Hokule’a crew visits giant star compass

AURERE, NEW ZEALAND » The best place in the world to find a giant Hawaiian star compass, it turns out, is a chilly bluff some 4,600 miles from Hawaii where the winds whip hills dotted with sheep and the Pacific Ocean feels like ice water.

Here the sun and stars rise above 32 traditional carvings painted burnt-red and spaced evenly in a perfect 144-foot-diameter circle overlooking the sea. Each of those carvings, known as "pou" by the Maoris who live here, represents an equal part of the horizon.

Crews of the Hawaiian voyaging canoes Hoku­le‘a and Hiki­ana­lia on Saturday ventured to this unique site, part of a 300-acre beachside property, to visit with the local compass’s creator, a renowned Maori elder and canoe builder named Heke­nu­ku­mai Busby, known to the Hoku­le‘a crews as Uncle Hector.

It was the latest stop on their more than 50,000-mile "Malama Honua" journey, a risky worldwide sail to promote cultural harmony and protection of Earth’s natural resources. The canoes will spend the next 5 1⁄2 months or so in New Zealand, making repairs, doing community outreach and waiting out the region’s hurricane season.

The star compass at Aurere, on the country’s North Island, pays tribute to the ancient Polynesian voyagers who navigated the Pacific using the stars and swells. It’s based on a traditional wayfinding compass design that was refined several decades ago by Hawaiian master navigator Nai­noa Thompson. Much smaller versions have been incorporated into floor renderings at Hono­lulu Airport, Puna­hou School, Kapiolani Community College and the Kapa­lama campus of Kame­ha­meha Schools.

"It’s awesome to have that as a learning tool, a training tool," Hoku­le‘a captain Bruce Blankenfeld said during Saturday’s visit. "It’s really a nice site."

The outdoor compass includes a stainless-steel chair at its center where apprentices looking to master the ancient navigation craft can spin around and study the stars’ movements with ease.

Busby, a bridge builder by trade, also built what’s believed to be New Zealand’s first traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe in about 600 or 700 years using the country’s native kauri wood.

He started doing all of this several years after the Hoku­le‘a’s first visit to New Zealand in 1985.

"That was the beginning of the changing of my life," Busby, 82, told his visitors from Hawaii on Saturday, referring to the original visit by the Hoku­le‘a and Thompson, who introduced him to wayfinding navigation.

The canoe crews gathered in the compass’s grassy, dandelion-speckled center and strained to hear Busby over the wind.

"Once I decided, and once I made up my mind I was going to study navigation, that was it," Busby told them.

He said he’s made dozens of trips to Hawaii in the years after the Hoku­le‘a’s 1985 visit. Eventually, Thompson’s Micronesian navigation teacher, Mau Piai­lug, gave Busby the title of "pwo" — a great honor on Piai­lug’s home island of Sata­wal — for Busby’s work to promote traditional navigation in the Pacific.

Glimpses of the Hoku­le‘a’s influence dot Busby’s family property. His original voyaging canoe, Te Aurere, currently rests in dry dock a stone’s throw from the compass.

In the past 20 years, this first New Zealand voyaging canoe of modern times has made expeditions to the other two points of the Polynesian Triangle: Hawaii and Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui.

Local voyagers are working to fix the cracks in the Te Aurere’s kauri hulls, following its 10-month journey to Easter Island and back several years ago.

About 30 yards from the Te Aurere, workers have started building what’s so far being called the Kupe Waka Center, a facility envisioned to teach students and the public about traditional canoe-building, carving and navigation. According to the New Zealand Herald, the facility is being funded in part by ASB Community Trust. The trust’s website says it supports nonprofit groups in New Zealand.

New Zealand and Hawaiian voyagers hope to have the building completed before the Hoku­le‘a leaves New Zealand next year, when the canoe will venture outside of the Pacific for the first time in its nearly 40-year history.

Thompson also stayed at the property nearly 30 years ago ahead of the Hoku­le‘a’s first sail to New Zealand in order to study how the stars rise and set in the local sky, Busby said.

Busby created the compass at Aurere in the early 1990s, while Piai­lug was staying with him. Back then the compass’s points were simple posts fixed in the ground, Busby said.

"I thought it’d be a good idea after learning a little bit, and Nai­noa always spoke about it. Well, I had this flat area over here, so I thought I’d might as well make use of the whole thing," Busby said. "And it’s good, you know? It’s beautiful to see the stars rising, especially on the horizon."

He took wood from the same kauri logs used for the Te Aurere to create the star compass’s pou carvings, which stand several feet off the ground on concrete bases. The carvings and the central chair were installed only in the past several years, Busby said.

"All of Mau’s teachings flowed through him to Nai­noa and then out to everybody else," Blankenfeld said. "For Hector to teach it up here, it takes that same continuity and puts it together."

Before Saturday, Kalepa Bay­ba­yan, a Hawaiian pwo navigator and member of the original 1985 Hoku­le‘a crew to New Zealand, had never seen the star compass — he’d only heard about it.

"This is ingenious!" Bay­ba­yan exclaimed to Busby, marveling at the compass’ steel chair. "This is smart."

"It’s Maori," Busby quipped.