PACIFIC SUPERHEROES

Ia ora na, and time to get our waka on PACIFIC SUPERHEROES check it out Hawaikinui II is working towards completion in Tahiti for its voyage to Peru. Another revitalization of pacific voyaging through our watery highways! Woohoo, awesome huh. Manuia whanau!!!

‘Tahitian navigator Francis Cowan and Maori master carver Matahi Brightwell are constructing an 83-foot-long waka hourua (traditional Polynesian double-hulled sailing canoe) that they will navigate by the stars from Tahiti to Peru, across 7500 kilometres of open ocean and against the prevailing wind and current.

The voyage retraces the route pioneered by their forebears a thousand years ago and unravels one of the enduring mysteries of the blue continent that has vexed anthropologists for decades – did early Polynesians sail to the Americas, more than a thousand years before Colombus’ ‘discovery’?

There is a renaissance of sorts in Pacific Voyaging, but few practice it like Francis Cowan and Matahi Brightwell. They eschew modern materials preferring instead to hew the hull from solid native timber with a hand adze, lash it with sennit rope, weave sails from pandanus, use bamboo masts and traditional sennit rope made from coconut fibre for rigging. There is not a single piece of metal or modern contraption on the waka.

While many of the traditions of Polynesian canoe construction, maritime technology and star navigation are dwindling, this project serves to reinvigorate these arts where they still exist. Hawaiki Nui II is symbolic of the desire to remember the past, and a catalyst for the resurgence of traditional culture in the Pacific.’

To support the project and get more info, go to this website to soak it all in .