Hikianalia Update | Sep 1 – 2, 2018: Letters, Songs, Dolphins and Unicorns
Hikianalia Update by Hye Jung Kim
Sept 1, 2018 Update: A Song from the Sea
Jackie Meggs
Looking from my bunk over at port #2, I can see it is filled with boxes of makana we are bringing to California from Honolulu. That bunk was supposed to have our fellow crewmate Jackie Meggs in it. She was supposed to be here with us but with the weather delay we had at launch, it was challenging for each of the crewmembers to talk with their ʻohana and work about the fluctuations in our voyage schedule. Jackie, an amazing crewmember and a friend of each of us, in the final week made the agonizing choice to stay behind due to mounting responsibilities . However, she did come out to help everyday that she could and she helped prepared the waʻa for the voyage that we are so lucky to be experiencing now.
The day before departure, Jackie came down to the Marine Education and Training Center with a jar filled with letters. She asked us to open it at sea when we were under way for our Alahula Kai o Maleka voyage to California. Today, we took time to open her letters and we are so thankful at how thoughtful Jackie is and we want to send our aloha to her. She spent time writing to each of us on the crew and we were so thankful of her thoughtfulness! We love you Jackie!! We are carrying you with us in our hearts!
Navigation Update: For our students and teachers that are following us, today we will go through how we calculate our miles along reference course and from the reference course.
We keep track of speed on the waʻa by watching bubbles go from the first iako to the last. We count the seconds that it takes for the bubbles to travel and then we divide that number from 25. This magical number is calculated by doing unit conversion and the details can be found on our hokulea.com website.
We keep track of speed and the time elapsed to get total distance traveled. Then we look at which direction we were heading. So for us, our reference course was ʻakau then hikina so the calculations were easier for us.
For example, say we were traveling at 6 knots for 4 hours. Then we traveled a total of 24 nautical miles during that time. Suppose that our heading was Lā Koʻolau. That means that we were one house north of Hikina, our reference course. So to calculate how many miles we traveled along the reference course, we use a little bit of trigonometry (navigators have all of these numbers memorized). So, 24*cos(11.25) will give you the total distance along reference course east. And 24*sin(11.25) will give you the total distance from the reference course north. We use sine and cosine because the triangle that we draw are right triangles! We have been keeping track of each 4 hour crew shift and recording it to study and reference amongst the navigation team.
If you’re excited to learn more, visit the section on Polynesian wayfinding on our website at www.hokulea.com.
Through the past 24 hours, our three watches have covered 72 nautical miles of easting. We had the sun come out so crew members got our cold showers in! We also caught two albacore tunas today with full ōpūs.
We’ve got a little bonus today for all of our dear followers: our crewmembers wrote a song for Hikianalia, here are the lyrics.
Hikianalia, Sail with Me
By Archie, Kalani, Matatini, & Seren
Hikianalia, sail with me
From the land of Aotearoa
To the oceans of Hawaiʻi
As we learn to voyage to perpetuate our genealogy
Hikianalia, sail with me
Hikianalia, sail with me
Give me the tools to learn from the sea
Bringing many together, creating new families
Hikianalia, sail with me
Hikianalia, sail with me
Give us a voice to speak and eyes to see,
Keep all the people strong, perpetually
Hikianalia, sail with me
Hikianalia, sail with me
Riding the waves for all to see
Indigenous knowledge from sea to sea
Hikianalia, sail with me
Sept 2, 2018 Update: Dolphins!
We had a night of all three watches heading toward the star house of Hikina and covering 32 nautical miles of easting. We had 100% cloud coverage so we had another night without the stars. We also could not see the sunrise since it was clouded in. We had a few ships go by us and this morning we had a pod of dolphins come by and say aloha to us.
We finally had a lot of sunshine and clear skies during the day today. Then in the mid-late afternoon, we had a ship pass us and their vessel name was Yang Ming (YM) Unicorn. It was another fun day for our crewmembers as we continued to laugh and enjoy each other’s company, learning more about each other every minute.
During our three watches, we covered 32 nautical miles of easting (64 nautical miles in the past 24 hours). Since we had the sun out towards sunset, we had the chance to check our heading using the sun to set us up for the coming night.
SB 72,
Hye Jung
“Hikianalia was built by the Okeanos Foundation”
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