Many interesting things are happening in the World of Polynesian Voyaging Canoes.
Best way to see what is going on in Hawaii is through the website of the Polynesian Voyaging Society.



The name Proa is a Dutch transliteration of an Indonesian word for Outrigger canoe. Europeans use this word when describing sailing outriggers. The Polynesian name is usually VAKA AMA.
The proa configuration is in itself a very old concept, probably one evolutionary step from the dugout canoe. It can best be described as a twin hulled vessel in which the load carrying or main hull (the VAKA) is held upright by the (usually) smaller outrigger hull (the ama).

Sail driven proa fall into two categories:
I. Pacific - sailed with the ama (outrigger hull) to windward. As such the ama is effectively a ballast weight of small volume (needing only to support it's own self-weight and that of the crossbeam). The Pacific proa is often sailed flying the outrigger, with the crew able to act as additional ballast.
II. Atlantic - sailed with the outrigger hull to leeward, using a volumetrically larger hull than that of the Pacific proa, the buoyancy of the ama supporting the main hull as it heels. The Atlantic proa is a modern western variant of the proa concept. Some dispute that the Atlantic proa is actually a proa at all.

Boats of proa arrangement generally enjoy the following. They offer low wetted surface areas, have high righting moments when sailed on the correct tack and have the potential for good performance due to their slender hull forms.

On the other hand, tacking a reversible proa is generally a pretty slow process. This process is called Shunting and not tacking. Shunting usually involves bearing away onto a beam reach, releasing the sheets and bringing the boat to a halt. The rudder is then removed (or raised in a two rudder system) at one end of the boat then taken to the other end (or lowered). Sometimes the rudders are incorporated into the centreboard in which case the rudder not in use is stored by raising it into the centreboard case. Once the steering apparatus has been rearranged, you can then proceed onto the new tack. The mainsail is resheeted at the other end of the vessel, the old jib lowered and the new jib raised. The second problem with proa is that they can run into trouble when caught on the wrong tack. An Atlantic proa will simply fall over if suddenly taken aback in a stiff breeze, whereas a Pacific proa may have its small volume outrigger forced underwater.



Traditionally Proa are found throughout the western and Southern Pacific Ocean with some around Sri Lanki and Madagascar. Presently native populations in the Micronesian Islands are still building proa from traditional materials. One of the best website to visit is that of Dr. Mimi George a cultural anthropologist stationed in Hawaii. Dr. Mimi George has initiated a special project called:



The Vaka Taumako Project is about documenting the process of building and sailing a completely authentic Polynesian voyaging canoe by the last of the traditional Polynesian voyagers who know how from first hand experience. This is the only Polynesian community alive with an uninterrupted history of building voyaging canoes, and still able to sail them using completely traditional methods. Handfuls of surviving seventy and eighty year old elders have experienced every traditional aspect of voyaging. They will share both the stone-age technology of the craft and the non-instrument navigation of it.



This is the last and only chance for modern man to learn fully authentic traditional knowledge. The how and why to do it, as wells as to evaluate the performance and usefulness of such a craft. The relevance of such a cultural and technological process in the modern world would be unsurpassed.
A full size Te puke is a craft capable of crossing the longest stretches of the Pacific -and may well have been the vessel of the Polynesian voyagers who discovered and inhabited a third of the earth's surface.



This voyaging canoe, with it's radical claw sail, it's water-sealed, and mostly submerged (like "SWATH" technology), main hull, it's massive and high outrigger profile, and very heavy cargo and passenger capacity, and it's speed and known voyaging range of, thousands of miles, make it arguably the most interesting and pan-Polynesian design of all. It shunts like a Micronesian canoe, it has a radical crab-claw sail - the mark of Polynesian sail-craft - and it is swift in performance and massively constructed to carry a lot of cargo over long-distances at sea.



