Dr. Mimi George, Director of The Vaka Taumako Project will give a power-point presentation entitled "Sailing with Lata." Dr. George will discuss the traditional knowledge of the Polynesian voyagers of Taumako, Solomon Islands, and the aerodynamically superior designs of their voyaging canoes and their "wind compass” navigation system.

The Vaka Taumako Project seeks to educate young people in the ancient skills and values of building and navigating voyaging canoes. The project seeks to share information on the practical and spiritual nature of ancient sailing knowledge, and promote awareness and revival of authentic Polynesian voyaging.

Taumako is located in the Duffs Group of the Santa Cruz Islands in the far southeast of the Solomons chain. Polynesian people live there without electricity, telephones, roads, airport, anchorage, or other modern technology. Because they still use ancient technology in everyday life, and no modern communications can serve them, they use the same methods of sailing that enabled their ancestors to populate the Pacific’s most isolated islands long before Europeans. These methods include adzing hull and spars from various hard woods grown on their island, lashing their canoes with sennit and inner bark cordages, weaving pandanus mat sails that last 10 years, and using designs for sails and vessel construction that are aerodynamically and hydrodynamically superior to modern designs. Taumako voyagers retain knowledge of handling their heavily outrigged, proas  in open ocean conditions, and their “wind compass navigation” technology is useful in all oceans.

According to Polynesian oral history, the first person to build and sail a voyaging canoe was Lata.   According to the people of Taumako, Lata was born on Taumako.  In 1996, Koloso Kaveia, Paramount Chief of Duff Islands, with assistance from Dr. George, started The Vaka Taumako Project to pass on the ancient heritage to young people who are the heirs of Lata. 

To read more about the Vaka Taumako Project, visit www.vaka.org.