries and eventually give pwo to women,
naming them “master navigators.”

Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Left: Hōkūle’a relies solely on the wind in its sails for power.
Right: The sun peaks over the horizon to the vessel’s starboard side.
Courtesy of The Polynesian Voyaging Society

Numerous women have been training, and while none have yet received pwo, Kamalu
is leading the charge. “Lehua is going to shift everything in voyaging,” said
the PVS president. “She has the whole world, this whole, amazing world, to show
her the way.”

PVS has set another goal: to inspire a greater reverence and respect for the sea
and the broader natural world, whose rhythms so dictate these journeys. By its
50th anniversary in 2026, the organization hopes to reach 10 million people
through in-person events, online classes, and storytelling from a five-year,
41,000-mile circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean scheduled to begin in 2023.

0:12

By its 50th anniversary in 2026, the Polynesian Voyaging Society hopes to reach
10 million people through a mix of in-person and online classes as well as
storytelling from a five-year, 41,000-mile circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean
scheduled to begin in 2023.
Video courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

On May 8, Hōkūle'a safely arrived in Tahiti. Lehua Kamalu had completed her
historic voyage—one she accomplished on very limited sleep for nearly three
weeks, without a relief navigator of any kind. “You’re the only one who knows
where we’ve been, you’ve added it all up in your head, and it’s pretty hard to
convey that to someone else,” she said. “You’re constantly keeping track of your
progress along that ancestral pathway.”

Knowing where you’ve come from is the first step toward knowing where you’re
headed. For Kamalu, the answers are written in the stars.

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