Credits
Written and Produced by:
Gail Evenari, Maiden Voyage Productions gke@maidenvoyage.com
Gregory Weinger gweinger@pacbell.net
Hakan Nilsson, Arlene Nilsson, The Web Advertising Group hakan.nilsson@thewaginc.com, arlene@thewaginc.com
Funded by:
Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC)
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
Troubleshooting
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Basic Wayfinding:
Using nature to guide you:
Nainoa on Wayfinding:
Q. Explain what you meant by " the principles of Wayfinding are simple, the practicalities are very complex."
Wayfinding is a very old, simple system of navigation that many cultures have used. It's basically taking the surrounding natural signs - whatever they might be for that particular culture - to help guide them in terms of their need to understand the world and be able to travel on it. And the clues for our particular wayfinding, over the ocean, they're all there. It's in the sky, it's in the heavens, it's in the ocean. And the strategies and the principles behind how you understand your place in the world are really quite simple. But in terms of practicality, it's being able to exercise the navigation over a thousand miles of open ocean that gets pretty complicated.
Q. What are the most challenging aspects of Wayfinding?
A. Well, one is that the clues are there in nature, but they're not necessarily all that easy to see. So you need to have experience, and you need to develop skill and knowledge of the ocean environment. Polynesians didn't keep a written language. There was no written record. There's understanding where you are in the ocean. Basically, in its simplest form, it is memorizing where you come from -- that's direction, speed and even time. The memorization process becomes extremely complicated, because you've a lot of memorizing and you only know where you've come from.
You have to be awake to be able to observe, and the natural role of fatigue becomes a real factor. Also, in the ocean, really, the environment's always changing by the weather. So you're always adjusting your choices and your decision making in the wayfinding or navigation process.
Q. Describe the main components of Wayfinding.
A. Okay: one is being able to hold a course, to tell direction. And that's using the signs of nature to guide you. The other is being able to make estimates of speed, 'cause that's important in the dead-reckoning process, and being able to roughly understand duration and time. Obviously the ancient people didn't have a compass, a magnetic compass, nor did they have speedometers or watches. It's all mental estimates. The other part of wayfinding that's important is understanding how far you are north and south of the equator -- that's determining latitude. That's done by knowing certain specific stars. And there's another body of knowledge that's very important, that's what we call expanded landfall. And that's where we're able to get clues that islands are nearby without visually seeing them. Another important component of wayfinding is safety at sea; being able to survive severe storms. And the last component is really knowing what the canoe and your crew and yourself can do. It's knowing your limits, and then having an understanding of how hard you can push the crew or the canoe or yourself in these kinds of conditions.
Q. Interesting. So wayfinding really crosses over into being a leader and being responsible for the canoe and the crew.
A. Right.
Q. Can you explain how you use the star compass to tell direction without instruments?
A. Okay - Well, the way that I've been taught the star compass - it's from Mau Piailug, the navigator from Micronesia. The star compass is really a mental construct, a concept in your mind. And you visualize yourself in the center of the ocean world, and around you on the ocean horizon are these thirty-two different points, and they're equally spaced into the whole circle of the horizon. And they really meet at the boundary between the ocean horizon and where the sky touches the ocean. And these thirty-two points are called 'star houses'. It's those points where certain stars rise, come out of the ocean and certain stars set and go into the ocean, that define these thirty-two points. They're called Star Houses because they house the stars when they come out of the sea and they house them when they go into the ocean. And these stars that come out of these houses actually tell us bearings, certain different bearings. For instance, if Orion's Belt were to rise in the east, the northernmost star, Mintaka, would be one star house that we would call "Hikina" and then it would set in the west, which we would call "Komohana". But that mental construct of the star compass, really all navigation and especially in the memorization process, is directly or indirectly related to the star compass. So it helps us visualize certain bearings on the sea, but it's also a tool for how to memorize all the different kinds of complicated things you need to do mentally on board the canoe.
