Crews from canoe, Viking ship meet
COURTESY POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY
Hokulea crossed paths with the Draken Harald Harfagre, a modern day Viking ship from Norway on a similar mission of connecting the ancient ways of sailing with modern-day exploration, at New York’s Sylvan Beach last week.
COURTESY POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY
Hokulea crossed paths with the Draken Harald Harfagre, a modern day Viking ship from Norway on a similar mission of connecting the ancient ways of sailing with modern-day exploration, at New York’s Sylvan Beach last week.
The crew of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokule‘a met a set of kindred spirits from the land of the Vikings last week at New York’s Sylvan Beach.
Like the Hokule‘a, created more than 40 years ago as means of rekindling Native Hawaiian navigation traditions, the dragon ship Draken Harald Harfagre of Norway was constructed in a bid to prove that a traditional Viking ship was capable of traversing the globe.
The two crews visited on Aug. 31 when Hokule‘a arrived at Sylvan Beach, located on the east shore of Oneida Lake adjacent to the Erie Canal.
Kalepa Baybayan, captain of Hokule‘a’s current East Coast journey, presented Draken Captain Bjorn Ahlander with a traditional Hawaiian feather kahili; the Hokule‘a crew members received a book from the Draken Harald Harfagre crew that contained photos of the vessel sailing alongside icebergs and through snowstorms.
“The mission was to prove that it is possible to sail the ocean with a Viking ship,” said Ahlander. “We knew that before, because we got findings from (Viking explorer) Leif Eriksson around year 1000 in North America,” hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus reached the New World. “The mission was to prove that it was possible to go the historic voyage from Norway to Iceland, Iceland to Greenland, Greenland to Newfoundland, and we did it,” he said.
The Draken Harald Harfagre is 114 feet long and 80 tons with a 3,200-square-foot sail from Norway crafted from oak.
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“A lot of people do not move far from where they come from, and I think that’s a pity because people all over the world are different; we can learn so much from each other,” said Erik Rolfmoller, deckhand for the Draken Harald Harfagre. “The exploration and the development you go through personally when you go exploring is very important.”
Hokule‘a is docked in Oswego, N.Y., on Lake Ontario and will be heading for Ontario, Canada, next.
Since departing Hawaiian waters in May 2014, Hokule‘a has sailed more than 26,000 nautical miles and made stops in 14 countries and 70 ports.
More than 200 volunteers have served as crew members, sharing messages promoting sustainability, cross-cultural understanding and global conservation.
