The National Kenu and Kundu Festival has returned, and traditional Papua New Guinean sailing practices are being revived thanks to two brothers who have started a canoe school. Alley Pascoe reports.

Full sail at the National Kenu and Kundu Festival at Alotau.

After a four-year hiatus brought on by COVID-19, the National Kenu and Kundu Festival returned to Alotau in Milne Bay last November.

The wind was up on the first day of the festival as the canoes arrived for the weekend event. The vessels seemed to cut through the water at an impossible speed.

Watching from the shore in the excited crowd was Master Sailor Sanakoli John from Basilaki Island.

“Don’t you get scared out there when the wind is so strong?” I ask. “No,” he says with a wide grin. “This wind is good wind.”

Sanakoli reads the wind like a book. Sailing is in his bones; salt water is in his veins. He was taught to sail by his father and uncles as a child, and now he is passing on this knowledge to the next generation with the Pasana Group canoe school, alongside his brother Justin, a renowned canoe builder.

Pasana Group is constructing a permanent house for the canoe school in Lumolumo village on Basilaki Island and actively engaging the youth to maintain and expand sailau (traditional sailing canoe) culture.

Pasana Group is also working with an Australian kayak tour company – Coral Sea Kayaking – to facilitate locally appropriate paddling tourism in Milne Bay.

Sanakoli has helped facilitate community engagement for the company’s 10-day ‘Beyond Borders Expeditions’, which explore the Louisiade Archipelago.

The Pasana Group built three sailaus last year and they are all here at the festival in Alotau. “I am very happy the festival is happening again,” says Sanakoli, who circumnavigated the island of New Guinea in a traditional sailing canoe with Justin and Danish adventurer Thor F. Jensen in 2017 in a world first.

“I’m so proud to be here with all the other villages and for people to see and experience our cultures,” he says.

At home and abroad, Sanakoli and the Pasana Group are leading a revival of traditional sailing practices and driving tourism in Papua New Guinea.

“That’s what I do, I promote sailaus to bring more people to our province and our country,” says Sanakoli, who hopes to see the festival continue to grow and thrive.

The weekend-long festival is a true celebration of the nation’s culture, with traditional dancing, drumming, art and – of course – sailing. To mark the occasion, 86 sailaus and 42 kundu groups have travelled to Alotau to be part of the festivities. The main event is the canoe race across the bay. On the second day of racing, the Pasana Group canoes come in first, third and fourth.

On the last night of the festival, the documentary film ‘Sailau’ – about the 2017 circumnavigation – has its PNG premiere. Thousands of people turn up to see the film, including the local sailau sailors.

Thor, the film’s director, says: “After a series of international film festivals, I was a little nervous to show the film in Milne Bay as this is the real test – whether the PNG audience will connect with the film and whether we’ve done justice to the sailing culture.”

Luckily, the audience were entranced by the film, laughing at the highs and gasping at the lows – applauding when Sanakoli declares on the big screen, “This is for our country, for PNG.”

Thor describes the festival as the greatest show on earth. “The traditional dancing and culture are just spectacular, and a testament to the hospitality and strength of tradition in Milne Bay,” he says.

The revival of the festival signals a resurgence in kenu culture and opportunities for tourism in PNG. The Pasana Group is working at this intersection to both preserve traditional knowledge and share it with international audiences.

After the festival, Sanakoli travelled to the Solomon Islands to meet with another oceanic voyaging group and to host a screening of Sailau in Honiara.

Air Niugini, the Grand Papua Hotel and Consort Express Lines were supporting partners of the film’s PNG premiere.

This is an edited version of an original article first published in the February-April 2025 issue of Paradise, the in-flight magazine of Air Niugini.