Q. What is dead reckoning?
A. There are different definitions of that, but in my definition of dead reckoning it's just a very simple form of navigation. It's basically when you leave, you know your destination in terms of its bearing to that destination and distance -- and basically you are maintaining a sense of the course you're steering -- the speed at which you're going and time. These three basic elements and you get your position by looking at where you're heading, how fast you're going and how long you've been going at it. Then it gives you an estimate as to where you are between the place where you left and where you're going.
Q. How does the Wayfinder set course and determine departure time?
A. Well, determining the course from the place of departure to your destination is a study of the ocean world. And in that study you need to really understand the elements of nature. So you need to study the things in the heavens, you need to study the atmosphere in the sky, you need to study the ocean, even the animals that-that are gonna be available for clues. What you're trying to generate is some strategy based on the kinds of elements that will be available to help you guide yourself from one place to another. And the departure time. So within that process of studying you're going to be able to come up with a strategic course that you're going to hold. Departure time, for us, really depends on the weather. You know, we're in the tropics. We need to avoid tropical cyclones- hurricanes at sea- because it's so extremely dangerous. That's one factor, and we also need to look at when are the best winds available, and so forth, for our particular voyage. And then the next important issue is looking for the right clues that will be available in the sky for the stars, telling direction and telling latitude. And then also we also look at other cycles, like the lunar cycle, to use the different phases of the moon to our best advantage.
Q. How does Wayfinder hold a course?
A. The Wayfinder and the crew on our voyages, they basically hold their course by simply steering to different signs in nature. The elements in the heavens -- the stars, the sun, the moon, even the planets -- and then in the daytime they use the passage of the sun, and steer by the ocean waves. We even use clues in the sky -- the atmosphere, the clouds, winds and so forth. The way that I've been taught, all the clues to guide a canoe, to hold a course, are all in nature. It' s just a question of whether you have learned enough and been through enough experience to be able to see them, but they're all there.
Q. Good. How do you calculate distance made good?
A. Distance made good, we just estimate- how fast we're going through the water. And that's basically watching how quickly the canoes cut through the water. There's a point on the front of the canoe, and there's a point on the back of the canoe that we estimate -- when we pass through the water -- the white foam from the front that has been created by the wind and the ocean. We just kind of estimate how long it takes to go from that one point from the front of the canoe to the back of the canoe to give us some estimation of speed. And then time -- we break the day into two periods, sunrise and sunsets. And we just estimate that to be twelve hours. And any kind of other estimate in between, you know, that the length of the day and length of the night would be watching certain ways - certain paths of the certain stars and the moon and sometimes the planets. So basically the clues again to tell speed and to tell time. Calculating your distance made good is all in nature, but they're all estimates, they're mental instinctual estimates.
A. I remember when we were changing crews in Tonga it was based on the Southern Cross rotation.
A. Right.
Q. It's really amazing. Tell me how you determine position east or west of reference course.
A. Hmm. Well, the reference course is a line that we have in our minds that is really the kind of hopeful, optimum course that we would like to hold between the place that we leave and the place that we're going to, our destination. And that reference course is created by, again, it's studying the ocean world's conditions to come up with the most- the best route to take. So that reference course is something that we use as a tool to determine our position at sea, and we determine if we are on the reference course and we sail it- exactly on it- or with the estimate then we're gonna hit a particular target. But many times the ocean or the weather condition don't allow you to sail on that reference course, so that you need to be able to know if you've been driven off it to the west or to the east. And the way that we make that estimate is just basic dead-reckoning. It's looking at how much of a deviation in terms of angle we're sailing off the course, and we need to again make estimates of how fast we're going and how long have we been driven off the course, and then we make our estimates in terms of our position east or west of the reference course. That's if the reference course is north and south. So basically it doesn't really matter if it's east and west, it's whether you're on the course or you're to the left or to the right of it. And those positions are determined just again by dead-reckoning. Does that make sense?
