Chad Kalepa Baybayan, a revered Hawaiian seafarer who was a torchbearer for the artwork of “wayfinding,” which ancestral Polynesian sailors used to navigate the Pacific Ocean by finding out the celebs, commerce winds and flight patterns of birds, died on April 8 at a pal’s residence in Seattle. He was 64.

His daughter Kala Tanaka stated the trigger was a coronary heart assault. He suffered from diabetes and had had a quadruple bypass over a 12 months in the past.

Many centuries in the past, oceanic tribes sailed the waters between the islands and atolls of Polynesia in double-hulled canoes. They plotted their course by consulting the instructions hid inside sunrises and sunsets, ocean swells, the behaviors of fish and the reflections of land in clouds. As Polynesia was colonized and modernized, the secrets and techniques of celestial navigation had been almost forgotten.

Mr. Baybayan turned a face of a cultural motion to protect these previous methods, and a tireless educator who taught the science of wayfinding in school rooms and auditoriums throughout the nation.

Mr. Baybayan (pronounced “bay-BAY-an”) was a teen when he joined the crew of the fabled Hokule’a (“Star of Gladness”), a voyaging canoe wherein he discovered to turn out to be a wayfinder beneath the tutelage of the Micronesian grasp navigator Mau Piailug.

On the time, conventional Hawaiian tradition was in peril. Utilization of the native language was declining, sacred lands had been being desecrated and fewer ceremonies had been being held. In 1973 the Polynesian Voyaging Society was shaped in hopes of preserving the area’s seafaring heritage, and it constructed Hokule’a, a reproduction of an historic deep-sea voyaging canoe.

In 1976, the vessel embarked on a historic journey from Hawaii to Tahiti with out assistance from navigational instruments, in what was meant as a show of wayfinding’s technical sophistication. The journey, which was led by Mr. Piailug and documented by Nationwide Geographic, additionally sought to disprove theories that Polynesia was settled unintentionally by hapless sailors misplaced in an aimless drift. (Mr. Baybayan was too younger to go on that famous voyage, though he served ceremonial drinks constituted of awa root to his crewmates earlier than their departure.)

When Hokule’a lastly made landfall in Tahiti, hundreds of individuals had gathered on shore to greet the canoe, and the event was declared an island-wide celebration. The voyage’s success galvanized a revival of native tradition, generally known as the Hawaiian renaissance, that included a celebration of slack-key guitar music and the hula.

Starting within the late Seventies, Mr. Baybayan sailed on Hokule’a for greater than 40 years, rising to the rank of captain and grasp navigator — although, he told Nationwide Geographic in 2014, “I’ll by no means be a ‘grasp’ as a result of there’ll all the time be extra to study.”

“What it actually does is sharpen the human thoughts, mind and skill to decipher codes within the atmosphere,” he added. “It’s additionally extremely rewarding to navigate and make a distant landfall. For me, it’s essentially the most euphoric feeling that I’ve ever felt.”

In 2007, Mr. Baybayan was initiated by Mr. Piailug, who was then 75, into an elite class of wayfinders generally known as Pwo. The ritual commenced with the blowing of a conch shell, and Mr. Baybayan was given a bracelet of stinging coral to mark his new standing. In 2014, he helped lead Hokule’a on a three-year circumnavigation of the globe.

In his late 30s, whereas elevating a household and juggling jobs as a lodge porter and a ramp agent for United Airways, Mr. Baybayan determined to pursue the next training. He graduated with a B.A. in Hawaiian research from the College of Hawaii at Hilo in 1997. He then earned a grasp’s diploma in training from Heritage College in Toppenish, Wash.

Mr. Baybayan turned an educator on the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, utilizing its planetarium to show guests about celestial navigation. He additionally traveled to school rooms throughout the nation to speak about wayfinding with assistance from an interactive star compass flooring mat. In 2013, he gave a TEDx Discuss that recounted the historical past of Hokule’a.

“There are just a few individuals on the earth who can actually navigate correctly, and Kalepa was one among them,” Nainoa Thompson, a fellow Hokule’a grasp navigator, stated in a telephone interview. “However the place Kalepa separates himself is how far he took issues with training. He broke the principles.

“Conventional navigation faculties,” Mr. Thompson continued, “have all the time been extremely protecting of the information. There are 4,000-year-old navigation faculties in Micronesia that also received’t educate their strategies to outsiders. Historical past will say that Kalepa was the one who stopped the extinction of the nice navigators as a result of he shared our information with the world.”

Chad Kalepa Baybayan was born in Honolulu on Aug. 15, 1956, and was raised in Lahaina, Maui. His father, Llewellyn, was a laborer and postal employee. His mom, Lillian (Kalepa) Baybayan, was a homemaker. As a boy, he went spearfishing with a grandfather and his household ate their recent catches for dinner, served with poi.

In highschool, Chad performed basketball and soccer and was on the wrestling crew. In 1975, when Hokule’a docked on the shore of his seaside city, he felt one thing stir inside him.

“It simply grabbed my coronary heart,” he said in an interview in 2000. “I knew that if there was something in my life that I wished to do it was sail on her.”

His daughter elaborated: “For him, seeing Hokule’a was like seeing this factor he’d solely heard about in tales and historical past books, however then there it was and it was actual. It wasn’t only a story anymore.”

When Mr. Baybayan first joined the crew, he was charged with duties like washing and scrubbing the vessel. He started learning the methods of wayfinding in his 20s, and he went on to information voyages that took the canoe to Cape City, Nova Scotia, Cuba and New York.

Mr. Baybayan’s progressive strategy to preserving custom typically made him a polarizing determine in his Native Hawaiian neighborhood.

He was an ardent supporter of the development of a $1.4 billion telescope on the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, a sacred web site thought-about the resting place of gods. Known as the Thirty Meter Telescope, it’s anticipated to be probably the most highly effective telescopes ever made, however activists have protested its development for years.

“I’ve heard the remark that the protesters need to be on the proper aspect of historical past,” Mr. Baybayan told The Related Press in 2019. “I need to be on the proper aspect of humanity. I need to be on the proper aspect of enlightenment.”

Along with his daughter Kala, Mr. Baybayan is survived by his spouse, Audrey (Kaide) Baybayan; one other daughter, Pukanala Llanes; a son, Aukai Baybayan; his mom, Lillian Suter; two brothers, Clayton and Lyle Baybayan; a sister, Lisa Baybayan, who now goes by Sister Ann Marie; a half brother, Theodore Suter; and 6 grandchildren.

Final month, Mr. Baybayan was in Seattle along with his spouse to go to a few of his grandchildren when he collapsed immediately one night.

The evening after he died, a gaggle of his crewmates, together with Mr. Thompson, gathered aboard Hokule’a for a moonlight passage in his reminiscence. Mr. Thompson, who had studied celestial navigation alongside Mr. Baybayan as a younger man, regarded towards the celebs as he honored his fellow wayfinder.

“I feel Kalepa has gone to the place the spirits go,” Mr. Thompson stated. “Now he’s up there with our ancestors who dwell within the black of the evening.”


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