Hōkūleʻa Update | May 30, 2015

Aloha from Cleveland, Australia. This is “Irish” Mike Cunningham, we are here for our second day. We are tired up at the Volunteer Marine Rescue (VMR) dock, who have been our gracious hosts for a couple of days providing room and showers for us. Today was an unbelievably busy day for people coming down to see the canoe. Yesterday we had our official welcoming ceremony. Today I think we probably hosted close to 200 families and quite a few young families and middle-aged folks. Not too many kids. But all were very interested in the waʻa, mission, and history of Hōkūleʻa. The questions they asked were quite exciting.

At the same time that was going on, our ground support team was busily loading the food for the next leg of the journey. Lots of shopping and filling up containers. And tonight, the new crew will be coming in. So we are preparing for that. We want to make sure we leave the canoe in better condition than we found it so when they come on board, they won’t have anything that’s not working or left unattended. We had a busy day with both visitors coming on board and with our own preparations going home and preparing the next crew for their next leg of this awesome voyage.

We also did quite a lot of technical things today in the hopes that we are leaving the canoe in better condition. I think every crew has a sense of doing a little something to put their own name of the voyage to improve it. So we made improvements today along the strips that keep the water from getting into our living space. And we also made changes to the second VHF base stations so transmitting back and forth to the support vessel is a little easier to maneuver.

But that’s it. All in all, a busy day. The sun is going down. The weather has been delightful and has been a great break on the winter weather and a nice way to end our voyage. That’s it from Brisbane and hope to see you all back home. Aloha.

Please help keep us sailing for future generations. All contributions make a difference for our voyage. Mahalo nui loa!