It was a colossal assignment: Document the entirety of the historic three-year, round-the-world journey of the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a as she sails unfamiliar waters to raise awareness about environment and culture.

Set up live video feeds on the high seas; fly drones off the deck; shoot, edit and post countless clips and photos; and beam all this to the world from aboard the forty-foot-long, double-hulled sailing canoe as she dodges cyclones, rogue waves and logistical snafus.

Fresh content would be expected daily so that anyone with internet access could follow the voyage. And in addition to round-the-clock media duties, the camera person on each leg would serve as a regular crew member—standing watch, wrestling with the steering paddle, pulling ropes and taking turns sleeping on thin pads inside the hulls under a leaky canvas cover. “Even though we had more than a year to prepare, we were still unsure how it would all play out when we left Hilo in May of 2014,” says longtime Hōkūle‘a crew member Nā‘ālehu Anthony, who cofounded the media production company that took on the daunting task, ‘Ōiwi TV (‘ōiwi means native). “But we knew we had an exceptional team that would enable us to work through each challenge as it came up.”

Beside the dangers inherent in sailing across the open ocean using traditional navigation methods, the journey posed countless unknowns that could easily derail what Anthony knew needed to be a success story, one that would inspire people to act on the voyage’s mission of Mālama Honua (care for the Earth). A story that would build on the incredible promise and passion that have defined Hōkūle‘a for more than four decades. For a Hawaiian filmmaker devoted to making media that matters, this was a huge responsibility but also a lifetime opportunity.

Anthony and ‘Ōiwi TV took the assignment without hesitation. A Hōkūle‘a captain whose passion for voyaging was cemented after his first sail back in 1999, he was comfortable filming on board the canoe, and the story was a natural fit for ‘Ōiwi’s mission to tell meaningful stories from a Native Hawaiian perspective.

The eight ‘Ōiwi camera people trained alongside the other voyagers, and one of them was aboard the canoe on each leg of the journey. During their “off” hours from sailing, they filmed, edited and uploaded media. “When you’re not on watch, that’s precious time to rest, and they didn’t get a lot of it,” observes navigator Ka‘iulani Murphy, who guided four legs of the voyage. “These guys are super-powered, and they were always where they needed to be.”

Late last year, about a year and a half after Hōkūle‘a returned from her global expedition to adoring local crowds, the ‘Ōiwi crew was somehow able to get a whopping four thousand hours of footage from the forty-one-thousand-mile voyage edited down into a two-and-a-half-hour documentary, Moananuiākea: One Ocean. One People. One Canoe. Packed with incredible imagery, the film is part love letter to Hōkūle‘a, part heroic journey and part call to planetary action.

During the movie’s opening sequence, navigator-in-training Kaleo Wong frames the Worldwide Voyage as a rite of passage for the next generation of navigators. “The only way to learn about the ocean is to be on the ocean—to feel the rise and fall of the canoe and the wind on your face,” he says. “Navigation, the practice of it, is trying to be one with the ocean.”

As soon as Hōkūle‘a departed Hilo on the voyage’s first leg to Tahiti, seven of the thirteen crew members got seasick. “They weren’t just seasick. They were incapacitated,” master navigator Nainoa Thompson describes in the film. This introduces one of the main storylines: Will the younger crew members and apprentice navigators be able to handle this? Behind the cameras, the ‘Ōiwi crew wondered the same thing about their own ability to pull off the mammoth documentation project. “We were all experienced videographers on land, but how do you translate that to being on board a moving platform exposed to the elements?” Moananuiākea writer and producer Bryson Hoe says. “And you have to troubleshoot everything yourself.”

Anthony encouraged the ‘Ōiwi crew to embrace the challenge. “At home when people wreck gear I get so irritated, but I had to turn that off,” he says. “I told them, ‘Look, if you’re trying to get ‘the shot’ while it’s blowing thirty-five knots and you’re getting hit by twenty-foot swells … and you kill the camera? No harm. We know there’s a ton of effort going into sailing in those conditions, so we have to get that.”

Another filming dilemma was looking for fresh ways to present life aboard the canoe, a space the size of a conference room where the film was “on location” for hundreds of days. “By the middle of the voyage it was like an unspoken competition between us to get the most dynamic, creative shots,” Hoe says. “You didn’t want to be the guy with the meh material.”

On each leg, ‘Ōiwi squeezed a boatload of gear into the canoe’s cramped confines: cameras, lenses, tripods, mics, laptops, batteries, hard drives … and spares of everything. “We basically lived out of Pelican cases with our gear,” Anthony recounts, adding that they were constantly fighting a battle against salt buildup. Because all the equipment needed to be charged regularly, it was critical that the canoe’s solar-powered electrical system remained healthy. So besides getting the shot, the onboard media specialist often had to become a de facto electronics technician.

The team’s efforts made it possible for content to be shared in real time via satellite links, including live video chats with students across the globe as well as daily updates from the deck. In addition to allowing thousands of followers to share in the voyage, the connectivity ‘Ōiwi provided also gave constant assurance to loved ones back home that their family members and friends on board were safe.

The communications technology aboard was a far cry from the minimal equipment on Hōkūle‘a’s earliest journeys. “Back then we had no direct communication with anybody but the escort boat,” remembers original 1976 crew member Billy Richards, who also sailed on a number of the Worldwide Voyage legs. In the early days, he says, “media transfer” meant tossing cassette recordings and film canisters overboard in buckets for the escort boat to pick up.

