Crew Blog | Moani Hemuli: A Whole New World

Written by Moani Hemuli

As many of you know, provisioning Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia is no easy task: First, creating a balanced menu that crew members like and will eat, then sticking to a budget. With previous legs, these things seemed simple because we knew where we could get the items for our meals and what brands the crews liked better than others. But in Aotearoa, it was not as easy; there were no longer pounds and ounces; brands of food were unknown to us, let alone tasted; and descriptions like tomato sauce for ketchup and biscuits for cookies also caused confusion.

To our rescue came Jason Witehira, owner/operator of New World Victoria Park, who was instrumental along with his managers in helping provision Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia. They proved their extensive experience in provisioning vessels!

Helping Jason with this task was his dedicated staff Anita Cloete, Store Manager, and Anna-Mare Claassen, Service Deli Manager. They were a tremendous help with the menu that our PVS logistics team created. Anita and Anna-Mare converted our ounces into grams, gave us tips on making some dishes more flavorful and suggested foods that we didn’t normally have on the waʻa. After meeting in person just three times and numerous e-mails, the menu for both Hikianalia and Hōkūleʻa were supplemented and converted.

Three days after arriving in Aotearoa with a small packing crew, our food was ready for pick up. Four pallets of food, filling three vans, held all of our food, ready for packing. After getting it sorted and packed, I realized we had the easy part. The ladies at New World Victoria Park had done all the mind-boggling, teeth-pulling hard work.

From the crew onboard Hikianalia going to Tahiti, and Hōkūleʻa going to Australia, we would like to send out the biggest mahalo to Jason, Anita and Anna-Mare for all their hard work to make sure we eat like kings without refrigeration while sailing to our designated ports. Mahalo, Mahalo, Mahalo!

— Moani Heimuli

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