Waterpeople Podcast
Stories about the aquatic experiences that shape us.
Listen with Lauren L. Hill and Dave Rastovich as they talk story with some of the most adept waterfolk on the planet.
Waterpeople is a gathering place for our global ocean community to dive into the themes of watery lives lived well: ecology, adventure, community, activism, science, egalitarianism, inclusivity, meaningful play, a sense of humour. And, surfing, of course.
Waterpeople Podcast
Ethnomads: Ke'ili Mcevilly + Chris Miyashiro
Grief, love, and lineage shape a rite of passage as our guests recall learnings from storms, stars, mentors, and manta rays at midnight.
Ke'ilii Mcevilly is an environmental scientist with a Masters degree in sustainability. Ke'ili grew up surfing in California, and is now based on the island of Oahu. She is an artist and waterwoman involved in the flourishing of traditional Hawaiian cultural practice, from aloha aina based conservation work, to hula and making kapa under the tutelage of Pūkoʻa Studios.
Artist- surfer- sailor-filmmaker Chris Miyashiro shares his story in-depth here.
Together, they are Ethnomads, two pacific islanders learning how to wayfind.
We get into an unlikely origin story: finding the canoe on Craigslist, and calling in a mentor to teach traditional lashings.
Then the real crossing begins: A compass left unsecured spins uselessly on day one, a phone with charts pops overboard, and the crew leans into mixed navigation: swells, stars, and disciplined watches.
Ke'ili shares what it meant to be the only wahine aboard, from cycle logistics and zero‑waste choices to the mental endurance of being surrounded by water you can't get amongst.
They weathered cold, wet nights under June gloom, feet stuffed into wetsuit tops, and defied a fear list that covered everything from infections to constipation - revealing the gritty side of ocean travel. Along the way, the ocean becomes a classroom—mahi on the lines, journals open, and the sky replacing the newsfeed.
Threaded through the voyage is lineage. Aʻa, the star whose name means 'to burn bright' and 'to dare,' becomes both compass and prayer. We talk kuleana and wayfinding ethics, the quiet authority of mentors, and how culture lives through practice.
The canoe A'a shapes not just their route but their relationship, teaching balance, patience, and mutual care—two hulls moving as o
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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich
Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander
Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll
Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander
Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast
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I know this little cliff where we could see some batteries, and she jumps off this cliff into the abyss with this little dive light. I think it was actually like 11 o'clock at night. Yeah. And I see the little white light just like breaststroking to the horizon. I was like, oh, like, ah, it's kind of scary. And this is like deep water, like there's all kinds of sharks and big creatures, and I had to jump in. I just followed her and jumped in, and we were swimming, swimming, swimming. All of a sudden she shined the light down. This manner just emerges from the depth and just does this super slow backflip and just barely graces her hand. And I was just like, what?
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Water People, a podcast about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastovich. Here we get to talk story with some of the most interesting and adept water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bunjalong Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders, past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Today's episode is a companion to our chat with artist, surfer, and sailor Chris Miyashiro. Here we pick up where we left off in the last episode, diving into the voyage that inspired his latest film, A-A, which takes a whimsical dance through the personal, ancestral significance of the 2700 nautical mile unsupported journey he took across the Pacific Ocean in a double-hauled canoe, unassisted, with his two best friends. One of which joins us here, Kaili McKevale. She's an environmental scientist with a master's degree in sustainability. Ka'ili grew up in California and is now based on the island of Oahu. Ka'ili is an artist and waterwoman involved in the flourishing of traditional Hawaiian cultural practice, from Aloha Aina-based conservation work to hula and making kappa under the tutelage of Pukoa Studios.
SPEAKER_00:So when we were coming up with the idea for sailing up the coast from our river region to the barrier reef, one of the reasons I reached out to you all was because of your recent voyage from California to Hawaii. And that that was also on a warm and a smaller one. And so I guess what Lauren and I would really love to know is where the story of Ah began and who we're sitting here with now. Because there's another voice in the room. And maybe you want to introduce yourself, or maybe brother Chris, you can introduce a lovely lady.
SPEAKER_01:Please introduce, as you say, your wahine. Her full name.
SPEAKER_00:This is my Wahine. And the names that you use.
SPEAKER_05:So um, how do I introduce someone? Like as if I'm introduced to the side.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, who's so who's who's sitting next to you, brother? Who who is that on the right?
SPEAKER_02:Who am I?
SPEAKER_05:So in the room right now we have my wahine, Kaili Ely Maluhia, the peaceful little pebble, also known to me as Moing Moing. Or Boing Moing, or Noing Noing, or Ely Ely. But most people call her Kaili, which is her name.
SPEAKER_00:Yay, welcome, Kaylee. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been so fun with you guys. Really appreciate the time spent with you guys so far in Australia.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It's my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:So you all were where and how did U-A come into your lives?
