Wa are traditional sailing outrigger canoes of the Caroline Islands, Palau, and Yap. They have a single outrigger. They are similar to the sakman of the Northern Marianas.
Design and construction
Wa are proa — vessels with identical bow and stern, allowing the craft to reverse without turning. They are made from hewn-out hulls, typically breadfruit trunks, with single wide top-strakes, and carved head and stern pieces. Sails are lateen rigged and were traditionally made of pandanus mat sailcloth. Benjamin Morrell recorded in the 1830s that sails were "made in small pieces of about three feet square, sewed together. In cutting the sail to its proper shape, the pieces which come off one side answer to go on the other; this gives it the proper form, and causes the halliards to be bent on in the middle of the yard." After World War II sails switched to canvas, and after 1973 the use of dacron began to increase.
Early accounts agreed upon "a lee-platform on the side opposite to the outrigger-frame, which also has a large platform of poles laid athwart its booms, whereon men are stationed to counterbalance any excessive heeling over toward the lee side when the wind increases in force". The windward float stabilizes the craft. This occurs "by its weight rather than its buoyancy. When the float becomes submerged in a wave its increased drag swings the canoe slightly around into the wind, thereby relieving some of the wind pressure on the sail. The canoe slows down temporarily and allows the float to rise again." This design feature also acts to reduce drift by tending to place the wind toward the beam or side of the craft.
On Poluwat, the skill of canoe building is called héllap ("great rigging"), and different schools of canoe carpentry include hálinruk ("Rope of Truk") and hálinpátu ("Rope of the four Western Islands").
Speed and means of propulsion
Wa may be sailed over long distances, paddled, or moved by punting. One analysis of wa under sail indicated "conclusively that these primitive craft are superior to a modern boat on significant points of sailing." They were estimated by Anson in 1776 to be able to move at or perhaps beyond wind speed, and to have better windward pointing ability than any craft previously encountered. Several early western observers stated they were "capable of for sustained periods". Edwin Doran, author of Wangka: Austronesian Canoe Origins (1981), cited a average for a wa traveling from Guam to Manila. Benjamin Morrell reported in 1831 that he had "seen these boats going at the rate of , within four points of the wind" and that he had "no doubt but they will go at the rate of twelve or thirteen [] miles an hour in smooth water".
Use and range
In the past, voyages of across open ocean were commonplace, and a "brisk trade" was carried on with the Mariana Islands to the north. Trade items included shells, tapa cloth, wooden vessels, cordage, iron, copper, nails and knives. Rai stones were brought from Palau to Yap. Physical evidence of contact with the Chamorro people of Guam in the far southern Mariana Islands includes pestles, fish hooks, and shell rings from the Caroline Islands." The earliest documentary evidence is Friar Juan Cantova's 1721 letter to Friar William D'Aubenton in which he describes the June 19, 1721 landing of canoes from Woleai on Guam. During the same Spanish colonial period, many Chamorro people died due to introduced disease or were forcibly relocated from Saipan to Guam, and Caroline Islanders emigrated to Saipan in their place. By 1788 fleets from the Caroline Islands were sailing to Guam near annually to trade in iron and other goods. In the same year, a canoe from Woleai arrived at Guam and told the Spanish that "they had always been trading with Guam and had only discontinued their voyaging after witnessing the cruelty of the Europeans."
In 1821, Adelbert von Chamisso recorded a voyage of from Yap to Aur Atoll in the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. Long voyages of at least between the Carolines, Philippines and Marianas were frequent. A canoe from Satawal made a voyage to Saipan in 1970. Star courses between islands were known on Puluwat for all major islands from Tobi, south-west of Palau, to Makin in the Gilbert Islands – clear evidence of repeated trips over various parts of this -long region. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the Caroline Islands natives "who are Micronesian hybrids of finer physique than their kinsmen of the Pelew Islands, have a comparatively high mental standard, being careful agriculturists, and peculiarly clever boatbuilders and navigators."