Lehua Kamalu

Oh, my God.

My name is Lehua Kamalu, and I am a captain and navigator and sometimes crew member of traditional Polynesian voyaging canoes.

There is no timepiece involved in the wayfinding in this way.

And so I'll probably call it non-instrument navigation.

That's probably the simplest way to describe it.

You need to constantly be watching, like, are we making good progress?

Are we still doing the same speed?

Are we a little slower?

Are we a little faster?

You know, are these conditions the standard conditions that we expect?

Or are we experiencing something that is out of the norm?

And how do we account for that?

Let's just imagine the world not so much with an imaginary grid on it and rather just see it in the natural way that it is.

And I think what it forces you to do is to allow nature to tell you where you are and not you to tell nature where you are.

It's not that you are traveling from point A to point B.

with absolutely nothing in the middle.

There's an ocean that is pointing you in the right direction.

There are wave patterns.

There are animals.

There are wind directions.