Kahungunu Seafarers Weigh Anchor in Whanganui

Been an interesting week here, outside of RWC.
Monday night was a lecture/video evening presented by Awhina Twomey and Hannah Rainforth, who earlier this year spent several weeks on board a traditional design double-hulled ocean going waka.
There were a fleet of seven such canoes navigating, using revived traditional methods of the 1100-1600 AD period, from Auckland NZ to San Francisco CA, each of them crewed by different cultural groups representing Aotearoa NZ, Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, Cooks, and the other two Pan-Pacific.

Use of pacificvoyager photo acknowledged

On account of not wanting to knock down fourteen 200 plus year old trees to carve the hulls out of, the 33 metre waka were cast in fibre-glass here in Auckland. Sails were also conventional material, but one waka did carry tradional pandannis sails.
One novelty of construction was a solar panel bank mounted over the prows, which charged, I presume, batteries to drive twin swing-down propellers, auxilliary power is a mandatory requirement of all ocean going sailing vessels.
The waka had 8-bunk water-tight crew compartments in each hull, a small galley on deck, plus a head.
All crew had life jackets and clips to attach themselves to a stanchion line for safety purposes.
Steerage was effected by a steering oar, sometimes requiring 3 men to handle. Sails were twin mast, inverted keeler.
Apparently, there was only one man left in the whole Pacific, who had been raised in traditional sailing culture, a Marquesan, and its fantastic of him to share his knowledge with the new school of navigators.
The system uses stars, sun, moon, wind, cloud formations, ocean current and wave direction, drift matter, seabirds and fish, to steer by.
The ancient sea-ways were pretty well established in the Pacific Triangle bounded by NZ, Hawaii, and Easter Island, (NZ Maori tongue is highly similar to that of Easter Island, Rapanui, being the two most isolated corners), but the presence of a North American Indian welcoming committee at San Francisco exercising recognisable protocol leaves one with the strong impression contact with the American coastline did occur throughout those times.
These young women had a fantastic experience. A documentary was shot during the mission, with an environmental message theme, and is due for release in due course.
The whole exercise had funding assistance from German industrialist/philanthropist Dieter Paulmann.
An excellent website including GPS tracker progress of any of the waka offers more extensive detail:
http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/