 Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject: Adventurers pay tribute to renowned Micronesian navigator |
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Renowned Micronesian seaman Mau Piailug, who died last week aged 78, is credited with stimulating a revival of the ancient art of navigation without the aid of instruments.
Pacific adventurers met in Majuro Wednesday to pay tribute to Mau, who taught young islanders the skills to cross oceans using traditional navigational methods just as their ancestors did thousands of years ago.
Piailug, who died on his native Satawal atoll in Micronesia, used only the stars, moon, winds and wave patterns to guide outrigger canoes across the Pacific Ocean.
He revived the once-dying art in 1976 when, working with the Hawaii-based Polynesian Voyaging Society, he guided the canoe Hokule'a on its landmark 2,500-mile (4,023 kilometre) voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti.
Piailug also navigated the Hawaiian canoe Makali'i from Hawaii to Majuro and then to Satawal in 1999.
Alson Kelen, the programme manager at Waan Aelon in Majel (Canoes of the Marshall Islands) sailed with Piailug on the Makali'i voyage and recalled the fanfare that surrounded the arrival of the double-hulled canoe in Majuro after its three-week, 2,300 mile journey.
"It was a very touching moment," said Kelen who named his daughter, born on the day they departed, after the Makali'i.
"We were greeted by many people and boats. Former President Imata Kabua and his whole cabinet, national museum officials, council of chiefs representatives, students from many Majuro elementary schools, and many, many people were there to greet us."
Kelen said Piailug's visit to the Marshalls raised an appreciation among the islanders for canoe building and navigation skills that had been honed over more than 2,000 years in this western Pacific island nation.
"Because of this visit, it opened a lot of eyes here in Micronesia. Cultural preservation became an important thing to do," said Kelen, whose programme teaches young Marshall Islanders how to build and sail canoes.
In April this year Kelen organised the first long-distance canoe voyage in the Marshall Islands since World War II.
Relying on the waves, moon and stars to guide them, the crew of the 30-foot (9.1 metre) outrigger canoe "Jitdam Kapeel" took 21 hours to cover the 90 miles from Majuro to Aur Atoll.
Ancient voyaging skills are being revived elsewhere in the the Pacific and a group of four traditional Polynesian canoes left New Zealand recently on a voyage to French Polynesia.
"Mau's work throughout the Pacific and the world has proven that our navigational knowledge that we said is of the past is actually of the future," Kelen said.
"It's not technological, but magical and it is from the heart. Mau has shown us that the ocean doesn't separate us, it connects us."
American Dennis Alessio, who started an outrigger documentation project for the Marshall Islands national museum in the late 1980s, said he met Piailug when he took a Marshall Islands crew to Hawaii to sail on the Hokule'a.
Mau "was one of those people who knew the importance of keeping traditional knowledge and skills alive and was a great inspiration for the work that we were doing in the Marshall Islands," Alessio recalled.
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