His teacher, Mau Piailug, intervenes.

Mau steps in and acts to change what the crew is doing.

Nainoa, a Native Hawaiian navigator, is making his first voyage to Tahiti.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

Its rising point helps a navigator hold a course.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

The navigator watches the sky, follows the course and keeps track of the distance travelled.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

Their directions and timing give the navigator patterns to recognise.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

The navigator keeps those changes together in memory, updating the imagined position of the canoe.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

For each new navigator, the horizon becomes familiar gradually.

The person who works out the canoe’s direction and helps it reach its destination.

Hōkūleʻa had two hulls joined by a platform, with room for a crew and supplies.

The main bodies of the canoe that sit in the water. Hōkūleʻa has two of them.

Between them stretches the open Pacific, crossed by winds, currents and long lines of swell.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

Through the day, the crew can hold the canoe at a familiar angle to the swell.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

This is swell.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

The angle of a swell against the canoe helps sustain a sense of direction through the dark.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

A swell can strike land and return across the incoming waves.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

A swell has a direction.

Long, rolling ocean waves that can travel far from the wind or weather that made them.

At evening, the setting sun and the first stars provide new bearings.

Directions that help the crew work out which way the canoe is travelling.

In his account of the crossing, this is the moment when his teacher changes the course.

The route or direction the canoe follows across the water.

For people rebuilding Hawaiian voyaging traditions, she offered somewhere to practise: a sail to handle, a course to hold, a crew to bring safely to land.

The route or direction the canoe follows across the water.

Its rising point helps a navigator hold a course.

The route or direction the canoe follows across the water.

The navigator watches the sky, follows the course and keeps track of the distance travelled.

The route or direction the canoe follows across the water.

Across open water, the task has been to keep the course and follow the canoe's progress.

The route or direction the canoe follows across the water.

Sunlight reflected from a lagoon can brighten a cloud from below.

An area of shallow seawater partly separated from the open ocean by land or a reef.

Some leave their nesting places to feed at sea and return toward evening.

Places on land where the birds keep their nests and raise their young.

Nainoa organised that circle into thirty-two sections, called houses, in his Hawaiian star compass.

A map of directions held in the navigator’s mind. It uses places where stars rise and set around the horizon.

Between them stretches the open Pacific, crossed by winds, currents and long lines of swell.

Movements of ocean water flowing in a particular direction.

A change of wind can require a different heading.

The direction in which the canoe is pointed.

Another bird heading south suggested that the island lay behind them.

The direction in which the canoe is pointed.

A star seen beneath a planetarium dome became a reference to recognise from a moving canoe.

A known sign, such as a star or the sun, that helps the navigator work out a direction.

At dawn, the rising sun offers a fresh reference.

A known sign, such as a star or the sun, that helps the navigator work out a direction.

Light changes, stars rise and disappear, and the canoe keeps travelling through a world of moving reference points.

A known sign, such as a star or the sun, that helps the navigator work out a direction.