Resuming the Voyage

500 Sails

Resuming the Voyage

Our Indigenous canoes were engineered for our seas and helped our ancestors thrive. We are advancing this ancient technology to meet our needs today.

We are headquartered in Saipan, in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Northern Mariana Islands

Nonprofit

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High rates of poverty and chronic diseases plague the native communities in the Mariana Islands where 65,000 Indigenous Chamorros live on the 4 populated islands, a situation that is mirrored across Oceania. The root cause is centuries of colonial occupation and the subjugation of the human and natural resources. Chamorros lost access to the bounty of the sea when the building and use of their sailing canoes was banned by the Spanish in the 1600s and four thousands years of a free and thriving island people came to an end. The impact of a maritime people losing their canoes is devastation as canoe culture is the heart of island culture. Chamorros today are back on the ocean in motorized craft that provide access to the ocean fisheries. However, these fossil fuel burning vessels are not sustainable and are beyond the economic reach of most Chamorro families who continue to rely on imported food that is expensive, high in carbohydrates, and contributes to high rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease while the high-quality protein of the ocean remains inaccessible.

Our Chamorro ancestors were ingenious, innovative inventors who designed and sailed what were the fastest sailing vessels in the world until the 1960s. Their canoe were clocked at speeds exceeding 20 miles per hour in the 1600s and a replica of a 1742 Chamorro canoe in our possession exceeded 30 miles per hour. As in all parts of Oceania, canoes were designed for local waters. The Chamorro canoes were perfected over thousands of years of use and we have been building them without modification and finding them extremely reliable and suitable for transport and fishing today. However, modern needs are often time-dependent, meaning reliance solely on wind is a problem. This project aims to build a hybrid fishing canoe that combines proven Indigenous wind-powered technology with modern solar-powered motor technology to solve this problem and provide affordable and sustainable vessels with auxiliary solar-powered engines.

The target population is primarily the Indigenous population of the Mariana Islands, including Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan, and can benefit everyone living in the region today. The proposed solution is environmentally and economically sustainable, and culturally relevant for islanders. 500 Sails is focused on rebuilding a maritime community in the Marianas as a means of improving the health and quality of life of the native people and of all who live in the Marianas today. By doing so we will be restoring and continuing the trajectory of the Chamorro people that was disrupted by colonial interference, dominance, and occupation. It will allow us to resume our voyage as a people and to contribute to a thriving worldwide community by advancing sustainable technologies that meet modern needs and solve modern problems.