Thirty years ago, the Hawaiʻi Island voyaging canoe Makaliʻi launched from Kawaihae. A younger sibling to Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa, the waʻa kaulua was built to give voyagers and their students a way to continue the cultural practice on the island.
Since then, Makaliʻi has engaged with the community, teaching generations of voyagers. It’s also traveled to Tahiti, Satawal and Mokumanamana in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
This year, Hawaiʻi Island and the waʻa community celebrated Makaliʻi’s birthday and all that it has accomplished at the Mālama Makaliʻi Ocean Festival. The event, led by Nā Maka Onaona, Kawaihae Canoe Club and Nā Kālai Waʻa, was filled with music, locally sourced food and included 25 different organizations sharing their missions with festival attendees.
“It was a day to celebrate all the great work that our community is doing and Makaliʻi gets to be a part of, and you know, for people to understand that what we do from the deck of the voyaging canoe really is because of the support of our community,” said Chadd Paishon, Pwo navigator and executive director of the nonprofit Nā Kālai Waʻa. “All the things that we’re able to do in voyaging, it starts from the island.”
The first Mālama Makaliʻi Ocean Festival was held in 2012, and the last festival was 10 years ago in 2015. Paishon said that after seeing the overwhelming success of the event, they want to throw another one next year.
Makaliʻi is born
Nā Kālai Waʻa, which means “canoe builders,” was founded by Clay Bertelmann, who voyaged on Hōkūleʻa and trained under Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug.
Bertelmann dreamed of a voyaging canoe for Hawaiʻi Island, and so he and fellow Hōkūleʻa crewmembers Tiger Espere and Pwo navigator Milton “Shorty” Bertelmann, who is Clay’s brother, started the grassroots project with the help of volunteers and contributions from businesses and community organizations.
For nine months, they worked at Parker Ranch inside a quonset hut until the voyaging canoe was finished. This would become the second canoe Nā Kālai Waʻa built. The first was Mauloa, a single-hull traditional sailing canoe, completed two years earlier.
Named after the navigator in the legend of Hawaiʻi Loa and Nā Huihui o Makaliʻi (the constellation also known as Pleiades), the 54-foot double-hulled voyaging canoe, Makaliʻi, was born on Feb. 4, 1995. She set off on her maiden voyage just 24 days later, meeting up with Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa in Tahiti.
The next pivotal moment for Makaliʻi came in 1999. “We sailed Papa Mau home to Satawal to his home island to thank him in front of his people for all that he’s done for us in Hawaiʻi and through voyaging,” Paishon said.
At the time, Clay asked Mau what they could give him as a gift in return. Mau responded: a canoe. Clay thought he was referring to a Micronesian canoe but that was not the case.
“They said, no, he wants a Hawaiian voyaging canoe so that when the people in his home island see the canoe they’ll always remember about Hawaiʻi and the connection that we share,” Paishon recalled.
Nā Kālai Waʻa built a second voyaging canoe, Alingano Maisu, and sailed it to Micronesia with Hōkūleʻa in 2007.
In between trips, Nā Kālai Waʻa focuses on educational programs, introducing students to voyaging and wayfinding. The organization also worked with Hawaiʻi Land Trust to save the lands of Mahukona in North Kohala from future development. Mahukona is a training ground for navigators and holds many historic cultural sites, including Koʻa Heiau Holomoana, one of the rare heiau dedicated to voyaging.
“The last voyage that we did aboard Makaliʻi, back in 2019, was out to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to make the connection between Mahukona and the island of Mokumanamana because of the navigational heiau that is here in Mahukona,” Paishon said.
Future plans
Makaliʻi’s next voyage will be its longest, taking about two years to complete.
“We’re looking to do another, probably within the next two or three years, to return back to Tahiti and to make that connection again, but then also to continue through the South Pacific, down to the Cook Islands to Samoa, Tonga, into New Zealand,” said Paishon. They would also like to sail through Micronesia to visit Mau’s home in Satawal before returning to Hawaiʻi.
Until then, Nā Kālai Waʻa is training the crew and preparing the canoe. “It will be our community that will be helping us to do all those things,” he said, “so that when we leave, we’ll be able to be successful.”
