The nonprofit Hui O Wa‘a Kaulua is working to replace a voyaging canoe that burned in the Lahaina wildfires. Photo courtesy Department of Land and Natural Resources

With a group effort helping to put the resources in place, a builder is working to replace a more than 50-year-old voyaging canoe that burned in the 2023 Lahaina wildfire by the end of this year.

According to a news release, the effort to bring the 44-foot Nāleilehua to life involves a landowner, a trucker, a shipping company, a canoe builder and the Department of Land and Natural Resources, all of whom are helping the Hui O Wa’a Kaulua nonprofit replace the historic voyaging canoe.

Born more than 50 years ago, the Mo’olele was being kept in a park along the ocean at 525 Front St. when it burned. Timothy ‘Timi’ Gilliom is a captain and the builder of the Mo’okiha O Pi’ilani and the Nāleilehua, the new canoe that will replace the Mo’olele.

Gilliom was working in Lahaina on Aug. 8, 2023. He had gone to the location where the Mo’olele was being restored, and he remembers thinking he’d never see the boat again as he was evacuating Lahaina.

For Gilliom, it was a devastating blow. Building Polynesian canoes is a laborious, painstaking and expensive process. It’s rich in Hawaiian tradition, which explains the kōkua his group received through a series of connections and donations.

With tons of koa and fiberglass hulls — all donated — Gilliom and his crew of three are working to have the Nāleilehua finished this year.

“Mo’olele was 42 feet. This (Nāleilehua) is 44 feet, a little longer, same crab claw sail, same parts, and everything,” Gilliom said in the news release. “And we moved from Lahaina (to Kahului) which is where our nonprofit was. It’s called Hui O Wa’a Kaulua, the group of the double hull canoes.”

He added that they didn’t know if they would be able to use koa for the new canoe because it was hard to get.

“Then we got a hold of David Tsuchiya (Kaua’i Branch District Superintendent for the DLNR Division of State Parks-DSP), and he ended up sending us a container load. So, we got a lot of koa now. It was 22,000 pounds,” Gilliom said.

Some of the koa was salvaged from tree fall from lessees, but most of it was collected in Koke’e State Park when trees fall across roadways and other common areas of the park. The wood is stored for potential future public auction, which has happened in the past.

“There was no question that State Parks preferred to donate this koa for Nāleilehua,” DSP Administrator Curt Cottlrell said in the release.

From Koke’e, trucker Timmy Lopez, drove the long shipping container to the harbor, where Pasha-Hawai’i loaded it onto a container ship for the voyage to Maui.

“The trucking was free … the shipping was at the discounted employee rate. The koa that we have is heavy koa. So, it’s older koa,” Gilliom said. “It was overwhelming.”

“My actual genealogy is from Pi’ilani, from that area where Mo’olele lived before,” said Makaio Lorenzo, who sawed and cut fiberglass hatch covers.

He describes Nāleilehua as: “Kind of riding the line, right in the middle. So, functions as traditional, looks very traditional, but we have more modernized stuff, like hatch covers for our storage. I’m sure back then our kūpuna had something like storage containers, but it’s just the cleaner, more modernized way of doing it.”

But, it’s the sense of tradition and ancestry that has Lorenzo all in.

“100%,” he said. “I get to be what Timi was to Mo’olele, to this canoe now. And it doesn’t stop with Timi and Mo’olele. It goes further with his teachers, Uncle Leon, and it’s continuing that genealogy through our canoes.”

Lorenzo looks forward to sailing on the Nāleilehua. One day he’d like to be its captain.

“I dream about it every single night and I just keep thinking about her. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I don’t know if I’m going to cry. I don’t know if I’m going to just stand there and be like, good job. No idea,” Lorenzo said.