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Exploration -- The importance of exploring and learning about the world around us, essential to finding solutions to the difficult issues of our times. Learning is all about taking on a challenge, no matter what the outcome may be. When we accept the challenge we open ourselves to new insight and knowledge. --Nainoa Thompson The Polynesian Voyaging Society was founded for the purpose of scientific inquiry and exploration: How did the Polynesians discover and settle small islands in ten million square miles of ocean, geographically the largest "nation" on earth? How did they build canoes from limited resources on small islands? How did communities come together to combine resources, material, and manpower, to build and sail these voyaging canoes? How did they navigate without instruments, guiding themselves across open ocean distances of 2500 miles? And how did they transport the food necessary for societies to survive, then flourish on uninhabited islands? Over the last 25 years PVS has built two voyaging canoes, Hokule'a and Hawai'iloa, and conducted six open ocean voyages throughout the Polynesian Triangle to answer these questions. The 1999 voyage to Rapa Nui was once again about exploration: How did our ancestors find this remote, isolated island smaller than Ni'ihau, the smallest major island in the Hawaiian Archipelago? How did they get there 1450 miles against the wind from Mangareva, where the first settlers are believed to have originated? Once again we were challenged and excited about the opportunity to look for answers, about learning, about discovering something new. --Nainoa Thompson |