The crew of a Polynesian canoe is planning a daring voyage by sailing around the world in three years- without the aid of modern navigation tools, the Associated Press reported.
The canoe Hokulea is no stranger to long voyages, making a successful 2,700 mile trip from Hawaii to Tahiti in the '70s with the crew only using traditional Polynesian sailing methods.
Today, a crew of navigators-in training-plan on using those same traditional methods- a convoluted mix of math, astronomy and virtually no sleep- to sail 47,000 nautical miles from Hawaii to 85 ports in 26 countries around the world, the AP reported.
The journey will take three years, during which the navigators will need to be awake 20 hours a day to make sure they don't stray off course.
"One degree off 2,000 miles away will take you to Antarctica," Lehua Kamalu a 27-year-old apprentice navigator who attended the University of Hawaii, told the AP.
The navigators will be able to tell the canoe's direction by studying the position of the stars, which along with the sun move across the sky from east-to-west due the Earth's rotation.
In order to determine the longitude, the crew first tracks the number of seconds it takes the boat to pass the bubbles on the water's surface. That number is divided into 25 to determine the boat's speed, which is then multiplied by the number of days and hours into the voyage to get the longitude.
The Hokulea is set to begin the voyage on Saturday. The journey will be a learning experience for Kamalu, her sister and the other young apprentices who want to carry on their ancestral sailing traditions.
"There's nothing more central to Hawaiian and Polynesian culture than the canoe, because that's how our kupuna came to Hawaii in ancient times," said crewmember Kekaimalu Lee, referring to the Hawaiian elders, West Hawaii Today reported.
"And getting to experience what they experienced, see what they saw, feel what they felt, and to arrive at land after many, many days at sea must be an extraordinary experience, and I can't wait to experience that, like our kupuna did many, many years ago."
