“Setting out on an ocean voyage, with water in gourds and pounded tubers tied up in leaves, he would point his canoe into the right slant of wind, and then along a path between a rising star and an opposite, setting one. With his departure star astern and his destination star ahead, he could keep to his course.
By day he was guided by the rising and setting sun but also by the ocean herself, the mother of life. He could read how far he was from shore, and its direction, by the feel of the swell against the hull. He could detect shallower water by colour, and see the light of invisible lagoons reflected in the undersides of clouds. Sweeter-tasting fish meant rivers in the offing; groups of birds, homing in the evening, showed him where land lay.”
— The Economist, July 24th to 30th, 2010
In 1976, Mau Piailug, a Micronesian man from Satawal Atoll, sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti without a compass sextant or charts. The last palu (“initiated navigator”) of his kind, he passed away on July 12th at the age of 78.
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