Voyage Update | Canoes Make Brief Stop Off Keauhou

Canoes depart Maui and make brief stop off Keauhou to pick up ashes of Pwo Navigator Kalepa Baybayan.

After a nine-day weather delay in Maui, Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia departed Lāhainā on Saturday, May 22, 2021 at approximately 11 pm, to continue the training sail in preparation for next year’s Moananuiākea Voyage, a circumnavigation of the Pacific.  Mother nature allowed for good and safe sailing across the notoriously dangerous ʻAlenuihāhā Channel, arriving offshore of Hawai’i Island by 10 am. The canoes sailed to Keauhou, arriving at about 5:45 pm this evening and having sailed approximately 100 miles since leaving Lahaina.

The crew made a brief stop off Keauhou to receive the ashes of pwo navigator Chad Kalepa Baybayan who passed away last month.  According to Pwo Navigator Nainoa Thompson, Baybayan will be the twelfth crew member on board Hōkūleʻa for the training voyage to Moananuiākea.

“We are going to Keauhou to pick up a friend…to pick up someone that was on this canoe starting in 1977 that has 44 years and 100,000 miles,” said Thompson.  “His name is Captain, Pwo Navigator, Kalepa Baybayan.”

From Keauhou, the canoes are sailing to Kalae, or South Point, then down Kealaikahiki (the ancient sea road that connects Hawai‘i with its ancestral homeland of Tahiti) into Moananuiākea – the deep region of the Pacific Ocean.  The canoes are tentatively scheduled to return to Oʻahu by May 28.

Upon their return, the crew will have received 900 miles of training, crossed seven of the nine major channels (five of them twice) in the lower eight Hawaiian islands.  PVS’s goal is to have 120 new crew trained by the end of the summer in preparation for next year’s Moananuiākea Voyage, a circumnavigation of the Pacific.

Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia were moored off of Lahaina, Maui, since Thursday, May 13, the morning after departing Honolulu for the training voyage.