Pictured: A photo by Dr. Ben Young from aboard the Hokuleʻa as it returned to Oʻahu on Saturday.
This past weekend, 41 years after taking part in its maiden ocean crossing, Dr. Benjamin Young, former Dean of Students at the University of Hawaiʻi medical school, boarded the sailing canoe once again. Dr. Young joined tens of thousands of islanders gathered to welcome the history-making vessel home last Saturday, at the conclusion of the Hokuleʻa’s most ambitious journey ever, a three-year long circumnavigation of the globe.
The members of the the original ocean crossing in 1976 (when the canoe sailed from Honolulu to Tahiti and back) were invited to attend a welcoming ceremony and to once again walk aboard the now iconic double-hulled canoe.
“We were taken out in launches and boarded Hokuleʻa,” Dr. Young said, sharing some of the photos and a short video he made to mark the occasion. “Just as sun was rising I took this photo,” he said. That photo is below:
