Trans-pacific voyagers


At well over six feet tall, Simon Ngawhika (Na-fee-ka) makes an impression on the audience gathered before him as he slowly approaches the podium—an impression underscored by his intonation of a song sung in his traditional Maori tongue.

A 27-year-old Master’s of Business Administration student at Portland State, Ngawhika agreed to speak last Thursday during the Native American Student Community Center’s “Reclaiming our Waterways as Highways” event, intended to celebrate and draw attention to the vibrant modern canoe culture that thrives across the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a topic that Ngawhika is well acquainted with; just this last summer he undertook a voyage that brought him all the way from New Zealand to the southern coast of California.


On April 18 of this year, Simon and a crew of 15 others set off from Auckland, New Zealand. They were part of the newly-formed Pacific Voyagers program, an international collaboration of Pacific Islanders designed to bring the people back to their nautical roots, while at the same time drawing attention to the pollution caused by modern freight shipping.

Ngawhika’s canoe, Te Matau a Maui (“Maui’s fishhook”), departed New Zealand with a few others, but the fleet gradually acquired more and more companions as they passed by the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Hawaii. They ended up with seven in total, making for a maximum combined-crew count of 112 on the water at any one time.

A group of four crew members were on duty for a three-hour shift, followed by a six-hour break, each day, every day, for the 106 days of the voyage (excluding time spent at port in French Polynesia and Hawaii). Simon’s favorite shift was 3 a.m., before the sun had risen, saying that one “could learn so much from the stars.”

Before setting out, the canoes bulked up on rice and oats, supplemented by a steady supply of caught fish. This would become something of a pastime on board, with canoes steering off course in pursuit of a catch. During their downtime, the crew would sleep, play guitars or ukuleles and swim if conditions permitted.

The sailors used traditional navigational techniques developed through generations of careful observation, such as the Hawaiian star compass, a map that took advantage of the known position of the sunrise at various times of the year as a means of orientation. Each canoe was, however, equipped with a GPS device that could be used in case of an emergency.

Those same GPS devices were used throughout the voyage to track each vessel’s progress, resulting in a map on the organization’s website (pacificvoyagers.com) showing the serpentine path the canoes took across the Pacific.

Te Matau a Maui reached the continental United States on Aug. 2, arriving in San Francisco Bay before continuing along the southern coast of California to San Diego, where the nearly three-and-a-half-month-long voyage ended.

Simon was introduced to sailing at the age of eight by his father, a career naval officer, but did not return to it until two years ago, shortly before he found out about the Pacific Voyagers. “For me, it is one of those few things where you can be engaged with all of your being: physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, culturally…some people are passionate about skiing or rock climbing, but for me it’s sailing—it just lights me up,” Ngawhika said.

When asked if he would continue sailing now that he was in Portland, he replied: “There was an opportunity to go sailing this Thursday, and I just had to take unpaid leave off work, catch a flight up to Auckland where the canoe was, jump on, then be back at work the following Monday.” Sailing, it seems, is in his blood.