Auto-experimentation in wave piloting and celestial navigation: Vaeakau-Taumako, Solomon Islands

Abstract

This report involves what I term ‘auto-experimentation’, or experimenting on myself, to learn and assess the arts of seafaring and navigation as practised in the south-eastern Solomon Islands. From 2007 to 2008, I spent nine months with people of the Polynesian island of Taumako, exploring local seafaring techniques. My objective was to study non-instrument navigation as a participant observer, combining verbal instruction with a 70-mile voyage in a large outrigger canoe, without the aid of navigational instruments, from Taumako to the Outer Reef or Vaeakau islands. However, no voyaging canoes were operational during my time in the field. Therefore, instead of watching navigators as they plied their trade, I spoke with them at length and tried to test my own ability to implement what I had learned from my instructors. Here I recount my efforts, while travelling aboard a cargo ship in the Solomon Islands’ Temotu Province, to estimate my heading and location by tracking the movements of stars, the sun, and wind and wave patterns. I then consider my own level of success and what it might suggest about the effectiveness of methods imparted to me by my interlocutors.