Buenas yan Hafa Adai!

Welcome to the website of Sakman Chamorro, Inc., a non-profit organization based on Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

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!

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.

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

Sakman Chamorro, Inc., and our fiscal sponsor, the San Diego Chamorro Cultural Center, both have Sakman building projects underway. To raise awarness of these projects and to raise the money we need to fund them, we have an exciting fundraiser happening right now. The "Chamorro Flying Proa Relay Team" is attempting to swim across the English Channel! The all-Chamorro team is made up of swimmers ranging in age from 18 to 51. You can read about them in the Saipan Tribune which is running a series of "swim journals" starting Monday, July 23rd. The opening story appeared in the July 20th issue of the Saipan Tribune.

You can help support the Chamorro Flying Proa Relay Team raise money for Sakan Chamorro and the San Diego Chamorro Cultural Center by making a donation here.

Si Yu'us Ma'ase!