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"The principles of wayfinding are simple; the practicalities are very
complex." -- Nainoa Thompson
Wayfinding involves navigating on the open ocean without sextant, compass,
clock, radio reports, or satellites reports. The wayfinder depends on
observations of the stars, the sun, the ocean swells, and other signs of nature
for clues to direction and location of a vessel at sea. Wayfinding was used for
voyaging for thousands of years before the invention of European navigational
instruments.
In the 20th century, it is still practiced in some areas of Micronesia,
although the traditional knowledge and techniques are in danger of being lost
because of modernization and Westernization of the cultures of these areas.
However, a revival of the art and science of wayfinding is underway among the
Pacific islands, a revival led by Nainoa Thompson, the first modern-day
Polynesian to learn and use wayfinding for long-distance, open-ocean voyaging.
Thompson studied wayfinding under Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the
island of Satawal in Micronesia. Mau navigated the first voyage of the Hokule'a
to Tahiti in 1976; Thompson was Hokule'a's wayfinder on the 1980 and 1985-87
voyages.
A voyage undertaken using wayfinding has three components:
- Setting up a course strategy, which includes a reference course for
reaching the vicinity of one's destination, hopefully upwind, so that the
canoe can make an easy downwind sail to the destination rather than having
to tack into the wind to get there; (Tacking involves sailing back and forth
as close as possible into the wind to make progress against the wind; it is
very arduous and time-consuming, something to be avoided if at all possible.
Psychologically and physically, it would be very difficult for the crew to
face the most demanding part of the voyage at the very end.)
- Trying to hold this course while keeping track of one's position in
relationship to it during the voyage.
- Finding land after reaching the vicinity of one's destination.
Non-Instrument
Navigation The star compass is the basic mental construct for navigation. We have
Hawai'ian names for the houses of the stars -- the place where they come out of
the ocean and go back into the ocean. If you can identify the stars, and if you
have memorized where they come up and go down, you can find your direction. The
star path also reads the flight path of birds and the direction of waves. It
does everything. It is a mental construct to help you memorize what you need to
know to navigate.
You cannot look up at the stars and tell where you are. You only know where
you are (in this kind of navigation) by memorizing where you sailed from. That
means constant observation. You have to constantly remember your speed, your
direction and time. You don't have a speedometer. You don't have a compass. You
don't have a watch. It all has to be done in your head. It is easy -- in
principle -- but it's hard to do.
The memorization process is very difficult. Consider that you have to
remember those three things for a month - every time you change course, every
time you slow down. This mental construct of the star compass, with its
Hawai'ian names, is from my mentor, Mau Piailug. The genius of this construct is
how they figured out to get in all this mental information and to compact it,
and to come up with decisions based on it.
Tahiti is smaller than Maui, and it is a hard target to hit from 2,500 miles
away. Even hitting a target as big as the Big Island is outside of the
probability of our navigation. When we go down to Tahiti, we have this mental
image of our course line for the trip. We tend to try to follow it, and if we
follow it properly, we will end up in what I call a "box." In this
box, there are many islands. In the Tuamotu archipelago, we cannot sail into
there and not find an island. This box is four hundred miles wide. The first
part of the journey to Tahiti is not trying to get to Tahiti, but to make sure
that you hit this box. And then we have to identify the island that we hit, and
once we do that, we know the direction to Tahiti. Or we can ask the people.
Since these are coral atolls, it is very difficult to tell one from the other,
so sometimes we ask the people, and hope they tell us the truth, and then from
this shield of islands, Tahiti is only about 170-180 miles away. Then we can hit
it -- even though it is just the size of Maui.
Now consider the return trip to Hawai'i back from the Marquesas. You are
coming from the southeast to the northwest. The Hawai'ian islands are 315 miles
wide, but approaching from the course you take from the Marquesas, you are
approaching the islands from the skinny side. The trick that we use is that we
sail toward Hawai'i, and use the stars to tell our latitude. We keep sailing
upwind, and then we turn straight down west toward the Hawai'ian islands.
How do we tell direction? We use the best clues that we have. We use the sun
when it is low down on the horizon. Mau has names for how wide the sun appears,
and for the different colors of the sun path on the water. When the sun is low,
the path is tight; when the sun is high, it gets wider and wider. When the sun
gets too high, you cannot tell where it has risen. You have to use other clues.
Sunrise is the most important part of the day. At sunrise you start to look
at the shape of the ocean -- the character of the sea. You memorize where the
wind is coming from. The wind generates the waves. You analyze the character of
the waves. When the sun gets too high, you steer by the waves. And then at
sunset we repeat the pattern. The sun goes down; you look at the shape of the
waves. Did the wind change? Did the swell pattern change? At night we use the
stars. We use about 220 by name -- where they come up, where they go down. When
I came back from my first voyage as a student navigator from Tahiti to Hawai'i,
the night before he went home, Mau took me into his bedroom and said, "I am
very proud of my student. You have done well for yourself and your people."
