Within Sight

Posted on 18 Jun 2014
In Crew Blogs

This post was written by Kalā Baybayan.

There is something about the ocean that makes us feel younger, and it’s a special connection between my father and me that we both share the same passion, voyaging.

One of my jobs as a crew member on the escort vessel Hikianalia is to keep Hōkūle’a always within sight; and since my father is on Hōkūle’a, I have a deep personal attachment to that canoe. This voyage is the first time I’ve ever sailed without my father on board the same vessel as me. As a daughter, I’m always worrying about my dad, even when we’re sailing together. I want to make sure he is being cared for and feel that as his daughter, I can do that the best. So at first, it was very hard for me to not be on the same vessel as him and to trust that the crew of Hōkūle’a would care for him well. But I trusted them and when I saw my dad for the first time while we were voyaging, I could tell even from a distance that he was doing very well; he looked younger, happier and a couple of shades darker from the sun.

There is something about the ocean that makes us feel younger, and it’s a special connection between my father and me that we both share the same passion, voyaging. I’m usually the medium between him and my siblings when they are frustrated that he’s not around because he’s sailing. In the beginning when I started sailing with my dad, he didn’t say much to me, but because of that, when he did speak, I would hang on to every word he said. He says a lot more to me now and I ask a lot of questions—I think too many questions sometimes. The canoe has brought us closer together.

Voyaging has changed my life by connecting me deeply to my natural world and my culture. Hearing the stories and learning from the amazing men and women of this voyaging renaissance has inspired me to do better and go farther because of their leadership by example. My crew training and voyages have empowered me to feel that I am a female who can do anything. I can solve any problem, and my input will help to change the world so that future generations will have a healthy and happy island Earth.

We need to continue to cultivate these relationships between voyaging past and voyaging future. We do this through education and by providing the opportunities to create meaningful experiences. It’s important that educators are also those individuals from our voyaging past, because it’s their stories of experiences, their passion, that have helped bring us to our present state of voyaging. It’s through honoring our past through practice of our culture and infusing newer technologies to reach more people and share knowledge that we maintain and strengthen our relationship with our ancestors.