Voyage of rediscovery

by Ben R. Finney

In the summer of 1985, a mostly Hawaiian crew set out aboard Hokulea, a reconstruction of an ancient double canoe, to demonstrate what skeptics had steadfastly denied: that their ancestors, sailing in canoes and navigating solely by reading the stars, ocean swells, and other natural signs, could intentionally sail across the Pacific, exploring the vast oceanic realm of Polynesia and discovering and settling all the inhabitable islands there. Their odyssey from Hawaii to Aotearoa (New Zealand) and back, through seven archipelagos and across 12,000 nautical miles, dramatically refuted theorists who had declared that because of the unseaworthiness of their canoes and the inaccuracy of their navigational methods, the Polynesians could only have been pushed accidentally to their islands by the vagaries of wind and current. Voyage of Rediscovery recounts this remarkable journey through the Pacific, describing how the Hawaiian navigator, Nainoa Thompson, guided the canoe over thousands of mil