He was very happy when he was going home. He said, "Everything you need to
see is in the ocean, but it will take you 20 more years to see it." That
was after I had just sailed 7,000 miles.
When it gets cloudy and you can't use the sun or the stars, all you can do is
rely on the ocean waves. That's why Mau said to me, "If you can read the
ocean you will never be lost." One of the problems is that when the sky
gets black at night under heavy clouds, you cannot see the waves. You cannot
even see the bow of the canoe. And that is where people like Mau are so skilled.
He can be inside the hull of the canoe and just feel the different wave patterns
as they come to the canoe, and he can tell the canoe's direction lying down
inside the hull of the canoe. I can't do that. I think that's what he learned
when he was a child with his grandfather.
The Southern Cross is really important to us. It looks like a kite. These two
stars in the Southern Cross always point south (Gacrux on top and Acrux on the
bottom). If you are traveling in a canoe and going south, these southern stars
are going to appear to be rising higher and higher in the sky. If you went down
to the South Pole, these stars are going to be way overhead. What happens if you
are in Nuku Hiva, nine degrees south latitude, and you are going to go to
Hawai'i? If you are going north to Hawai, the Southern Cross gets lower and
lower. If you are in the latitude of Hawai'i, the distance from this star
(Gacrux) to that bottom star (Acrux) is the same distance from that bottom star
to the horizon. That only occurs in the latitude of Hawai'i. lf you are in Nuku
Hiva and looking at the Southern Cross, the distance between the bottom star in
the Southern Cross and the horizon is about nine times the distance between the
two stars.
Finding atolls that are very low is extremely difficult, but there are a lot
of clues in the ocean to the presence of land. The wave patterns change when an
island is near. The behavior of animals in the sea, such as dolphins, will
change. Mau can read this. The main guides are sea birds. There are two general
types of seabirds that Mau taught us about. The birds we use are the manu o
ku (white tern) and noio (brown tern) with a long sharp black beak.
These are birds that sleep on their island homes at night. At dawn they go out
to sea, and come back at evening to sleep. They go about 130 miles out in the
morning and come back at night. The Tuamotus are just filled with them. When we
sail about 29 days down from Hawai'i and we see these birds for the first time,
we know the islands are close even though we can't see them. This bird, when it
is fishing, its wings flutter but when the sun goes down, it will rise up from
the water so it can see, and it will go straight back to land. When we see these
birds in the day, we keep track of them and wait for the sun to get low, and we
watch the bird. The flight path of the bird is the bearing of the island. Then
we turn on that bearing, sail as fast as we can, and at sunset we climb the mast
to see if we can find the island. And if we can't see it, we heave to until the
morning.
On my first voyage in 1980, we saw two birds after the 29th day, and I was
extremely relieved. At least we were in the ballpark. I did everything that I
was told to do, and the birds did everything I was told they would do. They went
up high and they flew away, and we sailed in that direction. At night, we
couldn't see the island so we took the sails down and we waited. The next
morning, as Mau told us, we looked for the birds to see what direction they were
coming from and that would be the direction of the island. In the morning, they
go back out to the fishing ground, so the direction they are coming from is the
direction to the island.
We had a great crew of 14, and we made a ring around the inside of the canoe
before dawn. We waited for the first bird. All hands on deck. Not a single bird.
I was in near trauma, my first voyage, early 20s. Mau was very calm and he
didn't say anything. We waited and we waited. The canoe was just sitting dead in
the water. It was facing south. One of the canoe members was in the back of the
canoe and a bird flies right over his head. The night before that we saw the
birds flying south, so how come late in the morning, with the sun very high, was
this bird coming out of the north? That would suggest that we passed the island.
The island was back to the north. In my -- I would say panic -- I thought we had
better start sailing back in that direction to find the island before the sun
goes down again. I asked the crew to turn the canoe around. The crew was very
disciplined. They turned the canoe around -- and you have got to understand that
now we are sailing back toward Hawai'i. And Mau, who has always said that his
greatest honor would not be as a navigator but as a teacher -- that he would
come and make sure that the voyage to Tahiti would be safe but if he didn't have
to tell me anything the honor wolud be his. But when I started to sail north he
came to me and said, "no." It was the first time that he interrupted
the trip. He said, "Turn the canoe around and follow the bird." I was
really puzzled. I didn't know why. He didn't tell me why. But we turned the
canoe around and now we see other birds flying also. Mau said, "You wait
one hour and you will find the island you are looking for."
