The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaii that was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods. It is best known for undertaking voyages throughout Polynesia using replicas of traditional double-hulled canoes, navigated without modern instruments.

PVS was founded in 1973 by anthropologist Ben Finney, Ph.D., Hawaiian artist Herb Kane, and Tommy Holmes, to show that ancient Polynesians could have purposely settled the Polynesian triangle using non-instrument navigation. Their first project was to build a replica of a double-hulled voyaging canoe. On March 8, 1975, the Hokule'a was launched, the first voyaging canoe to be built in the Hawaiian Islands in over 600 years.

The Hokule'a left Hawaii on May 1, 1976 for Tahiti in an attempt to retrace the ancient voyaging route. Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug , using no instruments, successfully navigated the canoe to Tahiti, arriving there on June 3, 1976.

After an attempted voyage to Tahiti in 1978 was aborted when the Hokule'a capsized near Lana'i and crew member Eddie Aikau was lost at sea, Piailug trained Nainoa Thompson in the ancient navigation methods. Two years later in 1980, Thompson replicated the successful 1976 voyage to Tahiti, becoming the first modern Hawaiian to master the art of Polynesian navigation.

Since that voyage, the Hokule'a and her sister canoe the Hawai'iloa have undertaken five other voyages to other islands in Polynesia, including Samoa, Tonga, and New Zealand.

External link

• Polynesian Voyaging Society