The crew were looking at each other questioningly when suddenly, gusts of wind in the 40-to-60 mph range blasted the wa'a. For most of the voyage, he had only emerged for meals and to look at the sunrises and sunsets to gauge the weather nothing seemed out of the ordinary at this time. The crew members obeyed without question, but they wondered what had prompted Mau to take command of the situation. However, on this occasion, he quickly ordered the crew on watch to take down all of the sails immediately. During this voyage, he has acted as mentor to Nainoa, our young Hawaiian navigator, but has stayed in the background, never saying much, allowing Nainoa to practice his newly acquired skills. Mau is a master navigator from Satawal in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, who learned navigation from his grandfather. Suddenly, Mau Piailug emerged from his sleeping place under the tarp. watch, as the wa'a sizzled through dark rain under storm sails, lines of squalls began buffeting us. Two days into this storm, during the midnight-to-four a.m. Below the flimsy canvas shelter the rest of the crew try to rest, but as our Tongan crewman says, "Inside same wet as outside!" On this, our ninth day, we have been through four and a half days of roiling clouds, whistling wind and mountainous seas that have charged at us from two quarters, drenching the steersmen, navigator and everyone else on deck. We, the crew, are the hands and sinews that move the wings to catch the lift and skim on the skin of the sea. The stars, wind and swells speak to our navigators, who are the eyes of the wa'a. We left Waitangi to follow the ocean highways of our Polynesian ancestors and reestablish contact with our far-flung cousins. Well defined swell trains born in Antarctic waters have accompanied us, along with pelagic albatross and shearwater.
The first four and a half days have been crisp, cold and clear. No compass, sextant or any other kind of instrument has been used on this thousand-mile passage from Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, to the only surviving independent Polynesian kingdom, Tonga. Our navigator has told us that we should see land sometime this morning.
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