This Te puke will be made from one hundred percent natural and authentic materials. The log for the main hull will be Tamanu (mahogany-like hardwood), the ama will be from breadfruit tree, the sails will be from lauhala mats joined to form the "crab-claw" shape of the hovering wings of tevake - the white tropic bird, and the lashings and rigging will be sennit.
The modern applicability of this craft is remarkable. It can be used for practical transportation all year round and it can access remote landfalls in many conditions that the outboard motor driven canoes and deep draft government vessels cannot manage due to the expense of fuel and the time it takes for them to stop at the no-anchorage out-islands and atolls that are common throughout the Pacific. A Te puke can sail in over the reefs or onto the beach where modern vessels cannot.



Currently multihull racing designers are employing of some Te puke design features - such as super-buoyant ama, but are just on the verge of experimenting with others - such as submerged main hulls and shunting of the hull (changing ends) when tacking. These features already exist and have proved themselves in the case of the Te puke. This kind of rig is often called "proa."



Perhaps the most dramatic single feature is the crab-claw sail, which has been shown in wind tunnel tests to capture 50% to 150% more wind-force than the Marconi (depending on point of sail and other conditions). Also the crab claw sail, the lack of a fixed forward edge to the sail, and even shunting, are in some ways more flexible and efficient technologies for dealing with varying wind and sea surface conditions. In some very common circumstances the Te puke may prove to have a more elegant and high performance rig than the Marconi does (see Marchaj, 1988).



But western yacht architects and ocean racers have yet to make serious application of the claw sail or Te puke hull and outrigger design features. The idea of shunting - having two bows and changing ends to tack - and the claw sail are little known, much less understood, as regards performance potentials. Documentation of the technical design of the craft and observation of its seaworthiness in various conditions will provide a goldmine of applied information. The "performance equivalent" voyaging canoes that have been built in the last twenty one years have not succeeded in making lauhala mat sails or natural fibre lashings that will stand up to long distance voyaging. Authentic knowledge of these arts and a ready supply of both the cultivated and wild materials are needed to do them, have been lost almost everywhere.
The Taumakoan builders are doing this project as a strictly educational project for their own youth. They regard this as their last chance to vindicate and revitalise their own culture. They also see it as their main chance to develop an economy that is based on revival and use of their own deepest cultural knowledge and inspirations. Every step of this process is being done deliberately and with the seagoing future and the survival of this traditional community at stake. Every step is directed by them, at reforming a relationship with the outside world - a relationship based on mutual sharing and understanding of the universal value of culturally unique and time-tested knowledge and wisdom. This community is on a spiritual mission.



They want to make the world aware of the unparalleled performance of this craft and how it may be used today in remote maritime circumstances. They want to promote the voyaging way of life and to become a Te puke building enterprise - i.e. to build Te pukes to fill orders from the outside - just as they used to be prior to the 1960's. They want their own youth to become competent voyagers and to earn some income with what they know. This seems realistic in that there are dozens of outsiders who contact the community every year wanting to learn the non-instrumental navigation methods and be trained in the experiential realities of voyaging.



This is a rare opportunity to shed light on another controversial conundrum in Pacific studies - the traditional role of women in Polynesian voyaging. At Taumako it is said that women play as important and active roles in the process as men, including cutting the tree and bringing (actually "singing") the rough hewn log down from the mountain heights to the coast, weaving the lauhala mats and making the sails, as well as the sennit rope and lashings that bind the canoe together. There were and are trained women navigators and captains, as well as girl apprentices in all the voyaging arts among these people.
In 1993, George interviewed Reef Islands' women who were competent and very experienced in voyaging on Te pukes and using traditional non-instrumental navigational knowledge. In 1996, George learned that during the 40's and 50's; at least, there was a female Captain and 'owner' of a Te puke from Nukapu and Pileni, named Hoakena. In Pacific literature to date there are only a few rather vague and abbreviated accounts of living or mythic women on voyaging canoes (Kramer, 1935; Lewis, 1972; Grimble, n.d.; Sabatier, 1939; Pukui, 1957; Diaper, 1928). These facts stand in bold contradiction too much that has been written and assumed recently about women and voyaging.
Women are, in fact, prominent figures in Polynesian voyaging imagery! The building of a Te puke promises to clarify many of the questions that are only just being asked about women's knowledge and roles in traditional Polynesian voyaging. According to oral literature, it was often enough women, like Pele in Hawaii, who steered the first canoes to new islands. In 1993, George learned that the Taumakoan women throughout the entire building process will perform the oral transmission of stories, songs and chants.