And about after that amount of time had passed by, Mau, who is about 20 years
older than me -- my eyes are physically much more powerful than his -- he gets
up on the rail of the canoe and says: "The island is right there." And
we all stood up and we climbed the mast and everything and we just couldn't see
it. Vision is not so much about what you do -- but how you do it. It's
experience. Mau had seen in the beak of the bird a little fish. He knew that the
birds were nesting, and they were taking food back before they fed themselves.
He just did not tell me that in our training program.
We base our average sail time on average winds and conditions for 24 hours,
but it never is. The majority of navigation is observation and adjusting to the
natural environment. The more the weather gets up, the more the navigator needs
to be awake, the less he can leave the crew on their own. We estimate that our
navigators stay up between 21 and 22 hours a day. We sleep in a series of
catnaps. Mau says the mind doesn't need much rest. But the physical body does.
When the navigator is on the canoe, the crew does the physical work. When you
are tired, you close your eyes. He always said that for him maybe his eyes were
closed but inside here, inside your heart, you are always awake. And I have seen
that. Outside here in Waikiki, training in 1979, when he was confident that I
could steer by myself, he said, "Now I am going to go to sleep and you
follow this star path." And like an overanxious student I wanted to try
some different angles to feel what the wave patterns felt like and I thought
that he wouldn't notice because he was sleeping inside the hulls. And the
morning dawned, and he came up and said, "O.K., what did you sail last
night? What star bearing did you hold?"
He knew that I had changed course. And when I told him, he challenged me to
make sure that I knew where we went. He actually knew, lying in the hulls.
Somehow, he has that ability.
Nainoa
on Wayfinding
Nainoa Thompson, the first modern-day Polynesian to learn and use wayfinding for
long-distance, open-ocean voyaging, is leading a revival of the art and science
of wayfinding. Thompson studied wayfinding under Mau Piailug, a master navigator
from the island of Satawal in Micronesia. Mau navigated the first voyage of the Hokule'a
to Tahiti in 1976; Thompson was Hokule'a's wayfinder on the 1980 and
1985-87 voyages.
Here, Thompson answers questions about wayfinding in an interview with
filmmaker Gail Evenari.
Q: Why and how did the ancient Polynesians voyage?
A: The ancient Polynesians voyaged on the double hull canoes.
There were really three elements that -- allowed for -- the ability for the
Polynesians to explore. And they needed to explore and they needed to sail in
order to survive and spread their culture. The three elements that we're
speaking of is one, they had evolve the technology of constructing a craft, a
vessel, a double hull canoe that could -- be able to be sea-worthy enough and be
able to be able to carry the people, the plants and the animlas to new found
land. They had to have, they needed to be able to develop the skills of a
sailor's to be able to -- to sail these canoes. And also they needed to have to
develop a system of navigation that -- would able to guide the canoes to new
found land and then back to their original home.
Q: Why was the canoe so important to Polynesian culture? Why is it
still important?
A: The canoe is really the central element to their survival. To
the Polynesian's survival. They're an ocean people. Without the canoe they could
not expand. And that's why in some respects, Hawaiians today owe their existence
to the voyaging canoe.
Q: How is canoe sea-faring relevant today?
A: People should care about the past. The Hawai'ians should care
about the past. Because it tells the story of their ancestors. The
accomplishments of the Hawai'ians and the Polynesians are tremendous.
[Especially in light of] the time that they sailed and the minimal resource that
they had to build their crafts. And the fact [is] that when you look at the
great accomplishments of the Hawai'ians, there is a lot to be proud of. And that
when we honor our ancestors, [and] also other descendants, it gives us a place,
a place to belong.
Q: Why have you and others dedicated yourself to wayfinding?
A: Today we're voyaging to learn more about our past. We're
trying to recapture what has been lost in our history in the last couple hundred
years. It is the hope that in better understanding our past, we're going to
better understand who we are. When we understand who we are, it's going to give
us a much better sense of belonging in the land that we call Hawai'i.
Q: Tell me a little about the Polynesian people and their history.
They were a pretty unique people, weren't they?
A: Yes, Polynesians are a unique people. They are an ocean
people. They live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, mostly on small islands.
For the culture to expand itself and really to survive, they had to sail. They
had to explore the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Their explorations were
amazing because in the time in their history, so far back in time, they were
able to colonize almost every island in the central Pacific. And that -- that
whole area -- is really the largest nation on Earth, geographically. It's more
than six million square miles.
Q: What has it been like to sail on the replica Polynesian canoe, Hokule'a?
How do you feel about the canoe?
A: Hokule'a is like, is kind of like a window. A window that you
can look through to see our past. It's almost as if sailing on Hokule'a, you
could slice through layers of time and look back at who your ancestors were.
