NavList:

The next day we resumed our lessons.   Piailug seemed to teach me with urgency, immediately sensing what I understood from my own sea experience and previous study, and what was new to me.

I asked if he used the shape of the waves to tell which direction the current was setting his canoe, one of the most formidable problems for any navigator.   I gestured with my hands to show the waves coming from the direction of the wind and the current flowing against them:  “in this case, “ I said, “the waves would get bigger.”  

            “Not bigger but steeper,” he corrected me.   “And what if the current goes with the wind and wave?”  he asked.

            “The waves will be lower, smoother,” I answered.   He nodded.

            “We use the waves to tell the current,” he explained, “but first we do ‘fatonomuir’ [literally: facing astern].   We look back at the island to see if it has moved.”   He sketched a map of Satawal and the surrounding islands on the back of an old envelope.   When departing on a voyage, he explained, he sailed out to the point at which Satawal was about to dip beneath the horizon, then observed the effects of the current.   If Satawal had moved north, he knew a current was pushing him south.   If Satawal had moved south, the current was pushing him north.   The procedure was nearly identical to Western practice, except that Piailug visualized the islands moving in the sea while the canoe remained rooted to the bottom. 

            “What if you are here, out of sight of all islands?” I asked,  drawing an “x” on the envelope.   “If the current changes, how do you know?”

The ship continued on the Eauripik.   At sunset I stood with Piailug at the rail, the raking light modeling the sharp folds of his frown, the squint of his eyes, and his high, full, almost sensual cheekbones.   He watched the water intently, his hand resting lightly on the rail, his body seeming to merge with the rolling steel deck at his feet.

I asked where the current was coming from.

He pointed toward the setting sun and continued to watch the water.   “From there,” he said matter-of-factly, “from the west.”

The pilot charts showed it was the time of year for the Equatorial Countercurrent to set in.   During the winter months, when the North Pacific High – a vast area of high barometric pressure that dominates the weather patterns of the whole northern Pacific – moves south, the North Equatorial Current flows from east to west through the Caroline Islands.   As winter shades into spring, the High migrates north, with the North Equatorial Current taggin along.   During the summer and fall, the Equatorial Countercurrent flows through the Carloine Islands from west to east.   For me to measure the current, I would have to take bearings on an island – but we were out of sight of land – or take sextant observations of the sun, stars or other heavenly bodies.   Piailug had done neither; he had simply been watching the waves.   

I knew from the literature and our earlier discussions that he could determine the current from the ocean swells.   But this evening there were no swells, merely wavelets too small even to form whitecaps. 

“How can you determine the current when there are no swells?”   I asked. 

            “You look at the water and it is tight,” he answered.   “The small waves go like this [pushing in one direction] and then –how can I explain?”   He extended both his hands and pulled them back as if stroking the keys of a piano.   He claimed the sign was now present and that it indicated a weak current from the west, flowing against the light northeasterly wind.  I had never read about such a sign in the literature and  I pressed him for a more articulate description.   He tried to get me to see a kind of “tightness” in the water – tiny ripples flowing on the surface, almost like the wrinkles on a weatherbeaten face.   If I watched carefully enough, he said, I would perceive the ripples flowing against the wind and wavelets.   I stared at the shimmering water until my eyes hurt,  but could detect nothing, just the wavelets, glittering like a multitude of fishes caught up in the nets of the sea. 

In the morning we anchored off Eauripik.   I asked the captain the direction of the current during the night.   He glanced at the ship’s track penciled on the chart and at the sextant shots the first mate had plotted.   It had been weak, he told me, from the west.

The sloop was now rapidly drawing toward the region of doldrums, and the force of the trade-winds was lessening.   I could see by the ripples that a counter-current had set in.   This I estimated to be about sixteen miles a day.   In the heart of the counter-stream the rate was more than that setting eastward.[i]