I was recently commissioned to build a scale model of the MO’OLELE. I have never seen this canoe in real nor did I have a lot of material to work on it. Actually I found a total of 3 videos about Mo’olele of which one was instructive regarding the rigging of the sail while the other gave me finally an answer as to how many seats were installed within each hull and the shape of the spreaders. Beside all this I had to calculate the dimension of the hull, the beam of the canoe and draw lines, What surprised me most while doing the drawings is that contrary not only to how Hawaiian sailing or voyaging canoes were supposedly built but also to hydrodynamic laws, the deck at the front of the vessel was parallel to its draft while the deck at the stern was raised. It did not make sense to me from a maritime architectural point of view at all and I would love to hear from anybody involved in the construction of Mo’olele why the deck was raised at the stern and not at the bow of the vessel.
Line drawing of the Mo’olele