Q. Yeah it does. And explain the difference between that and determining your latitude.
A. Latitude is a part of the information gathering process. Determining latitude tells you how far you are north or south of the equator. And that's done by certain special stars. We use the stars that cross the meridian. That's that imaginary line that runs from directly north over the sky to directly overhead and then to directly south. It splits the celestial sphere- that nighttime dome- into half, and one is the western hemisphere and one is the eastern hemisphere. And when the stars cross that line, that imaginary line when they're north and south, they are at their highest position. So we do estimates of measurements of the heights of certain special stars, and that height determines where we are in terms of latitude north or south of the equator, based on the fact that if you change your position north or south of the equator- for instance, if you're going from where you are and heading north, you're going to be sailing underneath the north star over the curve of the earth. So therefore if you're heading towards north and towards the north star, the north star is going to get higher in the sky as you continue north. And it would be the opposite if you went the other way. If you traveled south, assuming that you're north of the equator, the farther you go over the curve of the earth, the lower and lower to the horizon the north star will become. Basically that's the simplest explanation of how we determine our latitude.
Q. How do you locate land?
A. Uh, we locate land depending on the kind of land that we're looking for. It depends on the character of the island target that we're looking for. For instance, the extremes would be if you're coming to Hawai'i and you would be looking for the island of Hawai'i, with mountains that are nearly fourteen thousand feet high. So, in other words, each target we go to has its own special clues. Hawai'i would have very high mountains that would trap clouds that would tend to stay stationary. Even on the eastern side of the island of Hawai'i, we've actually seen the volcano, the haze of the volcano at night first. But these high mountains trap clouds. On a clear day you can see Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the big island for almost a hundred miles away. But on the other extreme, we also are faced with trying to target islands that are very small, and they're called atolls. They're coraline islands where the highest elevation of the island is the height of the coconut trees. So that's only eighty feet tall, and even if we climbed the mast on our voyaging canoes, we can only see them ten miles away. And the majority of these islands are submerged reefs, extremely dangerous, so being able to locate those islands in the daytime, and knowing that they're there ahead of time and not be traveling at night is really critical. There are many clues to tell us that islands are near: one's the discoloration of clouds going over shallow atoll lagoons. There's also changes in wave patterns because of the disturbance that the islands have as the wave trains cross the ocean. There's seaweed in the water, there's even different changes in certain sea life- in certain fish and so forth. But the main clue is the sea birds. And certain birds, they live on the island at night and they fly out to sea in the morning and return at sunset to go fishing. And some of them can fly as far as a hundred a hundred twenty miles from land during the day and return. But these birds, because they sleep on the island at night, their range is maximum is about a hundred twenty miles. So, if we're traveling over thousands of miles of open ocean, and all of a sudden we see these birds, these certain types of birds for the first time, we know that most likely the atolls, these islands, are with in one, maybe two days of sailing. So what we do is that we sail in the daytime and when the sun sets and it gets dark and if we can't see the island, we take the sails down and wait for the next following day. But these birds are interesting. Their flight pattern is predictable in that in the morning they fly directly out from the island, out to sea to go fishing. So if you see the birds flying out in the morning, the path from which they're coming from is the direction to the island. And it's the opposite in the afternoon when you watch when the sun gets low, they rise off the water from fishing and they fly directly back to the island. So the bearing of the birds at sunset is the bearing to your island destination.
Q. How do you predict wind and weather?
A. Predicting wind and weather is really critical to making good decisions about how you're going to sail the canoe safely. In a given day the times in which we really observe and pay attention to the signs in nature are at sunrise and at sunset. When the light of the sun is either low or below the horizon, we look at the colors of clouds, the pattern of the clouds, the movements of the clouds to tell if there's gonna be a changing condition to the weather systems. Is the wind going to strengthen? Is it going to get lighter? Is it gonna change direction? Is there going to be more rain? Will there be increased squalls with dangerous wind within the squalls? We make those decisions at those two particular times of the day, 'cause that's when the- that low light gives us the best ability to see the clues for predicting wind and weather. And so when the sun comes up in the morning, we make a determination of how we're going to sail the canoe for the next twelve hours of daylight. More importantly is at sunset. When the sun goes down you need to look at the weather signs to make a choice whether you're gonna have to make an adjustment to your course or even maybe an adjustment as to the size of the sails that you are using to drive the canoe. If you think the wind's gonna strengthen and it's gonna be stormy, then it's really good at sunset time when it's still light to maybe change the sails, 'cause it's more difficult to do it in the darkness of night. Anyway, we make determinations on those twelve hour segments.
