Navigating by the Signs of Nature
Canoeing in Micronesia

By Chris Sims

“Stroke, stroke.” It is mid-winter, and the canoe-racing team is hard at work. The five teenagers from the island states of Chuuk and Pohnpei in the Pacific dip and pull their paddles in unison to the beat of their team leader’s chant. Sweat streams off their skin, and seawater glistens in their hair. Each young man holds his paddle firmly as he rows. Losing a paddle means a dive overboard to retrieve it and then a long swim to shore. A racing canoe cannot afford to carry the extra weight of a person who isn’t paddling.

None of the young men can remember his first canoe ride. All of them could paddle strongly enough by the age of seven to take a homemade canoe out alone to fish or to visit friends and relatives on other islands as far as three miles away. The six team members are from different islands throughout Micronesia and met while attending high school in Guam, but a common bond unites them. Ocean-going canoes are a way of life for them, as they were for their parents and grandparents, all the way back to the earliest peoples of these Pacific islands, who took canoe voyages hundreds of miles long.

The Early Navigators
To most people, even to Pacific Islanders, the ocean might have seemed open and empty with nothing to steer by. Skilled navigators, however—rare men who could read ocean currents, clouds, and stars as if they were street signs—always knew exactly where they were. No long canoe journey could take place without a navigator on board.

Navigational secrets were closely guarded and passed on only to males who were deemed worthy by their elders. Chosen boys would spend years learning the secret songs that told which rising or setting stars to aim for and in which order. Each island in Micronesia—more than two thousand in all—had its own song. Songs told how to get back from each place. Still more songs gave directions for the routes that connected each island to the rest.

At times, navigators used land to guide them. A tiny island might seem impossible to find in the great, blue sea, but on clear days, a flat island can be spotted thirty miles away. Islands with tall mountains can be seen eighty miles away. V-shaped “land clouds” that form over even the tiniest islands can be seen eighty miles away, even on overcast days. And at sunset, early navigators nearing their destination followed fish-eating birds as they flew to land to roost.

Sometimes the ocean shows the way to land almost magically. Some navigators depended on streaks of light that appear beneath the water’s surface and send their lightning-like flashes away from land and toward open water. Navigators who were fairly certain about where they were going could narrow their focus by relying on these lights.

If the stars weren’t shining, navigators steered by ocean swells. Unlike waves, which are caused by wind, swells are the rolling motion caused by ocean currents. Just as a rock in a river changes the flow of water, an island in the ocean affects the motion of currents. Boys as young as six studied charts made of sticks, sand, and rocks to learn where one current crossed another and how water bouncing off islands sent signs they would later learn to feel in the rocking of their canoes. Navigators often lay down in the canoes with their eyes closed to better feel where they were. In fact, some of the most famous navigators were blind.

Navigators Today
Navigating by the signs of nature nearly ended this century. Modernization had come to the islands, and the older men who knew the navigational secrets were dying before they could pass along this important information. Air travel also became easier in the Pacific. Some of the chiefs of the smaller, outer islands worried about this trend and made laws that forbade the use of motors and other modern tools on boats. Not only would people forget their history if they didn’t learn the old ways, they’d also be in danger of getting lost at sea if the modern tools failed and they couldn’t find their way home.

In 1970, the ancient sailing arts started coming back to life. Hipour, an old navigator from Puluwat in Chuuk State, was asked to record his skills in a book. Instead, Hipour guided author David Lewis on a five-hundred-mile journey from Puluwat to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, using only the signs of nature. It was the first such voyage in sixty-five years. Several months later, a canoe from Satawal in Yap State also made the journey to Saipan. And in 1998, master navigator Rappwi Yaluwairh and seven other men completed a voyage from Chuuk State to Saipan.

Interest in crossing the ocean by canoe has skyrocketed throughout the Pacific. Young racing teams are preserving their culture by keeping canoeing alive. From Hawaii to the Caroline Islands, canoe races, both long and short, are held almost every weekend of the year. Although these races tend to follow marked courses, races using traditional methods are sure to come.

Micronesia, meaning “small islands,” is a collection of more than two thousand islands spread throughout an area of the western Pacific Ocean about as long and wide as the United States. The largest island is Guam, about thirty miles long. The smallest islands are no bigger than boulders. If all the islands were put together like a jigsaw puzzle, they would fit inside the state of Delaware.