Last voyage for fabled explorer

In an era where a good $500 handheld sat-nav device can tell you whether you have moved your boat from one side of a marina to the other, sailing across the Pacific Ocean without charts, compass, sextants or a chronometer is virtually a lost art.

The death last week of famed Polynesian navigator Mau Piailug, a native of the Caroline Islands, marked the end of a career that rewrote the history of Pacific navigation.

Piailug, who died at 78, was virtually the last of the Polynesian palu, the master navigators who guided double hulled canoes across the Pacific for thousands of years before James Cook made his so-called "voyages of discovery".

The palu's skill at navigating vast distances was seen by Europeans as some mystical power -- but it was anything but that. It involved learning from a young age about stars, clouds, ocean swells, sea life and currents. It involved learning generations of traditional lore and being able to read the moods of the ocean as it was crossed.

In 1976 Piailug sailed a doubled hulled canoe on what was then considered an impossible voyage across the 6000 nautical miles from Hawaii to Tahiti and back again. His vessel, the Hokule'a, carried no modern navigation equipment of any sort.

Piailug navigated by the ancient maps of the Micronesian universe that his people had drawn the sand for countless generations. He memorised hundreds of star patterns, the habits of fish and birds, and the almost invisible landmarks of reefs and shoals.

While some scientists still dispute that the voyage of the Hokule'a failed to resolve the question of whether or not the Polynesian's voyages to and from the Hawaiian islands had been by accident or design, the feat made Piailug an international figure.

He settled in Hawaii where he passed on his knowledge to the local people and helped them to re-establish links to their almost forgotten history as a people perfectly attuned to their environment and nature.

Photo: Steve Thomas for samlow.com