Q. What do you do when it's cloudy and you can't use the sun or stars to guide you?
A. Well, the most accurate way to navigate the canoe is visual, you know, using the sun, the stars and the moon. But sometimes they're not available because we have days of a hundred percent cloud cover. That's when you use less of your eyes and you use more of your, how do I say it, your instincts- your ocean instincts. If it's daytime and it's cloudy, and we have no celestial clues, we study and we watch the wave patterns as they come across the canoe. And we steer by those that are created by the wind, that are set in motion during that day. So again, sunrise and sunset times are times we're also studying not just the weather, but the wave patterns that we'll be using for the next twelve hours. And the reason why we have to update studying the waves is because particular wave patterns are generated by the wind conditions that are on the ocean at that particular time. When the wind changes, the wave patterns change, so it's unlike the predictable cycles of the stars and the sun and the moon. The wave patterns are always changing. My teachers always said, "If you can understand and read the waves, you'll never be lost." Meaning that even when it's cloudy you can still steer by the wave patterns. Nighttime is a lot more difficult. The ocean tends to take the condition and the character of the sky, so that if it's a sunny day, the ocean looks nice and blue, but when it's a cloudy day, the ocean tends to look more gray. Nighttime when you have very thick cloud cover and the sky is dark black, so is the ocean, so what happens on those worst kind of conditions is you can't even see the ocean waves at that point. But because we're' a double-hulled canoe, when the wave trains and the wave patterns come through, they make the canoe pitch and roll into a certain particular motion. And when you're headed in a certain direction, it's really the relationship between the wave and the canoe at that particular time. So what you do is try to memorize that motion and just steer by that particular motion through the night. A lot easier said than done 'cause many times where I lose confidence in what that right pitching and rolling motion is. Sometimes, especially if there's a hundred percent cloud cover at nighttime and changing winds, where there's change the wave patterns, for me it becomes impossible to tell direction. At that point, because you only know where you are by memorizing where you come from, if you don't know where you're going, you're obligated to put down the sails and wait for the next visual clue.
Q. Is there a difference between ocean waves and ocean swells?
A. Yeah, there is. The general definition in terms of difference between wave and swell is that ocean waves are the waves that are generated by the localized winds, meaning the winds that you are experiencing at that particular time. Ocean swells is generally defined as waves, big large oceanic waves that are generated from strong wide wind systems that are not in the local area and that generate a big enough swell which can continue beyond the - that generating area and they become much bigger, much broader and much easier to see. So they're a lot easier to read than the locally generated ocean waves, because they're so large and so long and predictable.
Q. And you can feel the swells more in your body when you can't see?
A. Right. When you're in that hundred percent cloud cover it's almost like you could try- you need to divorce trying to see the clues with your eyes. You concentrate more looking inward more into your instincts to feel your direction through the ocean.
Q. Can you explain the use of the sun in Wayfinding?
A. The sun basically gives light during the day, and that whole daytime period is very important to many different aspects of- of navigation. But we also use the sun for the main clue to give us bearing and direction at the point in time when it rises until it gets too high in the sky in the morning to be able to accurately determine where it came up from. So when the sun comes up and it's touching the ocean (it does change its star houses on the star compass through the year, depending on where you are on earth. But basically the navigator, the wayfinder, understands those changes throughout the year) it gives you a fairly accurate bearing. And then, when it rises too high, roughly, generally speaking, about nine in the morning, it's not usable anymore because you cannot accurately estimate where it comes up. But then, as it travels across the sky, and when it gets roughly around three o'clock in the afternoon, when it starts to get low on the horizon again, we can estimate where it's going to go down. We know the part of the star compass that it's gonna set in, then it can give us a known bearing again.