SPEAKER_04:We were in California. We were living out there for a bit taking care of my mom. And I had been following these girls, Woman in the Wind, and they have a worm as well. And so I was following their journey, and it got me really interested. And Chris was really interested in worms as well. So he was like, let's just look it up on Craigslist, I think it was. And we're like, what are the odds? Like there's a worm because they are pretty rare to come across, as I'm sure you know. But sure enough, uh-uh had just been listed like two days before, I think. So we were like, Oh, let's just drive over. Like, what are the chances we could afford it? It was in really good condition. And then we found her.
SPEAKER_05:All we could see was the manus, the bow sticking out from this little canvas, and I just knew there's no other vessel that emulates a Hawaiian voyaging canoe as well as this one did. And there was no words needed to be said. I just felt that electric spark like, whoa, is this a huge decision we're about to make in our lives right now? Cause I don't know if I can pot pass this up. And there was a lot going on at the time because her mom was sick and we were taking care of her, and we both didn't really have jobs or work going for us, so spending money was a little bit scary, and it was definitely a big leap of faith. But it turns out in the long run it was all worth it, and it became the glue to our relationship in a way.
SPEAKER_01:Can you talk about that? Can you talk about Kaylee? You grew up in California, later moved back to Hawaii. I guess I want to start. Maybe can we start with how you met? Sure. I've heard the story once before from Chris's point of view, but I've never heard your point of view.
SPEAKER_04:Can you tell me that? Sure, yeah. I was um, I had just actually moved back to Hawaii. I was snowboarding for a season in Colorado. And so I was on the mainland for a bit, and I had just gotten back and moved into a new place. And my friend Bethany, uh, we call her beef, because she's a vegetarian. Um and she was in town, and she's she's a really good surfer and just a great human and um matchmaker, apparently, because she didn't tell me Chris was gonna be out, but she was good friends with him as well. And we both kind of saw each other and then paddled up to beef separately, and we're like, Who is that? How come I've never seen that before? And she's like, guys, play it cool, like just be normal. And then we ended up to both texting Beef separately, like, can we all hang out tonight? And so we had a bonfire at Chris's friend's house, and then pretty much hung out every day after that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I like that when I asked you about that, because we would we talked about everything on the recent time on the boat, and you were sharing the story of just full respect and like awe and admiration for Kaylee when it came to the manta ray moment you all shared. Can you sh give us an insight into that adventure that moment? Because it was pretty rad to see the sparkle in your eye and the like energy in your voice when you were recounting that.
SPEAKER_05:From my perspective.
SPEAKER_00:Whoever wants to share.
SPEAKER_05:Well, it could do both, but from my perspective, I was with this Wahine who's born and raised in California, but has her Hawaiian lineage, and just I thought that I was this oh, I'm no Hawaii waters, I'm grew up diving and free diving and surfing. We were in Kona at the time, and she I know this little cliff where we could see some manner rays, and she jumps off this cliff into the abyss with this little dive light, and I just see this little at night, middle of the night. Like, I think it was actually like 11 o'clock at night. Yeah, and I see the little white light just like breaststroking to the horizon. I was like, oh, like ah, it's kind of scary. And this is like deep water, like there's all kinds of sharks and big creatures, and I had to jump in because there's AD just aha, I'm gonna go swim out there. And I just followed her and jumped in, and we were swimming, swimming, swimming. All of a sudden she shined the light down, and ha halloo as we call it. This manner just emerges from the depth and just does this super slow backflip and just barely graces her hand. And I was just like, What? And then they just kept coming by the numbers, and it would ended up being like what, like an hour or two hours? These manneres are just swimming with us.
SPEAKER_04:They were probably out there till like two in the morning, and it was the most manneres I'd seen in my life. How did you know about that spot? Secrets? So we my friends had taken me there before. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's so wonderful.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What was happening for you when you did that with him? Were you was there part of you that was like, I'll show this guy what I can do? Or were you just like head over heels for going out to the mantis? Or like what's the the feeling that you had in your belly when you're doing that?
SPEAKER_04:I just love sharing magical moments like that with people I care about and creating memories and yeah, just going for it and not really thinking about sharks or whatever fears are in our head, but it was a special place to me and I knew I wanted to share it with them.
SPEAKER_00:Is that a similar story then when you think of that moment finding A-A and you were thinking or dreaming up what you would then do? What was the next step? So you did you do a lot of work on uh to get that kind of level of seaworthiness going? Yeah, how did the the moments after the decision to jump in, how did they look?
SPEAKER_04:That's a good question. Well you have an answer to that.
