Lehua Kamalu is an apprentice navigator and the voyaging director at the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), supporting the ongoing voyages of the double-hulled canoes Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia. She started volunteering with PVS in 2009, while attending the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Lehua graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering in 2013, when she decided to join the team at PVS full-time. She was responsible for researching and planning the sail plan for Hōkūleʻa’s circumnavigation of the Earth (2014-2018), a voyage themed “Malama Honua—to care for the Earth.”
By integrating a culturally grounded approach to environmental immersion, Lehua sees the practice of deep-sea voyaging as a means to challenge the depth and quality of our individual relationships to the ocean, nature, and one another. Her focus now has been to explore and develop methods of sharing and teaching in the hope that this work will create a generation of voyagers to carry on the values and traditions of voyaging, and lead Hawaii into a healthy, thriving future. She is able to do this as an instructor of voyaging and navigation to students from Kamehameha Schools and Honolulu Community College.