Q. Can you explain the use of the starts in Wayfinding?
A. We use about 220 stars that we know the place that they rise up from and the place that they go into the ocean- where they set. And these known rising and setting points on the star compass give us, if it's clear at night, many opportunities to tell direction by the places they come up and they go down. We also use the stars to tell latitude, and there's certain special stars that we use that cross that meridian- that north south line that goes overhead. We use the stars for time. That simple technique is just watching those stars very close to the north star go around, you know, due to the rotation of the earth and therefore the stars have this apparent motion of going around the north star, and the ones that are very close you can almost use it like a twenty-four hour clock. They'll be used rising, setting, timed to certain stars to help with the need to tell and estimate time.
Q. Can you explain the use of the moon in Wayfinding?
A. The moon is used for a number of different things. The moon is used like the sun and the stars. As you understand its lunar cycle you can tell where the moon's gonna come up, where it's gonna go down, generally. So it's used as a clue for telling bearing and giving us direction. It's also used for telling time, because it's in its lunar cycle, the moon rises at different times throughout the month. One of the important things about the moon is that it's a clue during the daytime. When it's a first quarter moon or a third quarter moon, when the sun is very high in the daytime and the only other clue is you can use is the ocean waves- you can use the moon coming up in the middle of the day, when it's available very close to the horizon, as a clue. We actually strategically set our departure times based on the phases of the moon. For instance, if we're going to sail to a place that has low islands like atolls, it would be strategic to have the full moon during the time that you're gonna estimate your arrival, because during the full moon you can see a lot more, and a lot better, than you can when there's a new moon and it's very dark.
Q. But the full moon also inhibits your seeing the stars, right?
A. Yeah, the full moon washes out - some of the stars, but still, even in the full moon, on a clear night, there are many stars you can see that can help you with the navigation. I like full moons because you can see more, even on a canoe. It just makes operating the canoe much safer.
Q. But the full moon also inhibits your seeing the stars, right?
A. Yeah, the full moon washes out - some of the stars, but still, even in the full moon, on a clear night there is still many stars you can see that - can help you with the navigation. I like full moons 'cause it- it's just - you can see more, even on a canoe. It just makes operating the canoe much safer.
Q. Can you explain the use of the wind in Wayfinding?
A. Well, the winds are what we need to move our voyaging canoe. Hokule'a, fully loaded, weighs twenty-four thousand pounds. There were early theories and ideas, probably not true, that they paddled these canoes great distances on the voyages. But the wind is what we really need to capture to be able to sail and drive us to our destination. Besides that, there are different wind conditions that help with navigation. When we know that the winds are just in a steady direction, we memorize what part of the star compass they' re coming from, and we can actually generally very roughly use where the wind's coming from as a direction. But it's really not a primary clue. But if it's cloudy and you have no other clues it becomes a kind of secondary clue.
Q. And what are zenith stars?
A. Zenith stars are stars that travel, depending on your latitude, where you are on earth, they're stars, certain stars, that are going to travel directly overhead. And zenith stars was a technique that some say was used to determine your latitude. For instance, if you're in Hawai'i, living on the island of Hawai'i, certain stars are going to travel always over that point. So that if you're sailing on the ocean coming from Tahiti, those stars won't be overhead, but you sail until they end up being overhead, so then you're in the right latitude and then you can turn certain directions to find your target. Our generation of navigators tends not to use zenith stars because it's very difficult to determine what is overhead on our rocking, pitching canoe and because it's really relative to where the horizon is. When you start to look directly overhead in that general area, it's difficult to determine that point. So it's really a secondary clue in terms of determining latitude.