SPEAKER_05:So I had sailed a little bit before we got a uh, did a couple overseas passages, and I definitely had the passion that this is what I wanted to do, and I wanted to share it with her because she was interested in not only sailing but the worms and the double hole canoes and the wahine side of things after following the women in the wind girls. And I remember when we got uh, it was really real at that moment because now you have a boat that you can't just trailer into the thing, you have to put it together, you have to spend time lashing every single bit, and then you have to put the mast up, and this isn't just something that you're doing a day sale in. And I kind of got nervous, so I called one of my mentors, Uncle Kiko from Hilo Side, and I knew that he was a very passionate Ho'okele Va canoe um practitioner, and he had a lot of experience with warhams. He like was building them at a young age and building models, and he had probably the only other pay I've ever seen that looks like A-Aw. The design is pretty similar, and so I called them and I said, Oh, uncle, like I just got a Warham Pahi 26. He's like, No way, brother, that's one of a kind. I like C. And then I was like, uh, can you just come out here? I'll pay for your ticket, please, and you can show me how to rig it. And I ended up scavenging up the money to fly this uncle out, and he spends two days with us showing us how to lash her together. We put her up, put her in the water, had a little blessing, and then this big old like storm was curdling up on the horizon. You remember that in the anchorage, and it was super dark, just impending doom, like the kind that rolls in all day. And he was I just remember him being, I'm a little old for this. I gotta go. And then he takes the dinghy that he just like gifted me, and he rows it to shore. He's like, Have fun, welcome to your new life. Thanks, Uncle. And then Kaylee and I just hunkered down in the holes, and this storm just whoosh. Oh, he showed me how to anchor. He's like, This is how you set up a bridle, you'll be fine. If you if worst case scenario, just throw this other one over, you have two anchors out, all good. Then, okay, later, uncle, and then storm hits, and we're just in this, it's in a protected anchorage, and the sea is just foaming. And that was yeah, that was when life began, and you kind of forced into it at that point, and we didn't know where to go. We had to figure out the whole marina thing, how to navigate, getting a slip, and you just gotta do it, you gotta do what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_01:Did you have voyaging in mind from the start? Or was was the aspiration smaller than that?
SPEAKER_04:I think it was really step by step, kind of like Chris said. We didn't really know what we were going into entirely. We did on a large scale, but the voyage to Hawaii was born out of the realization that we needed it back home and we couldn't afford to ship it, and we didn't really want to ship it. We wanted that experience, and we knew it was possible, so we decided there was no other way. How did you know?
SPEAKER_00:That's what I'd like to know.
SPEAKER_04:Well, Chris, do you want to Yeah?
SPEAKER_05:Um well anything's possible.
SPEAKER_01:But that seems pretty tremendous. Like if you've never, if you've never started a voyage like that.
SPEAKER_05:Humans are incredible and they've done wonderful things, and there's so many stories like Dove, the kid that sails around the world, and those girls that literally paddled across the Pacific in a rowboat, and there's just humans that have crossed the ocean on ridiculous crafts.
SPEAKER_01:And all that doesn't make most people want to do it though.
SPEAKER_05:It kind of does. You got them. You've crossed way bigger oceans and you've done all these things. It's just the same thing. You're just on a tiny little craft. It's the same thing. So I had the confidence of my teachers behind me, and I had the the I just could reflect on them in the hard times when I was preparing, knowing that they believed in me when all the people in the dock were talking mad crap on us and telling us that we didn't need to be out there doing that stuff. It just was kind of a hard time. But yeah, just having the right influences.
SPEAKER_01:You framed that voyage up as sort of a a practical part of getting back home. Was there deeper significance to the trip as well? Like from the outside looking in, you just had a a major change in your life, and also you're at an age where sort of rights of passage become something either in cultures that have rights of passage intact that's introduced into our lives as young, you know, sort of teens and twenties, great challenges, or they're the kind of thing that we create for ourselves to um welcome in transformation. Was there an element of that rite of passage for you?
SPEAKER_04:There definitely was, yeah. So, like right when we had gotten a uh, like Chris said, my mom was sick, and then unfortunately she passed away from cancer, and it was really quick, and it was we didn't have a lot of time to really prepare process, and so the voyage was kind of a way for me to kind of like you said, go through that processing. And I knew that she had returned to the ocean, and we all will one day, and it just felt like returning to my mom and being with her, being close to her. I'm also I have Hawaiian lineage, and my grandma and my aunt and my cousins all live in Hawaii, so it was like me finishing my chapter in California, finishing my kuleana, my responsibility of taking care of her and doing all that and returning home to Hawaii. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's a grand gesture. So deeply symbolic.
SPEAKER_00:You left port, and as far as I can recall from some of the story time, there was a strong wind. There was a strong wind by an eight-year-old minnow. Good timing, but you're probably you're probably holding that one on. Okay, well done. Speaking of strong winds, you all leave California and start travelling westward and you encounter some tricky weather. Can you walk us through what the start of the voyage felt like? What happened to your super complex navigational system that went pear-shaped in the first day, and yeah, just that first part of the trip. You can talk about the weather. How is that? That was my high tech.
SPEAKER_04:It's perfectly great.
SPEAKER_00:That's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so when we first acquired A-A, we knew that we had to put her to the test and get comfortable with the gear and the rigging and everything, make sure it was all in order because we did put it together with Uncle Kiko as the main guide and really no other guidance. So we'd sailed across the coast of California and up to Catalina, and then we were feeling a bit cocky, I guess, and decided to go north towards um LA and Malibu, and things got really hairy really fast. We were kind of told uh early on that it wasn't the best time to go go up that way, but we really wanted to see the islands up there, and so we were really excited to see all of the wildlife and see some friends up there and share a-a-we with them, and didn't think of the weather too much, but we started battling upwind, and then our engine went down pretty quick in the middle of the night. We were in the middle of a shipping lane, so these huge shipping boats were going past in the middle of the night. We didn't have really any working lights, so we were like holding up our lanterns, and we had basically triple A for boats. Is it US boating?