Hokule'a provided a tremendous amount of inspiration for not just Hawai'ians,
but for all the people we met in the south Pacific. It's a tremendous symbol
that we all can honor and find pride in. Because we're able to see how much our
ancestors were able to do in working with so little.
Q: What exactly is wayfinding? How does it work?
A: The traditional way of navigating used all the natural
science to guide the canoe. And that would be in the heavens, the stars and the
moon at night, the sun and the moon during the day, as well as the ocean waves.
The system incorporated reading the signs of the clouds and also the animals,
especially the seabirds to determine where land is. It was an ingenious system
that required tremendous observation of the elements of nature to make
successful landfall.
Q: Why did you want to learn how to navigate?
A: Initially, I just wanted to learn navigation because it just
fascinated me. I didn't in the begininning, I would say. Up until truly from
about 1974, when I was introduced to the ideas of navigation, to 1978, I didn't
even consider ever being a navigator. So learning navigation was -- to me it was
limited. I just wanted to go learn as much as I could, and I always thought,
"There's a limit to this," and I never believed that I could ever
navigate. I never considered that. I just wanted to learn, because, I wanted to
learn the things about, mostly, the environmental stuff. Reading the stars and
reading the ocean, and just being a part of something, that was so tremendously
exciting and adventurous. And the pure challenge to be able to go sail with Mau
from Tahiti to Hawaii, because that's the crew that I was on. He was going to
navigate -- and just to be able to be with him. And that reverence for him had a
limiting factor where we, in the crew, thought that it was almost absurd to
think that we could ever become navigators. We weren't really directly trying to
train for that. We were just -- I just wanted to learn as much as I could about
the subject.
Q: You didn't begin your training trying to be a navigator?
A: I wasn't trying to become a navigator, initially. It was more
like trying to answer questions about, "How did they do it?" And the
more that I got into it and tried to address elementary questions, the more
questions arose. So that the whole pursuit of learning became greater and more
immense, and yet a lot more exciting and a lot more meaningful and powerful,
because beginning to almost open up new doors to be able to begin to see how
huge an accomplishment it was, what these ancestral people could do.
Q: What was it like when you really grasped wayfinding? Can you
describe one of your more memorable experiences?
A: Probably the most powerful experience I had on Hokule'a
-- maybe, the most powerful one. Hard to say, hard to measure. But one of them,
definitely one of the most memorable ones, was on my first trip.
I just dreaded the doldrums, because I had no confidence that I could get
through it. I was very -- I forced myself, I limited myself to thinking that I
could only really accurately navigate with visual celestial clues. And getting
into the doldrums, where there's 100 percent cloud cover all of a sudden -- to
me, I would be blind. And that's what happened. We got in the doldrums, and it
was just a mess. It was 100 percent cloud cover, the wind was switching around,
it was about 25 knots, and we're going fast, and that's the worst thing you want
to do -- go anywhere and not know where you're going. And I was just fighting it
to search in this kind of black. It was nighttime, and it was black -- the sky,
everything was black -- and I couldn't find anything with my eyes. It was like I
just got so exhausted that I just backed up against the rail and - and it, it
was almost as if -- and this, I don't know if this is completely true, but there
was something, a mechanism, that allowed me to understand where the direction
was, without seeing it.
And it was almost like, when I just gave up fighting to try to find something
with my eyes, I just settled down, and then all of a sudden, it was like this
warmth came over me. It was just solid rain, and the guys steering the canoe ,
they were looking for direction. That put more pressure, because that was my
first [voyage]. And all of a sudden, when sat back -- I leaned against the rail
-- I felt this warmth come over me, and all of a sudden, I knew where the moon
was. But you couldn't see the moon, it was so black. And then I directed the
canoe with all this total confidence at a time when I had already convinced
myself prior to the voyage that I would have no confidence in knowing where to
go. And I turned the canoe to this particular direction, got things lined up,
felt very, very comfortable in this cold, wet, rough environment, and then there
was a break in the clouds and the moon was there. And I don't know how this --
from a scientific, you know, trained that way, just doesn't make -- it's
unexplainable, but the experience existed.
And those are the things that I chase now. It's not like I can do that any
old time, it's more like special experiences and my being has to be in the right
frame of mind and beyond that. Internally I have to be at a certain state to be
able to get into this kind of special realm. And so those experiences, I just
can't conjure them up consciously. But they do come, and they're coming more and
more often now. And it has a lot to do with this kind of internal relaxation. I
don't know what it is. It just happens. And to tell you the truth, I don't want
to analyse it too much. I just want to keep making it happen more often, and let
myself naturally obtain it. Not try to analytically figure it out, because you
know, I don't think there's an answer for it, throughout my kind of analytical
thinking.
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