Introduction
Hello everyone, my class, AKA JRD, watched a movie called “Moana”. We didn’t watch it just for fun, we watched it because we needed to make wakas of our own. Week 9 at Wednesday, we made wakas, my group, Widad, Bettina and me, built a waka that looked a bit similar to Moana’s big boat. I’ll be showing you a photo of the waka my group and I made.

As you can see, it has railings and a little shelter along with a pointed-deck at the end. This project only took less than a day to finish, because my team and I worked together as a pro. We handled this very easily and not difficult at all, the materials were great, and the whole boat itself.
The rails were the hardest thing to work and build on for the fact Widad and Bettina had a hard time measuring the toothpicks for it to be equal and to cut. The hot-glue was very messy and hard to put on the end of the toothpicks because the toothpicks are very thin.
What it is/Why we did it/What did you learn
Star: Hōkūpa’a – The North Star The suns position moves to east and west. They used star compass. They memorized the rising and setting points of the constellations.
Waves: This is what they also use, the waves. They use the waves to identify the direction by the rocking motion of the canoes, the ocean swells fill in to be a rough guide direction.
Wind Direction: Wind Direction, their doubled hulled canoes depended on Sails, and giant Oars. You can turn and let the wind carry you everywhere you go if you reach the correct latitude.
They use the navigations to reach their destination if they want to move to other islands or find other resources in those other islands.
I learned that the navigations were really different than our modern time, we use maps, our phone and vehicles to travel. It’s the same but different times and different ways to reach out destination for where we are supposed to be. We created the boats to connect the theme of wayfinding. It was fun to make but also hard for planning the base, the sails and other stuff that connects to the boats we made.
Materials
- Toothpicks
- Popsicle sticks (Big ones for the base)
- Popsicle sticks (Normal sized)
- Popsicle sticks (Smaller than average)
- Paper (There was no fabric)
- Straws
- Thin cardboard
- Hot glue gun
Conclusion
Although it’s finished, it’s very empty in the middle, it was fun to make though! We would’ve done better if we gotten enough time depending on the events that happened on Wednesday.
I am writing this on Sunday, 31st of March. Sorry for late posts, I have been doing a lot of work around the house and going to training and somewhere like that. This is the end of my boat making post, I might update it if I get told (Probably when I’m 50 something years old) Anyways bye!