SPEAKER_05:Boat US.
SPEAKER_04:Boat US or something like that, and so we were decided, like all cowarding and shame, that we were gonna call them and ask for a rescue, and they were kind of like, Where are you? And we had to figure that out, and they towed us in the middle of the night back to Venice, Boat Harbor, and we were very fortunate. We found some guys that were very knowledgeable about engines. We figured out our first engine troubles, which was awesome. So we learned a lot, but it was a scary experience for sure. We were bashing up wind in the middle of the night with big boats coming through that we knew wouldn't stop for us, so it was definitely a test.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:I think he was relating to our voyage home.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's good. I'm I'm glad to hear that because they're the things that build your familiarity with your vessel.
SPEAKER_05:But in that time, our compass was supposed to be screwed on, and I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to put any holes in the vessel. So I just had it sitting like on a little pad, and throughout all of my preparations from our voyage from California to Hawaii, that was the one thing I never thought about. And I did all of our rigging, I did all of our what I thought was electronics that failed, and I didn't think about the compass when we set off from California to Hawaii. Kalani was like, What, Brian? You want compass I can follow? I was like, nah, just use this swell, use this star. Oh, actually, I do have a compass. And I dug down below and I went to grab it and it flipped over. And I guess the orientation of it with the magnetic and the bubbles did something, and it just started spinning. And we looked at each other and we started laughing so hard. We're like, Are you serious? We don't have a compass. And I was like, Well, I mean, you know, you don't really need one, and that was kind of where that whole joke of something went wrong. No worries, I go ahead and call the supervisor because there's like no one to look out for us, and we were kind of our own supervisors.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so you don't have a compass. How are you navigating?
SPEAKER_05:Well, we did a mix of everything. We had a we had Navionics, obviously. I didn't want to be silly out there with no backup, so we all had Navionics downloaded on our phone. We had little Garmin inreaches so that people could follow us in case of emergency. We had those clipped to our um lifelines, and in the middle of the night, Kalani uh woke up and he had the go shishi and he he opened his jacket and it nudged his phone out, and boom, that was the first phone that we were using. So that one was gone and we were all bums. He had a bunch of cool music on it. And then yeah, we ended up just using like one phone, I think. Just to check. But I really wanted to make sure that Kalani and Kaylee had the time and the space to be able to identify swells and me too, and identify stars that lined up with swells, and hold the canoe in a way that everything was in one perpetual motion. And so yeah, I would say 50-50.
SPEAKER_00:So you've gone how many how many miles is it in total, that journey? And how far into it did you feel like it started to become like just different? Like when you become aquatic, you know, that feeling where you've like you you've kind of fallen out of your land rhythms of things and thoughts, and you become far more of an aquatic creature. So, yeah, two parts. How long is the journey and when did that sort of change come where you just felt like you're one organism?
SPEAKER_05:Well, the journey was 2700 nautical miles or something around there. Wow. I don't know how much it was under the keel or under our hull. We don't have a keel. Because if you zoom in at our track, we did a couple loop-de-doops and zigzags along the way. Cool. But what was it for you? How is becoming an offshore sailor for the first time?
SPEAKER_04:Um, it was really interesting because I think your brain is so used to matching up memories with a place or some sort of surroundings and environment. And so I found myself early on, like probably the second or third day, having dreams of islands that my brain just made up in my head. And it was because it was the same thing every day 360, which is blue and most of the time gray, unfortunately. We had a lot of clouds. So I think it was early on where I was having to adapt to that, and it was quite interesting. What were the challenges? Well, luckily, nobody was seasick. We were all really, really nervous. We'd kind of grown up on boats and we're all surfers and comfortable in the ocean, but we were still nervous we were gonna get seasick, but none of us did, so that was really good. I think it was mostly emotional challenges or mental challenges for at me at least, just being the only Wahine on board and being completely surrounded by the ocean but unable to go in. I found that really hard. Yeah. How about you?
SPEAKER_05:But at the same time, the ocean came to us. We were so wet the first week of the trip.
SPEAKER_01:And cold, right? And cold.
SPEAKER_05:So Kalani and I, before we left, it was just him and I in California getting ready, and we made a list of all the things that could go wrong from literally like psychotic breakdown to someone getting an infection on their finger. Wow. And like trying to find ways to like at least mentally prepare for it, but we didn't prepare for how cold and wet we would be.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. Wet didn't occur to you.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, like, I thought I knew a bit about sailing, and I was like, oh, it'll be a beam reach, and then eventually it'll be a broad reach, and then eventually we're gonna be straight running downwind. It shouldn't be too bad. And I forgot to take into account that the trade winds actually happen a lot further off the coast than it looks on a chart. And we had that is it called Santa Ana winds when it goes on shore? We had the Santa Ana winds and the June gloom, so the air was just super wet, and then it was on shore for a couple days because we weren't going super fast, and we were sailing straight into the wind. And as you know, on Magpie, actually we didn't get too wet, but on A-Au, you get really wet because we don't have that much hiding spots. No dream pod, no dream pod, just straight on the deck in whatever clothes you brought, and you would think that you would have the time to dry off because the sun would come out, but it was June gloom, so there was no sun, and we were so wet. And the one thing Patagonia, thank you, Patagonia, gave us was a couple wetsuit tops, and we didn't think that we would use them, but we used them as shoes because our feet were so cold and wet. And I never thought that because I mean I've sailed to Alaska and I was barefoot the whole time and I was fine, but I wasn't wet the whole time. And so this time sailing from the temperates to the tropics, I thought, oh no worries, feet are whatever. But yeah, our feet were frigid, look like Mordor, or no, look like uh what's his name? George Green. Yeah. Matt is never worn shoes except white.
