Marianas Visitors Authority and 500 Sails partner to provide visitors, residents with unique cultural experience
Tourists and residents in Saipan can take a ride on a canoe through Jan. 31, 2024, thanks to a new partnership between the Marianas Visitors Authority and the non-profit organization 500 Sails.
In September 2023, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota experienced a remarkable surge in arrivals, welcoming 19,483 visitors. This growth, reported by the Marianas Visitors Authority, signifies a striking 136% increase compared to the 8,256 visitors recorded in September 2022. To put this into perspective, before the pandemic in September 2019, these islands had hosted 37,022 tourists.
“What the tourists will experience in the Marianas is rare – an intimate and genuine cultural experience with traditional Micronesian canoes and the native people who build and sail them,” said 500 Sails Co-founder Pete Perez.
MVA Managing Director Christopher A. Concepcion called the activity an "extraordinary opportunity" for visitors to learn about and experience one of the fundamental components of indigenous Carolinian and Chamorro culture in The Marianas.
“Beach Canoe Project is a double win, giving visitors an invigorating memory sailing our quiet lagoon and strengthening our community through the preservation of our history and traditional culture as renowned sailing people," he said.
500 Sails currently sails from Hyatt Regency Saipan. It will use the MVA funding support of $10,000 to expand their current Beach Canoe Project to other sites.
The Chamorro people, believed to have sailed to and settled in The Marianas from Southeast Asia about 4,000 years ago, were noted upon first Spanish contact for the speed of their “flying proa” outrigger canoes, according to the press release. The Carolinians, who migrated to The Marianas en masse from the Carolinian Islands of Micronesia in the 1800s, are renowned for their traditional navigational skills passed through the generations that use stars and other heavenly bodies, waves, currents, marine life, and other natural phenomena for transpacific voyaging, without modern instruments. For more information, contact 500 Sails at facebook.com/500Sails, info@500sails.org, or 1.670.323.7245. mbj