At one point in the film, master navigator Bruce Blankenfeld articulates how navigators must find a way to transcend physical limitations: “Navigators sleep twenty to thirty minutes at a time,” he says.“They’re probably up twenty-three hours of the day for two, three weeks. As unachievable as that may seem, you get into a routine and a state of mind so that it all becomes amazingly doable.”

The camera pans to apprentice navigators staring into the sky, followed by a time lapse of clouds as they wash over bright stars standing as sentinels of the night. Thompson’s voice picks up where Blankenfeld leaves off: “That’s where you start to cross over the intellectual-academic training, and you step into the spirituality of the voyage. That journey is personal.”

Such experiences are hard to capture on film, but as crew members themselves the ‘Ōiwi team was able to tell the story from the inside. “Even I was surprised at how revealing I was while their cameras were rolling,” Richards says. “But it’s because I trusted them.”

On day 1,081 of the voyage, Hōkūle‘a leaves Tahiti for the final leg back to Hawai‘i. As lead navigator, Ka‘iulani Murphy feels the pressure of so many eyes around the world watching and waiting for the canoe to return home. Her mentor Blankenfeld praises her navigational ability, saying she had been ready more than ten years ago to steer the canoe home. Apprentice navigator Haunani Kane speaks of Murphy’s quiet strength: “She’s one of those humble leaders who doesn’t have to say much in order for everyone to listen.”

Murphy, who tends to shy away from the camera, says she appreciates that the filmmakers were always sensitive and never invasive: “Sometimes you didn’t even know they were there. And when they had other people talking about me, it was really touching. I told Nā‘ālehu, ‘If I were a crier, I would totally be crying.’”

As Hōkūle‘a approaches the equator the wind shifts unexpectedly, but Murphy keeps her cool. “The universe is telling us, OK, we’re going to slow down a little bit,” she interprets. “Before we transition from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere, we’ll just take a moment to breathe.”

As they near Hawai‘i’s latitude, the navigation team begins looking for the constellation known as Hānaiakamalama, the Southern Cross—a reference point they use to determine when to turn west and make a downwind run for home. After several consecutive days of cloud cover, the crew worries that they won’t be able to see Hānaiakamalama. Without this reading, they might turn too early and miss the Islands completely.

As their window of opportunity closes, the clouds part just long enough for the crew to get their bearings. The camera cuts to Murphy. “That’s the moment we needed,” she says. “It was definitely a gift, a huge blessing. Our kūpuna [ancestors] are here with us, making sure we see what we need to see, when we need to see it.”

After the canoe’s emotional homecoming, the ‘Ōiwi crew began to discuss how they were going to repack all of that content into a meaningful film lasting just a couple of hours. “There were some pretty hard conversations,” recalls Hoe. “We holed up at the Ala Moana Hotel for a few days and threw stuff up on the wall: What was really compelling from a voyaging perspective, from an environmental perspective, from an indigenous cultural wisdom perspective? It’s really three films in one, with multiple threads weaving each part together. So how do we make that compelling without being confusing for a viewer who was not there?”

Entire portions of the voyage, like the trip from Australia to Bali, had to be jettisoned. “The whole leg into the Great Lakes and Canada, for example, could be its own documentary,” Anthony says. “But the film doesn’t even show them going up there, because New York was a crescendo, D.C. was a crescendo. We couldn’t crescendo again.”

Editor and producer Maui Tauotaha says what he struggled with most was trying to give proper recognition to all the generous communities that adopted Hōkūle‘a and her crew. “The hardest part of filming for me was the departure ceremonies in each place,” he says. “We would have to shoot it as we said goodbye to the people who took care of us and became not just friends, but in many cases like family.”

Even though so many stories were left on the cutting room floor, the production team still managed to embed a few little “Easter eggs” holding special meaning for the voyaging community. The Sāmoa segment, for example, includes a tribute to beloved Hōkūle‘a captain and Moloka‘i paramedic Mel Paoa, who died unexpectedly in 2015. “There’s an extra-long clip that we actually slowed down, where Mel is smiling and cooking,” Anthony shares. “It’s a nod to him to say, ‘Hey, aloha uncle. We miss you.’”

After Billy Richards watched the film, he says he realized what a valuable keepsake it is for everyone who sailed. “When we get home from long voyages, especially the more challenging ones, we call it ‘re-entry,’” Richards says. “It’s missing being out there and missing each other. You get very close when you depend on each other to survive. And when I saw those faces, I missed them.”

Since the film premiered at the Honolulu International Film Festival last fall, a number of festivals and organizations have hosted screenings, and ‘Ōiwi has been working on plans for broader distribution. To find out about upcoming screenings, visit www.Moananuiakea.film.

For the makers of Moananuiākea, the film is an extension of the voyage, a way to carry Hōkūle‘a’s message even further. One day shortly after the film was released, Anthony was showing it to elementary school students on Hawai‘i Island. During a scene when the navigators lift their hands to the sky with their fingers in an L shape to measure the angle of the stars on the horizon, the young students in the class held up their hands to do the same. “And that was it,” Anthony remembers thinking as he watched their imaginations take hold. “We did our job.” HH