SPEAKER_01:Are you get so you're you're wet and you're trying to stay warm? Are you getting like crazy fungal infections? Somehow no. Because you think like even like your armpits or like you're trying to keep your body heat, you'd think trapped inside of warming wet clothes.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it might have been because we didn't move much. Once we were in our set shifts, so since there were three of us, we would do three hour shifts. Four hours four hours, sorry, and one person would be sleeping in the hole, two people would be on deck, one person would be half sleeping, also scanning for boats, and the other person would be hand steering. And once you were in your position, which was usually laying down and just steering by a star or by the swells, or just laying down half asleep, or laying down in the hole, you didn't really move because moving was such a workout, and also if it was night at least, kind of scary. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Wow.
SPEAKER_04:So I don't maybe that's why we didn't shave. Do you understand?
SPEAKER_05:I don't know about you, but my butt was red. I was so shaved up. Yeah, but no, you didn't have a weird. I didn't have a molo on that trip. Next trip will be different.
SPEAKER_01:If you've enjoyed listening to the conversation so far, consider also subscribing to Water People on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It'll help other people find the show. And if you're feeling inspired, leave us a review. We love hearing from you. And now a word from the folks who help make the podcast possible. Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Founded by Yvonne Chinard in 1973, Patagonia is a surf and outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. As a certified B Corp and a founding member of 1% for the planet, the company is recognized internationally for its product quality and environmental activism, as well as its contributions of nearly$230 million to environmental organizations. Its unique ownership structure reflects that the Earth is its only shareholder. Profits not reinvested back into the business are paid as dividends to protect the planet. Learn more at patagonia.com.au. Many of us look to supplements and special diets to maintain our health, but ignore the obvious. We are water. It's what we're made of, and it's what supports every bodily function. Primal water, the water our ancestors thrived on, is energized, alkaline, and made for real hydration. It doesn't come from the industrialized, often contaminated water systems most of us rely on. For the last 25 years, Alkway has been researching and refining ways to mimic natural water systems. We invite you to learn more about primal water and support their charitable work with BirdLife Australia. Head to alkaway.com to score a$50 discount using code WaterPeople. That's alkaway.com. What do you do when your sunglass lenses inevitably get scuffed or scraped? The top drawer of our kitchen island was where scratched sunglasses went to die. Until we learned about the sunglass fix, they've been at the forefront of the repair revolution since 2006 and carry more than 600,000 lens options. So there's a solution for every frame. We found our Sunny's on thesunglassfix.com and within a few days received brand new polarized lenses to easily install at home. A billion pairs of sunglasses are made each year with hundreds of millions ending up in landfill. The Sunglass Fix offers free lens shipping in Australia and two 161 countries around the world, as well as subsidized express tracked shipping worldwide for less than$5 in any currency. They're a proud member of 1% for the planet and are ready to help make your favorite frames last longer. Use the code WaterPeople for 10% off your purchase today at thesunglassfix.com. Kaylee, can you talk about some of the unique challenges of being the only Wahine on the boat? Yeah. And the sort of humbling nature of some of those moments.
SPEAKER_04:If you want to talk about that, you don't have to. I mean, I don't know how how real we want to get, but all the way. All the way to the body.
SPEAKER_05:Give the people what they want.
SPEAKER_04:Well, first thing that comes to everyone's head is like when you're on your cycle, what happens? And I actually called up this other badass sailor girl, Liz Clark, who I know you've talked to before. And she's sailed around the world and So I was like, please help me. What do I do if I get my period? Because I was so afraid and kind of embarrassed because it was just me and two guys. Well, you knew it was gonna be a month-long journey, kind of.
SPEAKER_01:Three weeks, two months, so you're definitely gonna get it to happen.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's happening and there's no way to go around it. Yeah. It always happens at the worst times, or at least for me. And she was saying, like period panties, and to just rinse them out on the side of the boat and then hang them up to dry. And I was so lucky it didn't rain because I didn't think about that being a possibility, and I would have just been out of luck. But yeah, you have to carry all your trash. So anything that you're gonna use, even single use, we also had to think about. So that was another thing. I didn't want to create excess waste, and so that was a really helpful tip. But I think that aside again, the mental challenges, just not having like a female to talk to, the boys were very supportive, but it is kind of difficult when you're going through hormonal shifts in your body and you need rest, but you can't rest. Um, and so the guys were really supportive in that, and that they tried to understand and they gave me breaks when they could, but they had to rest too. So yeah, I think those were the two main ones was the mental and the physical.
