Tutu Bids Aloha to Hawaiian Canoe in Port to Celebrate Friendship with SA

The double-hulled Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokulea – or Hōkūleʻa – has arrived in Cape Town, halfway around the world from Hawaii on a 60,000-mile journey. And there to greet the boat was one of its most famous supporters, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

On the Hokulea website, it said the visit to Cape Town was helping to celebrate ancestral connections and renewed friendship between South Africa and Hawaii.

Under the banner ‘Crossing Oceans & Connecting People, Hawaii To Cape Town’, a ceremony of friendship on Saturday in the V&A Waterfront featured greeting chants and a prayer of blessing followed by traditional South African performances and hula by members of the Hawaii delegation.

Archbishop Tutu, who blessed the boat during a 2012 visit to Hawaii, was there to wave the Hokulea in.

“The voyage of the Hokulea reconnects us to each other on a primal level, it talks back to our oneness, to the starting point of our interconnectedness and our human journey,” said Tutu’s daughter, Reverend Mpho Tutu, at the ceremony.

Archbishop Tutu attends the welcoming ceremony of the Hokulea:

South Africa is the halfway point on the boat’s three-year journey – which has already included Tahiti, Australia and Bali – and the 2,800-mile trip from Mauritius lasted 39 days.

At sea the crew uses the ancient tradition of “wayfinding”, with the sun, moon, and stars serving as a map. On board, there is no compass, sextant, or cellphone, watch, or GPS for direction. When clouds and storms make it impossible to see that map, wave patterns, currents, and animal behavior give a navigator directional clues to find tiny islands in the vast ocean.

In the past 40 years – since the boat was built to reawaken old traditions of sailing and a “connectedness to place” that was lost after colonialization – the Hokulea has travelled some 140,000 miles. A major part of its mission is to promote “Mālama Honua” (Hawaiian for “care for the earth”), which is what the worldwide voyage is named after.

The boat is expected to drop anchor in 100 ports in 27 countries by the time the voyage concludes in late 2017. Up to 200 crew members have sailed with Hokulea so far, joining and leaving the journey at various points.

Throughout the weeklong visit in Cape Town crew members will teach the local community about traditional navigation, native Hawaiian culture and ways to care for the ocean. Hokulea and her crew have been joined by a 60-person delegation of Hawaiian educators, students and families.

This video explains why the Hokulea was built in the 1970s and the amazing voyages it has taken:

https://youtu.be/tRHtu8rCAC0