Author to visit Pages in Manhattan Beach, discuss voyage millennia in the making
The cover to Malama Honua, a new book from South Bay resident Jennifer Allen documenting the three-year journey of Hōlūke’a, a voyaging canoe relying on ancient Polynesian sailing techniques. Image courtesy Jennifer Allen
Jennifer Allen set out on her latest writing venture with a deep sense of kuleana, a Hawaiian word that roughly translates as “responsibility.”
Allen recently completed a three-year project documenting Hōlūke’a, a traditional voyaging canoe that sailed around the world without modern technology, relying on only ancient Polynesian techniques. As with all writing projects, she had a responsibility to her readers, to get things right. But she also felt it on a deeper level, closer to the word’s traditional connotations of reciprocity: a debt or duty to the people who had opened her eyes to these ancient practices.
“As has often been said by those who have been on a voyage with Hōlūke’a, there are larger forces at work here. That someone like me would have the chance to document it was such an honor,” she said in an interview.
Allen, a Palos Verdes Estates resident, will visit Pages bookstore on Friday evening to discuss “Malama Honua,” her recent book exploring the circumnavigation project. The book, published by the outdoor-enthusiast brand Patagonia, features the photography of John Bilderback, a former senior staff photographer for Surfer Magazine.
Allen provided portraits of the crew and the history Hōlūke’a, and ventured to ports all over the world to meet the Hōlūke’a when it docked. Once there, she documented the intersection between the ancient sailing techniques and the rapidly changing worlds the crew found themselves.
Allen said it was her intent to capture the “purpose, hopes, and fears” of each place she visited. In each location, she interviewed a member of the local environmental community, and documented an interview with an elder from the area, allowing his or her own voice to come through.
The project began when Bilderback reached out to Allen, whom he got to know during college at UCSD. Bilderback, who has lived on the North Shore of Oahu for 30 years, was familiar with Hōlūke’a through Eddie Aikau, the namesake of a big-wave surfing contest and a legendary Hawaiian waterman. Aikau lost his life in 1978 while attempting to swim for help on one of the early Hōlūke’a voyages, when Hawaiians were attempting to resurrect the ancient sailing techniques.
In the years since Hōlūke’a has become part of a growing movement to embrace elements of native Hawaiian culture that were all-but destroyed by missionaries and colonists. Along with reviving the Hawaiian language, traditional Hawaiian ideas about protecting the environment have gained support amid rising sea levels and threats to the islands’ biodiversity.
When Hōlūke’a docked near Bilderback’s home on the North Shore and he learned more about the project, his life changed. He underwent the 18 months of training needed to become a full-fledged Hōlūke’a crew member.
“I had to get involved and put meaning in my life like these people had found in theirs, trying to save the planet,” he said in an email.
Bilderback asked Allen, a journalist who has previously written for Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine, to write about the project while he would take photos. Allen was excited, but also intimidated at the task of putting the ancient practice down on paper. She decided to write a letter to the Polynesian Voyaging Society to seek their approval; it took her a month to get up the courage to send it. The experience was humbling but proved valuable later on.
“On this voyage, it was all about permission. Do we have permission to come on to your land? This forest: do we have permission to come into this forest?” Allen said.
With the okay from the voyaging society, they sought a publisher in Patagonia, who often sponsors ecologically minded ventures to complement their brand’s responsible-sourcing ethos. Two weeks before the Hōlūke’a set sail, Patagonia signed.
The crew departed Oahu in May 2014 and returned in June 2017. Along the way, they visited Cuba, South Africa, New York City, New Zealand. Allen said that a key moment in the journey came when the crew was departing the Galapagos Islands and heading for Easter Island. One of the elder, experienced navigators was urgently called home to Hawaii, and it was left to a crew of relatively new voyagers to pilot the craft to Rapa Nui, a remote Chilean territory better known as Easter Island.
Rapa Nui is considered the most isolated inhabited place in the world. Modern sailors would likely struggle to come within 100 miles of it without GPS. The Hōlūke’a initiates, however, were nonplussed.
“It kind of seemed like, ‘We’re just going to go straight for a while, then we’re going to go left.’ We talked about studying the wind, the stars, the birds, but it really came down to na’au, instinct. There was a moment where the crew was thinking ‘Mathematically, we should take a left now.’ But it didn’t feel right, and so they waited,” Allen said.
The successful voyage was inspiring for Allen who, along with journalism, is a local yoga teacher. She said that lessons of sailing without a computer-charted course reminded her of those of a yoga practice and meditation. Both, she said, require a kind of “going against your intellect.”
“Having to quiet the mental side and just tap into a more centered part of yourself, that thing that is part of yourself but also part of everything around you: it takes courage to listen to that,” Allen said.
Jennifer Allen will appear at {pages: a bookstore} Friday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. to share stories at photos from her new book “Malama Honua.” To RSVP, email rsvp@pagesabookstore.com.