SPEAKER_01:One thing that we talked about a couple of days ago was that it was actually dangerous to use the toilet unsupervised. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:That is also true. That was uncomfortable and awkward for sure being a girl. And I mean, Chris was okay. Maybe some people aren't that comfortable for all the owners, but six months into your relationship?
SPEAKER_01:That's true. That's pretty a year. Okay. All right, that's still pretty early for like full-on movement making. That's true.
SPEAKER_05:Gotta do what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, not with Chris.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It's always been supportive of making dirt.
SPEAKER_05:I was pretty adamant about them going number two and making a dirt because one of my fears on that list is for my crewmates to get um what is it called? Constipated. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That was on the list, not wet, but constipated. It was overly eager to give Kalani and I enemas.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I was I was threatening them with enemas.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, why did so why did that make the list? I would never think of it.
SPEAKER_05:Well, it's like because I could imagine I've never been constipated, but I can imagine that on a canoe, you know, you have to go over the side and get into these weird positions, especially when the weather is really rough. You have to find a new spot. Yeah, exactly. You get anxiety, and I had no problem because like I've been on sailing canoes before and I got it, but they have never gone on like an open ocean voyage, so I was scared that they were just gonna try to not go for the first couple days. And I was scared that I mean, obviously, like all health is taken into consideration and that it would be painful or whatever, is they wouldn't be able to handle their responsibilities if they got all stuck up. So gotta release some stuff.
SPEAKER_01:How long was the list? Huge I wish we still had it. I know.
SPEAKER_05:If Kalani's out there, I'm gonna tell him. Or if if it's out there, I'm gonna have Kalani find it because he would have it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, on his notebook. What a great exercise.
SPEAKER_05:It's a great exercise.
SPEAKER_01:Like to really write down all the fear.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. We even had it down to like tying someone to the mast kind.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_05:Like, what if they're like mutiny? Yeah. Or no mutiny, like gentle mutiny. All right. Like, if I'm somehow not in my brain, Kalana, you have to do something to me to like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Restrain me. Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:I don't know what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:We're all fine, but we all never had any issues with that in the past. But it was fun to think about.
SPEAKER_01:So how are you passing the days? Obviously, you have your tasks that you have to complete all through the day, except for when you're sleeping in the hall. What what's going on between your ears?
SPEAKER_04:Just thinking, honestly, and trying to stay on course. The most breaks we had was probably when it was sunny, and we would instantly set up the solar and kind of lay out all of our clothes across the deck. We were also trying to fish. We caught two Mahi Mahi, which was amazing, or Dorado. That was yummy. I had a little Kindle, and I got Chris one too, but unfortunately it also got wet and broke alongside our compass. So yeah, that was sad. So I was reading a bit. I know Chris and Kalani were journaling a lot.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I feel like voyaging is a great opportunity for you to use your time in a different way because you don't have the distractions of the outside world. So we're we're so used, especially like our generation, our phones are like our little escapism portal. And when you don't have that, suddenly your portal becomes the sky. We're suddenly talking about the stars way more, or suddenly laughing about some trivial thing back on land, or discussing what we're gonna do if this squall decides to shift a little bit more west, or what we're gonna do if the sun is covered at this time of day, so we can't get our bearing, and blah blah blah. And I feel like yeah, you just tap into a different type of human, like we were saying earlier, and I think it's super important for everyone to experience that, no matter if it's sailing or not. And that is just a world where you're forced into it, which is cool. You don't have to really try to practice it, you're just you're out there, and it actually there's never a boring time for me. I was never were you bored?
SPEAKER_04:I I was not bored, definitely not bored.
SPEAKER_05:You tap into the caveman brain where suddenly your book becomes the lines in the ocean and the sky becomes your Instagram. That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:A lot of observation.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, okay, Lee, I got a couple of these words in this list that I thought of you, and I didn't give them to Chris because I thought you'd do some you'd have some riffing on them. How to be kind. What comes to your mind when you hear those words? How to be kind.
SPEAKER_04:For some reason I instantly thought of a garden, and I don't know why. Maybe just because you have to put so much in and for not a lot of return sometimes. Sometimes you'll get a lot, sometimes you get a little, and you never know. But you're just kind of doing it for the joy of giving back to the earth, and that's what you always come back to is and it's honestly could be like we were talking about on the boat a little bit, that it could be one of the main purposes of being on earth as humans is taking care of the land and the plants and even the animals and giving back to others.
SPEAKER_00:Wonderful. How about our most vibrant selves? What comes to mind when you hear that?
SPEAKER_04:I guess I just think of like playing and like having fun, laughing with friends and doing what you really enjoy, like sailing and surfing and swimming and doing things for the pure joy of it to raise your frequencies and your vibrations higher, and really not for much else to come out of that. It's not like it's gonna give you like a reward in it besides your own joy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay, last one. Water mythology and symbology. So water mythology. What comes to your mind when you think about maybe the more mythical aspects of water?
SPEAKER_04:I think of that book, The Messages of Water. Have you read that book?
