You and the Sea
The brilliant navigator Kala Tanaka measuring
where she needs to go using her hand.
This week we moved house.
The fact we’re managing to get a couple of articles out is nothing short of a miracle, illustrative of the fact
there is a God and she has a soft spot
for old boats.
Over the course of the move, I have unpacked over 120 boxes of, you guessed it, the sh$* and detritus that some call memorabilia and others call landfill. Cute pics of small children in small frames, vases made by kid A that do not hold water. Slices of pottery cake made by kid H. Notebooks and bits and bobs from travels, cds, dvds, 475 editions of Classic Yacht Mag a old school style, and so it goes.
The notebooks were interesting. I randomly flipped to peer into times past. Story ideas and packing lists for holidays. I found a rather wonderful list of provisions for a cruise out to Great Barrier Island. I found my ‘hostess’ notes for how to prepare a sunset bbq for 65 people from Odysseus Yachting Charters, Corfu 1993. Basically the menu consisted of meat on skewers, a lot of dips and a toxic cocktail featuring Metaxa 3 Star Brandy.
But it was the notes to my kids that struck me. As I ran my own business I had help from various people, at various times to help ferry various kids, to various activities and this was all managed pre-mobile phones. How? How did we possibly communicate in a time before text messaging and Facetime, my now adult kids often remark.
Well we did and we did it with notes and trusting people would stick to the plan that had been set out and agreed to. How easily we have allowed ourselves to fall into lazy traps. Let’s blame the Iphone. Often, even if I know the way from A to B, I still find myself putting it into Google Maps, to either double check or to ascertain if there is faster way than the one I am planning to take. I’ve found myself watching my Sat Nav for early warnings of poor traffic ahead and feeling like I’m working with a friend when ‘we’ – both me and the Ap – agree we should take an alternate route.
Even Classic Boats experience new world disorder. Take expensive self-steering set-ups (if you can get it to work); or B&G screens - up, down and sideways. Or the story of when Mark and I were sailing Fair Winds from Melbourne to Sydney in January 2020. We had left Melbourne on January 1, before the bushfires took true hold. Out on the ocean, roughly 2km off the coast, visibility was about 200m. This was an overnight passage, sailing between Deal Island and Eden and by this stage, unbeknown to us, there was a fair bit of naval traffic up and down the coast.
It was 3am when my phone rang. It was my mum, watching us on AIS, advising me of a ship about 400m of my bow. Mark was asleep down below, holding the repeater. I was on helm, we were sailing along at about 6 knots with the gib poled out. Trying to avoid a gybe, I hadn’t been able to leave the helm to go downstairs and scroll to reposition the cross on the nav station. Thus I hadn’t seen the ship on the screen and I certainly hadn’t seen it in the smoke.
The above is nothing new – the weight and clutter of excess stuff, the ease with which we’ve allowed tech to wrap us up in cleverly, branded cotton wool. However every now and then a reminder pops up, something simple and authentically human that slows your pace and warms your heart.
Case in point – Samoan Navigation Tattoos of the South Pacific.
Navigator Kala Tanaka is one of many sailors who have gone on to act as Navigators for Ocean Passages.
Kala’s father is a master navigator who has passed on to his daughter his abilities to ‘read’ the environment around him.
Kala Tanaka teaches a new generation of Wayfinders traditional navigation.
Samoan hand tattoos have fish around the wrists and the stars and togitogi up the fingers. The thumb lays across the horizon while the fingers stand vertical as you align your markings with the stars. Every tattoo is unique to that navigator’s experience and knowledge. And interestingly the original navigators were: Pacific women. It’s part of the Nafanua story [known throughout Samoa as a Goddess of War]. She ruled all over Samoa and set up Tupa’i titles in villages on the complete opposite sides of Samoa. She was an accomplished navigator.”
“We memorize the rising and setting points of stars and use those to orient ourselves in our physical space so that we can navigate from place to place. I used to think that we would go to things. But that island out there was always there and all you’re doing in your place is you’re making it come to you. It’s the magic of navigation. The ocean swells, the wind, the fishes, the birds that are all out there – you may think that they exist independently, but there is a whole story, a whole dialogue that’s happening and they’re telling you where you are if you would just listen.”
Wayfinding is important because as voyagers, as oceanic peoples, wayfinding offered a deep, connection to everything that surrounded these people.
“You and the sky, you and the birds, you and the sea – you’re not separated. You’re one.”