Hokule‘a crew reaches St. Helena island

Fog, overcast skies and small seas threw some challenges at Kaleo Wong, the apprentice navigator tasked with guiding the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule‘a to the remote island of St. Helena using only the stars, swells and other natural cues.

Still, Wong managed to get the canoe and his fellow crew members there Friday after a 16-day, 1,900-mile journey from Cape Town, South Africa, that included the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Hokule‘a’s stop at St. Helena marks the approximate halfway point in its premiere sail across the Atlantic Ocean. The canoe has another 2,300 miles or so to Brazil on the current leg of the Hokule‘a’s three-year “Malama Honua” (“Care for the Earth”) worldwide voyage.

“We still have the fog coming with us from Namibia and constant overcast skies making it difficult to see our navigational tools,” Wong reported in a video recorded 10 days into the Atlantic Ocean leg, while sailing several hundred miles off the African coast. “Without a dominant swell is also making it difficult.”

In a follow-up video Friday, having successfully navigated to St. Helena with the island visible over his shoulder, Wong recounted how he had interpreted natural signs, including a lightning storm, to help guide the Hokule‘a.

The canoe had approached that storm just as Wong needed to decide when they should turn onto a direct course to St. Helena, he said in a video posted to the Hokulea.com website.

“Right there the lightning was flashing and the thunder was going off right next to the course we were headed. We decided that was the time” to turn, Wong said.

“Right after that the clouds cleared up, and it was only blue skies left and no sign of the lightning and thunder.”

The current leg is Wong’s fourth of the “Malama Honua” voyage, including a sail to New Zealand that he co-navigated with local navigator Ka‘iulani Murphy. Wong also captained the Hokule‘a’s previous escort vessel, the canoe Hikianalia, on a sail to the northwestern Hawaii island of Nihoa.

One of Hokule‘a’s crew for the Atlantic leg is Lohiao Paoa, son of renowned Molokai paramedic and longtime Hokule‘a captain Mel Paoa. The elder Paoa died in August in a boating accident. In 2014 he helped sail the Hokule‘a from Samoa to New Zealand. That was the same leg on which Wong navigated the canoe with Murphy.

“During this (Atlantic) leg … mixed emotions fill me as it has been utterly bittersweet,” Lohiao Paoa wrote in a Hokulea.com blog posted Thursday, which included reflections on his father. “It has been over two weeks on the water, and I can now understand why he enjoyed it so much.”