In 1996, George learned that it is the women's singing and chanting that is primarily responsible for the successful cutting and hauling of the log from the mountaintops to the sea where it is fashioned into Te puke. It is a Herculean task to drag a huge hardwood log down through the rainforest for miles. According to the Taumakoan it is the women who literally "sing it down." Documentation of what this actually describes will be an important part of the first account of the actual traditional voyaging knowledge and roles of women in voyaging. An account of women's work and roles in the full process will be an invaluable centrepiece for reconsideration of every aspect of voyaging knowledge and purpose from the point of view of actual knowledge of both gender roles and knowledge.



Another very important discovery that George and Lewis made in 1993 was that the indigenous concept and systematic organisation of navigational knowledge - especially knowledge and use of celestial (star paths and zenith or high star techniques) and of seasons, routes, and calendric information, is done in terms of the traditional "wind compass. Wind compasses, and often-just fragments of them, have been reported by Europeans several times. But the wind compass as a navigational tool and organising system for navigational knowledge remains almost a complete mystery. " The Taumakoan wind compass and the main details and features of its use were shown to George and Lewis at the island of Taumako. Ten of the stars that are associated with particular wind directions and voyaging routes were pointed out in the night sky. However, the wind compass and its use were not demonstrated at sea. The ideal circumstance for observing its use will be afforded in the traditional context of voyaging on Te puke.
I hypothesise that the Te puke and those who sail it by traditional means will dramatically demonstrate that many parts and the integrated whole of it's design and performance features are still unparalleled technologically for the purposes of voyaging, and perhaps for much more. I hypothesise that by observing and documenting the traditional community process of building and sailing a voyaging canoe we will learn much more about the actual traditional motivations and the experiential process of voyaging. This will begin to answer many of the technical and cultural questions, which are chronic in Pacific studies.



I propose to document the entire building and sailing process of this Te puke, paying close attention to who does what, how, and why. In this way we may, for the first time, understand how an authentic survivor of stone-age technology, and the community process of creating and using it, works. This knowledge will clarify many technical and cultural questions and issues in Pacific and maritime scholarship, and which will have interest and applicability to the modern self-knowledge and aspirations of Pacific Rim peoples, and humanity as a whole.
The Te puke building process will take about 8 months. The entire field project is planned for two years. The building begins when the tree is cut in December 1996 and finishes when the canoe is launched in September 1997. Then the Te puke will begin sea trials of four months duration, beginning in June 1998. Eventually the Te puke will begin circumnavigating the far-flung out-islands of the S.E. Solomon's - including Pileni, Nifiloli, Fenualoa, Lomlom, the Duffs, Anuta, Tikopia, Utupua, and Vanikoro, as well as Santa Cruz (Ndendo). A complete circuit normally requires bridging a change of season. Thus, the end of the research project would complete the circumnavigation in March 1999. The Taumakoan may then opt to sail for New Caledonia to show their Te puke at the gathering of voyaging canoes there, before sailing on to New Zealand to make a "challenge" display at the America's Cup. Eventually they want to sail around Polynesia.




Contact Dr. Mimi George, Principal Investigator
Mailing address:
Dr. Mimi George and Paramount Chief K. Kaveia
P.O. Box 662224, Lihue, HI 96766 USA e-mail: vaka@aloha.net
(Phone 001 808 632 2073)

H. M. Wyeth, Permanent Secretary
(Phone 001 808 822 0647, FAX 001 808 823 6741)

Healani Waiwai'ole, Office Manager
(Phone 001 808 245 7133)