The Nation - News from May 24, 1987

Hokule’a, a 60-foot replica of an ancient islander’s ocean-going canoe, returned to Hawaii from a two-year, 13,000-mile voyage meant to prove that the early Polynesians could have crossed the Pacific by celestial navigation. Well-wishers in motorboats, yachts and outriggers surrounded the double-hulled craft as it came ashore to be met by a crowd of 12,000 at Kualoa Regional Park on Oahu, from where it set out in July, 1985. Navigator Nainoa Thompson, 34, said that rotating crews sailed to Tahiti, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and the Tuamotu Islands without the use of modern instruments.