Today, for the first time in a long time, Wakana and I went to the canoe house. There is a team here from Japan working to record and revive traditional navigation in the Philippine Sea. The team includes two museum curators and a film crew. The film crew is well known in Japan. They have filmed documentaries around the world. Their last film was in Iran. In fact they had trouble with the immigration officials because one of the passports had an Iranian stamp in it.

The professors have received a grant from Toyota to do this work. They will be taking Manny to Japan to talk with others about canoe traditions in Micronesia.

They filmed Manny giving a class in traditional navigation and then we had a bit of a party. Wakana talked with the Japanese professors for a bit but then had to leave to go to a tutoring session she gives every Saturday.

Manny talked about the stars used for navigation. He also mentioned that some stars are used in weather forecasting. Then Larry told of May 2003 when Manny accurately predicted weather for a trip that was to take place in June. Manny explained further. He didn't look at the sky to make those predictions. He had gone to the planetarium and asked the director to dial up the night sky for late May. After looking at the star positions for a number of nights around the beginning and the end of the trip he suggested the best time to leave and when they should return. Sure enough, on the originally intended departure date they had bad weather that would have delayed them. And he had said they had to return in either late June or the first few days in July. On July 8 that year Guam was hit by Chata'an, the first of two super-typhoons to hit the island that year.

Tomorrow we are launching the Quest for a day of sailing. In the afternoon Wakana and I will harvest our bananas. There are ripe bananas in two of our trees.