Voyaging canoe Hokule'a has been making slow but steady progress from Yap to Okinawa in light winds, and a little more than a week into the passage was nearly two-thirds through the 1,330-mile course yesterday.

Captain and navigator Nainoa Thompson, speaking by satellite phone yesterday, said winds had picked up to about 10 miles an hour, but that the canoe was nearly becalmed for three days, and the crews have worked hard to take advantage of whatever breezes they could find.

"The ocean around us is just like a mirror, reflecting all the clouds in the sky. The water is so calm and clear that we even could see a mahimahi and an ono cruising in the deep ocean around the canoe," Kanako Uchino, a crew member from Japan, wrote in an e-mailed blog Tuesday.

At night, Thompson said, the crew could see stars reflected in the calm water.

"We're liking this trip. We were becalmed, but we haven't had bad weather and that's been lucky. Everything's going good," he said.

The quiet weather makes the canoe crew's daily educational calls easier to classrooms around the world — primarily in Hawai'i and in Micronesia.

The weather has cut the canoe's fishing success. Thompson said fishing was good earlier in the leg when the canoe was sailing fast, but dropped off in the calm weather.

Hokule'a is accompanied by the escort vessel Kama Hele, and Kama Hele skipper Mike Taylor in an e-mailed blog entry Tuesday said the crews have been working hard at changing and adjusting sails to take best advantage of light winds.

"Despite all the sails Hokule'a has deployed, there is so little wind, the crew is having to work very hard to attain even a little headway," Taylor wrote.

The canoe accompanied voyaging canoe Alingano Maisu from Hawai'i to Micronesia earlier this year, where the latter canoe was presented as a gift to the Micronesian voyaging community. Now Hokule'a is proceeding on the second part of its voyage, named Ku Holo La Komohana (Sail on to the Western Sun), a goodwill mission to the islands of Japan.

The visit celebrates historical links between the Hawaiian and Japanese islands, including King David Kalakaua's 1881 visit to Japan and the history of Japanese immigration to Hawai'i. The canoe is scheduled to make eight stops in Japan — at Okinawa, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Fukuoka, Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Ehime and Yokohama. Afterward, the canoe will be shipped back to Hawai'i.

Thompson said the canoe is sailing by traditional noninstrument means to Okinawa, and because of the light weather may arrive behind schedule. Once it is in Japanese waters, however, the vessel will do whatever it needs to do to keep to its schedule of city visits — which could include being towed. Thompson said he is also concerned about sailing through Japanese shipping lanes that are characteristically very busy.

Among safety changes, the canoe plans in Okinawa to rig high-intensity running lights to improve its visibility at night, and to run a small generator to power those lights.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.