SAILING back to the FUTURE
A Waitemata-based waka harks back to a time when the ancestors roamed the Pacific and multihulls were all there was…
Imagine the seafaring ancestors of 750 years ago sailing their ocean-going waka into the Waitemata Harbour today.
The towering totara and mighty kauri which lined the harbour have been supplanted by cuboid concrete towers decked out with multinational hieroglyphics. And the moa, as tall as young coconut palms, which strutted on the foreshore, are long gone.
But one thing they would have recognised is the twin red hulls and crab claw sail of the Okeanos Aotearoa waka sailing out to greet them.
The design is traditional with a slender entry and forefoot to slice the waves, swelling out to a plump belly for weight-bearing buoyancy and rounded sterns to provide stability for sailors using the four metre laminated wooden Hoi (steering sweep).
The ancestors would finger the dacron sail cloth and compare it to traditional tapa, tap the fibreglass hulls and querulously shake their heads, test the bar-tight lashings which hold hulls to deck and joke about the three 21-person liferafts – who needs liferafts when you have a good waka?
Below decks they’d bounce on the bunks and marvel at the soft mattresses or wonder at the kai kapai produced by the stainless steel hangi on the port hull.
To modern waka sailors though, these things are all old hat. Gear and materials may have changed but the waka designs stay close to the parameters proved by centuries of Pacific Ocean seafarers.
Auckland’s Okeanos Aotearoa is more than just another charter
boat though – she’s part of a uniquely Pacific solution to the problems faced by islanders throughout the area.
Seven waka were built by Salthouse boatbuilders in a project underwritten by German film maker Dieter Paulmann. Each of the waka ( vaka in some island languages) was allocated to a separate country – Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, Tonga and Vanuatu – who were to maintain and crew them. The plan was to sail a circuit of the Pacific Ocean and make a film, The Starchasers.
Each was 21.3m overall. They were vaka moana (ocean waka) with two masts, twin hulls built of e-glass and epoxy. They weighed about 14 tons and could carry four tons of cargo and 16 passengers at a time.
In 2011 the seven set off on the Te Mana o te Moana (Spirit of the Ocean) voyage and over two years collectively sailed 210,000nm visiting Pacific nations. They created a stir by sailing en masse under the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco and were rapturously received by islanders throughout the Pacific.
The waka were accompanied for much of the trip by a film boat, the 25.6m staysail ketch Evohe, and crew from that yacht reported that, in some conditions, they were hardpressed to keep pace with the ocean-going waka. “They’re wet – but they go like the clappers,” one told me.
Captain Cook, a consummate seaman, also paid tribute to the sailing properties of ocean-going waka. After arriving at Tahiti in 1769, he reported that the natives had twin-hulled canoes capable of carrying 200 warriors and which out-sailed