Modern Wayfinding

"The principles of wayfinding are simple; the practicalities are very complex." --
Nainoa Thompson

Wayfinding involves navigating on the open ocean without sextant, compass, clock,
radio reports, or satellites reports. The wayfinder depends on observations of the
stars, the sun, the ocean swells, and other signs of nature for clues to direction
and location of a vessel at sea. Wayfinding was used for voyaging for thousands of
years before the invention of European navigational instruments.

In the 20th century, it is still practiced in some areas of Micronesia, although

the traditional knowledge and techniques are in danger of being lost because of
modernization and Westernization of the cultures of these areas. However, a revival
of the art and science of wayfinding is underway among the Pacific islands, a
revival led by Nainoa Thompson, the first modern-day Polynesian to learn and use
wayfinding for long-distance, open-ocean voyaging. Thompson studied wayfinding
under Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the island of Satawal in Micronesia. Mau
navigated the first voyage of the Hokule'a to Tahiti in 1976; Thompson was
Hokule'a's wayfinder on the 1980 and 1985-87 voyages.

The star compass is the basic mental construct for navigation. We have Hawai'ian
names for the houses of the stars -- the place where they come out of the ocean and
go back into the ocean. If you can identify the stars, and if you have memorized
where they come up and go down, you can find your direction. The star path also
reads the flight path of birds and the direction of waves. It does everything. It
is a mental construct to help you memorize what you need to know to navigate.

You cannot look up at the stars and tell where you are. You only know where you are
(in this kind of navigation) by memorizing where you sailed from. That means
constant observation. You have to constantly remember your speed, your direction
and time. You don't have a speedometer. You don't have a compass. You don't have a
watch. It all has to be done in your head. It is easy -- in principle -- but it's
hard to do.

The memorization process is very difficult. Consider that you have to remember
those three things for a month - every time you change course, every time you slow
down. This mental construct of the star compass, with its Hawai'ian names, is from
my mentor, Mau Piailug. The genius of this construct is how they figured out to get
in all this mental information and to compact it, and to come up with decisions
based on it…

…How do we tell direction? We use the best clues that we have. We use the sun when
it is low down on the horizon. Mau has names for how wide the sun appears, and for
the different colors of the sun path on the water. When the sun is low, the path is
tight; when the sun is high, it gets wider and wider. When the sun gets too high,
you cannot tell where it has risen. You have to use other clues.

Sunrise is the most important part of the day. At sunrise you start to look at the
shape of the ocean -- the character of the sea. You memorize where the wind is
coming from. The wind generates the waves. You analyze the character of the waves.
When the sun gets too high, you steer by the waves. And then at sunset we repeat
the pattern. The sun goes down; you look at the shape of the waves. Did the wind
change? Did the swell pattern change? At night we use the stars. We use about 220
by name -- where they come up, where they go down. When I came back from my first
voyage as a student navigator from Tahiti to Hawai'i, the night before he went
home, Mau took me into his bedroom and said, "I am very proud of my student. You
have done well for yourself and your people." He was very happy when he was going
home. He said, "Everything you need to see is in the ocean, but it will take you 20
more years to see it." That was after I had just sailed 7,000 miles.

When it gets cloudy and you can't use the sun or the stars, all you can do is rely
on the ocean waves. That's why Mau said to me, "If you can read the ocean you will
never be lost." One of the problems is that when the sky gets black at night under
heavy clouds, you cannot see the waves. You cannot even see the bow of the canoe.
And that is where people like Mau are so skilled. He can be inside the hull of the
canoe and just feel the different wave patterns as they come to the canoe, and he
can tell the canoe's direction lying down inside the hull of the canoe. I can't do
that. I think that's what he learned when he was a child with his grandfather.