SPEAKER_00:Is that the Matsumoto?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Japanese.
SPEAKER_04:So they like did all of the clearing and gave it positive energy and everything that he listed in that book to make it the purest water. And that's the water we brought on our voyage from California to Hawaii, like really last minute. We thought it was funny because we had both just read that book and we thought it was really inspiring because we're so much water, and seeing how much it's impacted just by saying, I love you, or like so you're so beautiful that it makes it more pure, and when you say hateful things that it can be distorted, and to think that's going on in our bodies on a cellular level, like every day when we're having conversation or listening to music, watching movies, so yeah, I guess that's what I think about.
SPEAKER_00:When you think um when you reflect now on RR and that journey, where has that journey led you all to at this point in time? And what do you see as potential lines into the future together and with R?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, that's a good question. Um I think it's really important in a relationship to have something you learn and do together, whether it's surfing or for my parents it was tandem surfing. It was something that they did together, and they grew and excelled at it. But for Chris and I it's sailing, and I feel so lucky to have a partner that I can do that with. So I think it's just gonna be our vessel, literally, towards our relationship and growing together as people and learning together. But yeah, I think it's important for everybody in relationship to have an activity or a sport or something that they like to do as a pastime.
SPEAKER_00:How about for you, Miss Doss?
SPEAKER_05:How has voyaging, how has a impacted our life today?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and just where you see like just some of the I don't know, a a kind of a sense for where the canoe and your interests together with sailing and voyaging might lead you into the future.
SPEAKER_05:Well, bouncing off the relationship thing, the canoe is a double hole va'a kolua as we call it. So each hole has to be balanced properly, and it definitely reflects in your relationship towards each other. One can't be heavier or more buoyant than the other. You have to be mutually intact to move forward, and that has really impacted my life and Kaylee's where we see it in everything now, and I think the canoe serves as a symbol that carries throughout our day-to-day life, and it's it's really cool because people who you never get to meet are in your lives because of the canoe, like you guys. And I just think it's a really important thing to keep around, and it goes back to the idea of Kouleana, which is this canoe found us, and it is not only our responsibility to take what we've learned and share it, but it's a privilege, and a lot of people get this opportunity, so to be able to like perpetuate the canoe culture that we've kind of just happened to blast ourselves into is definitely a privilege we need to cherish every moment when we have it, but also it's an important responsibility that to do it well and to go further and do things outside of our comfort zones. And uh uh has really shown that to me, especially in our last trip returning from Kauai, just choosing your window right and making sure things are in line and choosing which people to go with, and yeah, it it it reflects on your life. Like who do you want to surround yourself with? Who do you want to go through the hard challenges with together? And like, where do you go from here with what you got? So the canoe is definitely everything now. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:And can we, for the record, get a definition of uh?
SPEAKER_01:Why is she called a uh, I was gonna pull it from the film actually, because I love the way I love how you go in there.
SPEAKER_05:There's a little bit of a story behind it, so you can do both, yeah. So I remember when I first started getting into sailing, my first sailing vessel I was ever on was Hokulea, and it was an extreme privilege to be there. And I remember it was a night sky and I knew nothing about the stars, and I was sitting next to Uncle Ninoa at the time, who knows everything that I want to know about the stars, and I asked him what this bright star that I saw kind of above the southwestern horizon, and he told me his uh uh. And he said that this man Will Kayselka was the one that taught him a lot about the stars, and he pretty much told me, Can you go home and tell me the right ascension, declination, and azimuth of that star? And I said, What is that? And still to this day I can't really understand everything, Uncle, but I try, and Aah was the one star that kind of was a spark, the genesis to my understanding of the heavens. And when we had acquired our canoe a-a-she didn't have a name at the time, and I was on a sailing adventure from California down to Tahiti, and I remember just thinking, like, what what's like the beginning? Like, what's the spark for me? And it was quite literally the star A-A, which means to burn brightly, and depending on how you spell it with all of the Okinos and Kaha Kos, it could mean to burn brightly, it could also mean to dare to do something, it could mean a small rootlet, or it could mean like sharp pokey lava rock. So there's all these little like parables and metaphors in it, but to me it was kind of this icon, this bright shining star in the sky that my teacher had taught me, and and a was the first star I ever learned, and so I named her for the first canoe I ever owned. And it just so happens that our path home to Hawaii was in the shining, glistening pathway of A-A on the setting west southwestern ocean, and it all just came together, and she was meant to be named that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, we didn't get to hear from you. What was it like arriving home after that tremendous voyage?
SPEAKER_04:It was so beautiful. It was also our first night of full stars right before we had gotten there. And we had saved like a special meal that my friend had given to us from Marquesas, Marshall Islands, and it was like this preserved was it? Oh yeah, Lau Hala, and it tasted like rose, but it was something that they would eat on voyages traditionally in the Pacific Islands, and so it was like our big cheers moment, and we had just started to see the island clouds forming and this huge arrangement of stars above us. So it was already a homecoming like the day before, and then all that day we had seen the island just keep rising from the sea, and when we finally got to our dock, my dad paddled out on uh one man, and his dad and his mom were out in a fishing boat of his uncle's, so our family was out to see us first, which was really sweet. And then our friend was throwing flowers from the dock, and all of our friends had a huge arrangement of foods that they figured we were craving. Um, so it was really a lot to take in. It was kind of overwhelming, but it was just so much love. There's just pure love and all our community and family there. It was so special.
