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Modern Wayfinding
"The principles of wayfinding are simple; the practicalities
are very complex. -Nainoa Thompson
(Photo by M. Doi: Nainoa Thompson Training
Some Cook Islanders in Non-Instrument Navigation)
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. He is currently training 18 new navigators from Hawai'i and other
Pacific islands.
A voyage undertaken using wayfinding has three components:
1. 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.)
2. Trying to hold this course while keeping track of one's position in
relationship to it during the voyage.
3. Finding land after reaching the vicinity of one's destination.
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