ANDREA Carr, a resident of Saipan, returned home on Thursday after spending months at sea as part of the crew of the historic voyage of the Palau-based Alingano Maisu. The voyage covered more than 1,600 nautical miles.
Alingano Maisu is a Polynesian-style double-hulled canoe, designed similarly to the Hawaiian canoe Hōkūleʻa.
The voyage was captained by Grandmaster Navigator Sesario Sewralur and departed Palau on April 20. The Alingano Maisu’s crew comprised members from the CNMI, Palau, Yap, the Central Carolines, Taiwan and Japan. The canoe followed a route that first took it to Lanyu Island, off Taiwan’s coast, and then to Taitung on mainland Taiwan. Carr said the crew did not use modern instrumentation, relying instead on sea conditions and the stars to find their way.
The crew landed on Lanyu Island on May 8, and then on Taiwan proper on May 11. They departed mainland Taiwan on May 17 and arrived back in Palau on June 16.
According to a press release, while in Lanyu, the crew engaged in cultural exchanges with the Hongtou and Yayou tribes. In Taitung, they learned traditional fishing and hunting practices from the Amis Tribe, shared in millet wine brewing with the Doulan community, and toured the sacred educational valley with the Kavulungan Tribe.
Carr, a program manager at 500 Sails who also has experience as a commercial boat captain, called the voyage a “blessing.”
“It was a very wonderful learning experience and connecting experience,” she said.
Speaking to the media at the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport, Carr said her duties included managing the canoe’s food and water, cooking, and manning the steering blade, or hoi, with others on her watch — the crew’s term for a canoe work shift. If additional help was needed to adjust the sails, Carr said she also assisted.
“I’m very proud of our whole crew, captain [and] canoe — that we were able to make sure everybody continued with their food, their water,” she said. “Everything lasted. In fact, we had leftovers. We could have gone another four or five days and still had three meals a day.”
Carr said that Sewralur is already considering plans for long voyages in 2026 and/or 2027 that could take a crew as far as Hawaiʻi. If 500 Sails is invited to participate again, she said she wants younger sailors to be included.
“If, hopefully, we do get invited … we would be able to have another person, maybe a youth or a younger person. Because we were discussing how important it is to pass on this very important knowledge and pass it on to the youth,” she said. “People like me — we are the sunset. And people who are younger … they are the sunrise. So we need to make sure that we encourage, teach, [and] empower the sunrise so that once the sunset comes, it’s not lost.”
She calls passing down and preserving traditional knowledge her “personal goal.”
Andrea Carr is welcomed back home at the Saipan airport on Thursday, June 19, 2025 after completing her stint as a crew member of Alingano Maisu.