Q. What is expanded landfall?
A. Umm- Well landfall merely is your destinations on your particular voyages. And when we use the term 'expanded landfall' what we're really referring to is being able to tell that you're getting close to island destinations, without even seeing them. And that's really important, especially when you're looking for islands that don't have high mountains. Like I say again, the island of Hawai'i, the mountains are nearly 14,000 feet and the target is really big, so that it's less difficult finding the island of Hawai'i than it would be to find a small island atoll out in the middle of the ocean. Atolls being low coraline islands, highest point are the coconut trees, maybe eighty feet tall. And there's two reasons why we use the techniques of expanded landfall, especially when we're heading towards these small islands. One is for safety, and one is being able to hone in on that particular island. The safety reasons is that a lot of the atolls, like the Tuamotu Archipelago, this shield of islands north of Tahiti. There's seventy-eight atolls that comprise the tuamotus and it's wide. It's almost as wide as the continental United States. There's this huge ocean area that these islands tend to shield Tahiti from the north if you're coming from Hawai'i and you need to get through them. But they're dangerous because they have a lot of submerged reefs. So you as a navigator or crew member want to know, for safety reasons, that the island is near. And then we use different signs and there are many: deflected or absence of certain ocean swells, 'cause you end up in the lee side of the island- on the down-wind or the down-swell side of the island. Also different colorations in clouds as they travel over shallow lagoons, because shallow lagoons are turquoise in nature and they tend to cast a green up on the bottom of the clouds. And - things like seeing like certain seaweeds or certain things -- coconuts from the islands that have drifted down-current that would suggest that the island is up-current from that direction. But again, the main clue is the seabirds. Those types of seabirds that live on the islands and will fly out in the morning to fish and feed and then come back in the afternoon; beause their range from the islands is maximum about a hundred twenty miles. This is very general, but they kind of create this circle of opportunity to know that once you sight these birds you know that you're within one day, two days or a hundred twenty miles from some island. And then they have that other characteristic, especially at sunset when the sun gets low they lift off the water. They finish fishing and feeding and they fly straight to the island. So the bearing of the flight path of the bird is the bearing to your landfall. And the morning's the opposite.
Q. What do you do, Nainoa, when you're not voyaging?
A. Since the voyage home in 1995, we -- as an organization and a voyaging community -- have really been attempting to participate and support quality education in Hawai'i. And we've been working both within the school systems and programs within our communities. We've been sailing our voyaging canoes throughout the state of Hawai'i and trying to introduce culturally relevant educational programs to both our school children and our communities at large. But also it's really important for us to create an opportunity for stronger kinship among the Polynesians, so that they're included in these voyaging traditions. The canoe voyage is only the conduit for quality education programs. What we really want is that the voyage become the vehicle to start the talk about important things like 'Why is culture important?' 'Why should we protect our natural environment?' And so forth. So our real intent and our real purpose for the voyage is education.
Q. You said, "You can only figure out where you are by remembering where you've come from-"
A. Well maybe one way to think about that statement would be the fact that we launched our first voyaging canoe - in March 1975. So it's been a little bit over twenty-four years, and we've sailed close to 85,000 nautical miles to most of the major island groups in Polynesia. But what's been so powerful in those sailings has been the learning process. I mean we as a community have learned, and not just learned but we've grown. And the reason why we've grown is that we've learned to appreciate and value so many things because of these special experiences. So when you look at "you only know where you are by knowing where you come from" that's why I think history is so important. That' s why I think traditional cultures are so important, and considering that native people lived so well and healthy and within balance with their natural environment for thousands and thousands of years and at the same time as we're gonna enter the twentieth century we have real challenges in terms of our growing population and our depletion of natural resources. I think there's so much to learn from our histories to help us define where we are and where we're gonna go. That's one, and the issue about staying awake to-to be able to watch for clues. It's just a matter of being able to pay attention to the signs of nature. I mean, just in terms of the environmental, natural resource issues alone, if you consider that the turn of the twentieth century we had 1.6 billion people and it was very interesting that 1999 the United Nations placed out a statement that in November of 1998 the six billionth child was conceived. And that they also, within those kind of projections, start to articulate the fact that by the 2023 that we may be up to ten or eleven billion people.
And at the very same time, we all know that the signs of nature are telling us that depletion of natural resources in our oceans, as well as in our forests is coming to levels of crisis. And these are the real challenges of our time. But I think we should pay attention to nature and we should look at history to help us guide us into our future.