Buenas yan Hafa Adai!

Welcome to the website of Sakman Chamorro, Inc., an association of individuals and non-profit organization based in the Marianas and the US Mainland.

Sakman Chamorro's mission is to revive the lost Chamorro art of canoe building and sailing. Specifically, we plan to build a "Chamorro Flying Proa", called a "Sakman" in Chamorro, based on a detailed drawing made in the year 1742. Then we plan to build more, and more, and teach the younger generations how to build them and sail them, and keep building and sailing them, until the Sakman is once again a regular feature on the off-shore horizon in the Marianas.

The Sakman

The Sakman was once the fastest sailing vessel in the world. It was once so numerous in the Marianas that 17th Century Europeans wrote in their journals of the hundreds of proas that could be seen plying the waters up and down the Marianas. The Europeans had never seen anything like it in Europe nor in all of Oceania. There were no sailing vessels that could come near to matching its speed. Sometimes exceeding 40 feet in length, they were capable of speeds in excess of 20 knots!

The Sakman's design is unlike any other proa in all of Oceania. The canoe hull is asymetrical - flat on one side and curved like most canoes on the other. Its outrigger, mounted off the curved side, faced the wind as it sailed, and the flat side acted as a keel. The bow and the stern were identical. When sailed, the Sakman's outrigger always faced the wind - even when turning. Rather than cross the wind and take the wind on the other side of the sail like other sail boats, the Sakman was simply steered away from the wind so that the stern became more upwind, the sailors all turned around to face the other way, and the Sakman took off in the opposite direction! With its massive sail and light, narrow hull, the Sakman was used for fast, long-distance travel up and down the Marianas chain and to the Western Caroline islands to the south.

How the Sakman was lost

In their efforts to suppress the Chamorro people, Spanish colonists forbade the Chamorros to sail on the open ocean. They also forced them off the northern islands (except for Rota) and crowded them in villages on Guam. This lead to epidemics of introduced diseases that severely reduced the population from perhaps as many as 80,000 to just a few thousand. By the mid 1700s the Sakman not only ceased to exist, but the knowledge of how to build and sail them was also lost. The loss of the Sakman and the ability to travel between the islands was devastating to Chamorro society and marked the end of Chamorro freedom. It is believed that some of the last Sakman were used by Chamorros to leave their island homes permanently in order to avoid Spanish oppression.

The 1742 Drawing

One of the last Sakman to be seen was captured in 1742 by Lord Anson of the English ship Centurion that was on a mission at the time to find and capture Spanish Gold Galleons. The Centurian put up a Spanish flag as it approached Tinian island, and when a Spaniard and four Chamorros sailed a Sakman out to meet the Centurion they were taken prisoner. Later, while half of Anson's crew was ashore, a strong storm forced the Centurian to put to sea. In the time that the Centurian was gone, the expedition's draftsman disassembled the Sakman and made a detailed drawing with precise measurements (unfortunately, the drawing did not include the details of the rigging). Later, when the Centurian returned, Anson ordered the Sakman burned so that it could not be used to sail to Guam to notify the Spanish of the English presence in the islands.

Why build a Sakman?

Bringing back the Sakman is more than just an exciting canoe project. The Chamorro people today are in serious trouble. Each successive generation has less cultural tradition that the one before. We are on the verge of losing our very identity as a people. We continue to lose ground on the language. We no longer have the "critical mass" of people living in the Marianas and speaking the language daily to ensure its survival. We are minorities in our own islands. At this rate, in a few more generations there will be very little left in the way of Chamorro identity. What we need, right now, is something powerful to pull our scattered community together. Something that will remind us of who we are as a people, of where we came from. Something to be proud of that is exciting, healthy and unique in the world. That something is the Chamorro Sakman.

Bringing the Sakman back is not an easy goal. There are many unanswered questions about its design and operation. It will take a great deal of study and trial and error to get the answers to these questions. But it is achievable. Although no Chamorro Sakman has been seen for over two and a half centuries, we have the Anson drawing, we have numerous eye-witness written accounts and descriptions of the flying proa, we have archeological findings, we have knowledge of Micronesian methods of canoe-building that have not changed for centuries, and most important of all, we have a strong determination to succeed.

How you can help

You can help support the building of the Sakman and the revivial of the Chamorro sailing tradition by making a donation here. Your tax-deductible donation will go directly to canoe and canoe-house building projects taking place at the Sons and Daughter's of Guam Club in San Diego, in co-operation with Chamorro Hands in Education Links Unity (CHELU) Inc. (formerly known as the San Diego Chamorro Cultural Center).

Si Yu'us Ma'ase!

Sakman Chamorro