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In: Other
There’s a lot of good information here, but I haven’t seen anyone directly answer the original question. The navigation methods people are discussing are all correct, but to answer, yes, they did pick a direction and just sail off.
When they were heading to a familiar location, they would sail north or south to the precise latitude, then head east or west. There’s no way to measure longitude without a precise chronometer, which wasn’t developed until pretty late in history by the Europeans. However, they could estimate with a sufficient accuracy. Their latitude measurements were incredibly precise. Over the course of hundreds of miles, they could come within a few miles of the exact spot they wanted by the use of a type of [astrolabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe) literally made from a coconut shell.
If, instead, they were exploring in search of new lands, they would choose a compass heading and go off for 10 days. If they didn’t find any evidence of land, using the methods others have already described as well as some additional ones, like types of fish encountered, they would reverse course.
This brings up a very interesting historical mystery. Hawai’i is much farther away from the rest of Polynesia than the other island groups. It was settled from the Marquesas Islands, which are 20 days sail away. The voyagers would carry 24 days worth of supplies on exploration missions: 10 out, 10 back, 4 days reserve for storms and such. How did they discover an island chain twice as far away as they normally explored?
The conventional explanation for decades was that they simply got lost, a ridiculous theory as soon as you learn anything about Polynesian wayfinding. [Thor Heyerdal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl) proposed that ancient people could have crossed the Pacific and even proved it with in a ship made from traditional materials. He got the direction wrong, going east to west, but he at least laid the groundwork for believability.
Polynesians have insisted for all the time they have been in contact with others that their ancestors settled the Pacific deliberately. In 1973 the [Polynesian Voyaging Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_Voyaging_Society) was founded to prove that the oral history was accurate. The [Hōkūleʻa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dk%C5%ABle%CA%BBa) was built as a replica of traditional Polynesian ships for that purpose. In 1976, she completed a journey to Tahiti using only traditional Polynesian Voyaging techniques. She has completed several other journeys since then. A sister ship, the Hikianalia was built along the same design, but using only traditional materials. This ship is equally capable of voyaging, but isn’t used as much because of the vastly increased maintenance needed. Both ships completed a three-year circumnavigation of the entire globe on a goodwill mission, visiting indigenous communities around the world. There’s no evidence that the Polynesians ever left the Pacific, but we know know they could have if they wanted to.
So, back to the mystery of Hawai’i’s discovery. The oral history says that a legendary navigator named Hawai’i Loa was given a vision from God to sail on a certain heading in order to find paradise. He set out on a trip that would be one-way if he didn’t find his destination. There are many ways to rationalize the discovery with reasonable explanations, but if you ask nearly any Hawaiian, they will insist the story is true. The one thing we know know for sure is that the Polynesians were fully capable of settling the Pacific using the technology they had at the time.
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