Habilitat Hawaii helps with rebuilding of Hokulea

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• published: 11 Mar 2012
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Habilitat Hawaii helps with rebuilding of Hokulea while in dry dock for the around the world journey. The community came together to volunteer 24,000 man hours to the project. For 18 months the canoe was taken apart, widened and refitted to be safer, reborn for the next generation of voyagers! Hōkūle'a is being reborn. An icon for Hawai'i and the Pacific, Hōkūle'a will be stronger, lighter, more stable and just as beautiful when she returns to the water later this year. The refurbished and rebuilt Hōkūle'a will be a gift of cultural pride for future generations, and continues to be a classroom for current generations. When Hōkūle'a was hauled from the water in September 2010, the wa'a was tired and worn, showing her age. She had sailed tens of thousands of miles of open ocean since her last major overhaul in 2002-3. To ensure Hōkūle'a remains solid, safe and strong for the next 35 years, PVS leadership planned and initiated the most extensive renovation of the canoe since she was launched in 1975. This renovation is intended to support the Worldwide Voyage (WWV) -- Mālama Honua; Hōkūle'a will be in the best shape of her life. For the first time, Hōkūle'a has been taken completely apart -- no two pieces remain attached to each other. Under the leadership of navigator Bruce Blankenfeld and the technical guidance of Bob Perkins, head of METC, every aspect of the canoe was opened and inspected for damage and water-rot. The famous Hōkūleʻa is a performance-accurate full-scale replica of a waʻa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, she is best known for her 1976 Hawaiʻi to Tahiti voyage performed with Polynesian navigation techniques, without modern navigational instruments. The primary goal of the voyage was to further support the anthropological theory of the Asiatic origin of native Oceanic people of Polynesians and Hawaiians in particular, as the result of purposeful trips through the Pacific, as opposed to passive drifting on currents, or sailing from the Americas. A secondary goal of the project was to have the canoe and voyage "serve as vehicles for the cultural revitalization of Hawaiians and other Polynesians." Since the 1976 voyage to Tahiti and back, Hōkūle'a has completed nine more voyages to destinations in Micronesia, Polynesia, Japan, Canada, and the United States, all using ancient wayfinding techniques of celestial navigation. Her last completed voyage began 19 January 2007, when Hōkūle'a left Hawaiʻi with the voyaging canoe Alingano Maisu on a voyage through Micronesia and ports in southern Japan. The voyage was expected to take five months. On 9 June 2007, Hōkūle'a completed the "One Ocean, One People" voyage to Yokohama, Japan. On April 5, 2009, Hōkūle'a returned to Honolulu following a roundtrip training sail to Palmyra Atoll, undertaken to develop skills of potential crewmembers for Hōkūle'a's eventual circumnavigation, currently planned to commence in 2012. When not on a voyage, Hōkūle'a is moored at the Marine Education Training Center (METC) of Honolulu Community College in Honolulu Harbor. Habilitat Hawaii is a long term residential addiction treatment center located in Hawaii