LAHAINA >> On June 11, 2014, some 4,000 Maui residents gathered at the Mala boat ramp to celebrate the long-awaited launch of the island’s deep-sea voyaging canoe, the Mo‘okiha o Pi‘ilani.

Many there that day expressed excitement that the 62-foot-long sailing vessel, which is almost identical to its famous Oahu counterpart, the Hokule‘a, would finally offer the Valley Island a hands-on way to experience Hawaii’s voyaging legacy.

However, with the local harbors already full of boat tenants, the Mo‘okiha has struggled in its first year to find a proper home on the water so that it can pursue that mission.

Despite a 2013 state law that compels state officials to provide space at small harbors to Hawaiian voyaging canoes that are used for educational purposes, the double-hulled Mo‘okiha has spent much of its first 15 months moored about 500 yards off Lahaina town outside the surf break. The only way to access it is by using a six-man paddling canoe, a dinghy or some other small craft.

What the traditional canoe doesn’t have yet — and what its owners say it urgently needs — is a harbor slip where local students and community members can board the craft and experience the Mo‘okiha firsthand. Until then its reach into the community is limited.

“It’s such a bummer. That’s what we’re all about,” said Kala Baybayan, who serves as education coordinator and apprentice navigator for the nonprofit Hui o Wa‘a Kaulua, which owns the Mo‘okiha. The group holds regular sailing and navigation classes on land. Instead of the students learning on the canoe, “they’re still imagining what it’s supposed to be about,” Baybayan said.

“This is a great classroom,” added Jack Breen, a Hui o Wa‘a Kaulua member, while recently aboard the Mo‘okiha. “It’s supposed to be ‘learn by doing.’ Hawaiians taught by getting their kids out there.”

Maalaea maybe?

The lack of harbor space also sent the Maui vessel sailing to Oahu last month to dodge the hurricanes and tropical storms that now roll past Hawaii on a seemingly regular basis. Pounding surf off West Maui from Hurricane Guillermo knocked a boat moored next to the Mo‘okiha onto the reef, destroying it.

“It’s not feasible for when the big storms come. We’ve got to get out of there,” Mo‘okiha captain Timi Gilliom said.

The canoe could be close to securing a safe, accessible home at Maalaea Harbor, which is less populated than Lahaina but more centrally located on the island.

Late last month state Rep. Angus McKelvey (D, Lahaina-Kaanapali-Honokohau), who co-introduced the 2013 law to give harbor space to canoes such as the Mo‘okiha, said that a deal to bring it to Maalaea was imminent.

However, Ed Underwood, who heads the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation, said last week that nothing is certain yet.

“Nothing has been finalized at this point,” Underwood said last week. “I know it’s been talked about.”

The parties are eyeing a Maalaea Harbor slip whose tenant might lose its commercial permit. But the tenant might still be able to retain a separate permit that would allow it to stay there even without the commercial permit, Underwood said.

“Those are highly sought-after berths,” Underwood said, adding that they can be leased monthly for about $5 to $7 per foot of vessel length.

Meanwhile, Gilliom and an upstart, volunteer crew hungry for more voyaging experience recently completed the Mo‘okiha’s first interisland sail, a more than 160-mile round trip to Oahu. They said they never thought that their first interisland journey would be to seek safe haven from storms because there was no safe place to dock at home.

The alternative, Gilliom said, would have been to round up 20 or so volunteers on Maui and haul the large canoe to safety out of the water. But he saw the situation as a chance to get Mo‘okiha’s volunteer crew more sailing experience.

The canoe wound up staying on Oahu for about 2-1/2 weeks.

It docked at the Honolulu Community College’s Marine Education and Training Center, on Sand Island, until Hurricane Hilda had passed and conditions were right to head home. Gilliom, Breen and a third member stayed that whole time, sleeping in the canoe’s hulls, while other volunteers flew home and later returned. Several elementary school classes from Oahu toured the canoe during the stay.

The canoe returned to Lahaina on Aug. 21. When it arrived at its mooring, a salvage boat had already tied on there. (The crew had to ask the boat to leave.) A couple of days later, volunteers hauled the Mo‘okiha out of the water to avoid damage from the latest cyclones to threaten the islands, Kilo and Ignacio.

‘Law pretty clear’

The Mo‘okiha took decades to build, largely with the help of community support, Gilliom and others say.

Its launch last year fits into a canoe renaissance of sorts across the islands, amid the Hokule‘a’s highly publicized sail around the world. Another voyaging canoe, the Namahoe, is poised to launch soon on Kauai. The Oahu-based Hawai‘iloa, a canoe crafted from traditional materials, was relaunched earlier this summer following years of repairs. Volunteers in Waianae are restoring the E Ala, a smaller canoe designed for interisland sails, and hope to have it ready for sailing soon. On Hawaii island the Kawaihae-based voyaging canoe Makali‘i is undergoing a major renovation.

In 2013, a year before the Mo‘okiha’s completion, former Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law House Bill 1412, a measure requiring that DLNR accommodate traditional Hawaiian canoes owned by nonprofits and used for educational purposes in the state’s small boat harbors.

“I felt it’s important, given how commercial interests often trump everything, that we have a niche for Native Hawaiian culture in the small boat harbor,” McKelvey, the state representative, said recently. He expressed frustration that state harbor officials haven’t found a spot for the Mo‘okiha even with the measure.

“The law is pretty clear with its intention,” he said.

DLNR officials say the language in the harbor law remains murky as to how exactly — and to what extent — the agency has to accommodate the canoes. They point out that it doesn’t require the agency to move the canoes ahead of commercial boats on the waiting list for a harbor space.

“We’ll work with them, depending on where they want to be,” Underwood said of Hui o Wa‘a Kaulua. “We’re just waiting to see what happens. It’s just a matter of what the current tenant (at Maalaea) is going to do.”

Local educators say they’re eager to get their students aboard.

“I’m sad that we have this opportunity that’s so close to make learning a reality for the kids and it can’t be,” said Mary Anna Enriquez, a sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Sacred Hearts School in Lahaina. Enriquez, who volunteers for Hui o Wa‘a Kaulua, read over the phone from an essay one of her seventh-grade students wrote after attending a class with the group at its boathouse.

“It was the best and most awesome experience that I’ve had. I hope to do it again someday and actually voyage on the canoe,” wrote the student, whom Enriquez identified by first name, Ariana.

Enriquez wonders what her student would have written had she actually sailed on the Mo‘okiha.

“I read something like this, and I think, ‘This child thinks this on land. (Imagine) the potential what this could mean actually at sea, on the water. What are we keeping them from doing because we can’t offer them the full experience?’” Enriquez said.