SPEAKER_01:You all felt like that voyage was possible. Did you get that sense from your families and your community as well? Or was there skepticism?
SPEAKER_00:You were in big trouble.
SPEAKER_05:To put myself in Uncle's shoes. Imagine your beloved daughter in this random brata from Hawaii, dreaming of all these sailing canoe adventures, and he's about to take her over the ocean. I would be skeptical too.
SPEAKER_04:My dad was really nervous and pretty fearful. I think rightly so. Like Chris said, if your kid was going on a voyage like this, you'd be skeptical and afraid for their health and safety. But when it came down to the last few days, he realized, oh, they're going no matter what, or how I feel about it. So he switched to full supporting mode and really engaged and helped us with whatever we needed. He ran to the dock last minute to give us a bag of medications that he had thought of that we might even need, and he let us use his van and all kinds of stuff. So he definitely switched, but he was very skeptical. And Chris's parents were really supportive. I know they were a little afraid, but pretty used to Chris going on these wild adventures at this point.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, the satellite. So during the trip, we had our little garment tracking things, and there are little dots that our parents could keep track of our waypoints. I think we had set it for every four hours, it would have like a little track so they would know where we are. And I guess I don't know if this is true, I have to fact check, but first worldwide satellite outage in the last century, maybe, or since satellites started being a thing, it was a big deal where like all satellite connections for a few hours were cut off and we didn't know. We were just happily sailing along singing songs and when was when it was like halfway through the trip, probably in July.
SPEAKER_01:Was it last year?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, last year. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like people would have experienced no. I was just thinking that everyone listening probably would have experienced some small ripple effect.
SPEAKER_05:But my poor parents or our poor parents, our all three of our dots just went blip, and they didn't know that there was a satellite outage. It's not like you're just googling it immediately. You're just looking at your phone, like, ah, so yeah, we scared them pretty hard, but I mean we didn't know. Thankfully, we were just out there.
SPEAKER_04:It was cute though, all our parents, me, Chris, and Kalani, they all had a group chat and they all became really good friends because they were just sharing messages the whole month. Um, so that was really sweet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:As far as family goes, I do remember when I first made landfall from Hawaii to Tahiti on one of my adventures. It was really strange. But during that time, this was the moment in the beginning of our podcast that I was speaking about. I wasn't super tired at all, but I could see my grandma's face really, really like in the sky, and I wasn't like hallucinating or anything, it was just in my mind. And she had passed away the year before, or a couple years before, but yeah, I never really thought about why. But she was born and raised in Hilo, which was the port that we made landfall in. And I remember telling my dad that, and he was all emotional because I was his mom. But he was telling me as we're making our plan to come into the east side of Oahu, that that was where my grandpa was born and raised, and to always know that he'll be watching us come in. And he was like a super big fan of voyaging canoes, he was the one that had the paintings on the wall, and so I had that in my mind of them out there, and then her mom was out there looking from the other side in California, so we felt that connection. And Klani, he'll never talk about this, but he is an incredible lineage of voyaging canoes, and I remember him showing me like where his ancestors were buried, and there's petroglyphs of Hawaiian crab claw sails and all of these heroes of old. And so, yeah, we just had we just knew that there was family on the earthly plane, on the terrestrial plane, but also in the heavenly plane. So we're we're we're fine. You got him.
SPEAKER_01:You've spoken a bit about the personal significance of the voyage. What about the significance of cultural lineage and carrying on old ways? How much has that played into your interest and devotion to voyaging?
SPEAKER_04:I mean, just going back, all our ancestors were voyagers. You know, the Hawaiians, the Irish, the Japanese, the Chinese. So it was pretty amazing to think we were the first ones in our family in so many generations that were doing this sort of wayfinding and this journeying back to our little island, especially to Hawaii, which is kind of just a small dot on a map. We felt the presence of all of those who had come before us, and it was pretty amazing to think that they were watching us do the same trip that they had maybe done long ago. So it was pretty powerful, especially for Kalani, I think.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I remember when we did the first little screening of uh-uh, his grandma was there, beautiful woman, all white Hawaiian hair, and she was expressing to me how proud she was that her boy got to do that. And I feel like that's another responsibility with the canoe is you never know how many people you take on this canoe and how many passions it fires up to be a navigator in their own right, would be breaking that line in their lineage to do something different that was an ancient practice long ago. And yeah, it could it doesn't have to be in the ocean at all, but just knowing that you're gonna make one of your great-great-grandparents proud in a ways makes it all worth it.
SPEAKER_01:Time is precious. Thanks for spending some of yours listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Soul Carroll with additional tunes by Dave and Ben. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water People Podcast. And you can subscribe to our very infrequent newsletter to get book recommendations, questions we're pondering, behind the scenes glimpses into recording the podcast, and more via our website, waterpeoplepodcast.com.
