Aunofo Havea Funaki is the first Tongan woman to become a licensed sea captain. The owner of a business that takes tourists to "swim with the whales", she has captained a traditional Polynesian canoe that sailed from the Pacific islands to the USA.
Early life
Aunofo Havea Funaki was born in Tu'anuku on the island of
Vavau in the Kingdom of Tonga. She had five brothers and three sisters.
Career
Having been working as a weaver, at age 25, Funaki was given a job of cleaning yachts, something that no other women did. From this she graduated to being a cook on a tourist yacht and was taught how to sail by its owners. Her decision to try to become a captain came about when she realised that she already knew more than a captain she was sailing with as a cook. In 2000, she was the only woman selected, together with 23 men, to take a maritime course in Tonga led by the
Royal New Zealand Coast Guard. She finished top of her class. This entitled her to a daytime skipper licence, and she subsequently obtained licences as a boat master and as a yacht captain. Funaki gradually built up her sailing experience to cover
monohull
right
A monohull is a type of boat having only one hull, unlike multihulled boats which can have two or more individual hulls connected to one another.
Fundamental concept
Among the earliest hulls were simple logs, but these were generally unstab ...
s,
catamaran
A catamaran () (informally, a "cat") is a watercraft with two parallel hull (watercraft), hulls of equal size. The wide distance between a catamaran's hulls imparts stability through resistance to rolling and overturning; no ballast is requi ...
s, and motorboats. Following a three-month course in 2018 at the
Northeast Maritime Institute in
Fairhaven, Massachusetts
Fairhaven (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ) is a New England town, town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast of Massachusetts where the Acushnet River flows into Buzz ...
, she became the first female licensed captain in the Kingdom of Tonga and in
Polynesia
Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...
.
In 2011, Funaki joined the ''Te Mana O Te Moana'' (The Spirit of the Ocean) voyage of vakas, or traditional outrigger canoes. Crewed by sailors from all over the South Pacific, the canoes were built in New Zealand and sailed from New Zealand to
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
, the West Coast of the United States,
Cocos Island
Cocos Island () is a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean administered by Costa Rica, approximately southwest of the Costa Rican mainland. It constitutes the 11th of the 15 districts of Puntarenas Canton of the Puntarenas Province, Province of ...
and the
Galápagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands () are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, west of the mainland of South America. They form the Galápagos Province of the Republic of Ecuador, with a population of sli ...
. Funaki was the only female captain, sailing on the ''Hine Moana'', which had ten different nationalities. In 2012, she captained an all-woman crew sailing in the Polynesian islands. She later had the opportunity to use a vaka for ecotourism purposes in Vavau, to emphasise her concern that too much whale-watching tourism using motorized boats was threatening the whales.
World Oceans Day
World Ocean Day (WOD) is an international day that takes place annually on June 8. The concept was originally proposed in 1992 by Canada's International Centre for Ocean Development (ICOD) and the Ocean Institute of Canada (OIC) at the Earth ...
conference in New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, which had the theme of "Gender and Oceans". She spoke of her experiences as a seafarer as well as her role in Vavau as an ecotourism entrepreneur.[
]
Personal life
Funaki is the mother of five children.[
]
References
External links
Video "The Ocean Knows No Borders" (2020) about FunakiFunaki captaining an all-woman crew on a vaka
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Tongan businesspeople
Tongan women in business
Female sailors
People from Vava{{okinau
21st-century businesspeople
21st-century businesswomen