“It’s amazing! The canoes have held up very, very well after about 4,000 miles.”
[dropcap2]F[/dropcap2]resh, flown in crews from Hawaiʻi arrived at the dock in Pago Pago this morning to get to work on the canoes in preparation for the next leg.
“It’s amazing! The canoes have held up very, very well with the exception of just a few things we have to take care of. After about 4,000 miles, we’re trying to revamp and upgrade the different electronics and electrical systems we have onboard. So we brought down a couple of specialists that are part of the Polynesian Voyaging Society,” said Hikinalia Captain Bob Perkins.
Crew members worked all day to provision the canoes, while others worked on installing the electronics and communications equipment that arrived with them. The coordination of this effort could not be done without the supervision of a seasoned veteran like Pwo Navigator Kālepa Baybayan.
“I’m a nuts and bolts kind of guy. So I’m first of all looking at how we organize ourselves into a workforce. It’s a demanding job. It takes great skill, great patience, and we have a compressed window. We’re not there yet. But I’m sure by tomorrow afternoon, we ought to be comfortably over that hump. We’ll probably need the time until we throw ropes off the dock to complete the preparation process,” said master navigator Kālepa Baybayan.
[pullquote]“We’ll probably need the time until we throw ropes off the dock to complete the preparation process.”[/pullquote]
The next stop for these canoes is Apia, Sāmoa for the SIDS conference.