China Seas Voyaging Society

  OUR MISSION

CSVS is a charitable organization dedicated to providing a global awareness of the arts and culture of the Chinese people via perpetual exhibits embodied by Chinese Junk lug-rigged sailing vessels.

  OUR GOALS

Short Term:

To restore, display, and sail the first of CSVS's flagships for the purpose of raising the level of awareness and the image profile of the Chinese Junk lug-rigged sailing vessel via the film, television, and advertising industry media.


Long Term:
1. Create the processes necessary to celebrate the contributions of the remarkable ancient and modern Chinese people as related to the stated mission.

2. Secure short term and long term funding to maintain CSVS's mission statement.

  OUR OBJECTIVES

1. Establish perpetual cultural exhibits embodied by the Chinese Junk lug-rigged sailing vessel.

2. Develop and coordinate educational programs via Chinese Junk lug-rigged sailing vessels, utilizing the best multi-media techniques available. Collect and disseminate resource information via the internet.

3. Present opportunities to discover and appreciate Chinese Junk lug-rigged sailing vessels by conducting sailing events and onboard, in-harbor public exhibition displays, broadcast live via the internet.

4. Secure the necessary short term and long term funding through memberships, sponsorships, donations and grants.

  OUR FLAGSHIP

CSVS has a ten year lease for the use of a Chinese Junk lug-rigged motor sailing yacht, The Intrepid Dragon II. This sailing yacht was designed by H.W. Fong and J. Trovers. The yacht was built in 1969 in Hong Kong by the Woo-Ying shipyard. Built of Yucal teak, her passenger capacity is roughly fifty persons. She was the main attraction of the 1984 Tallship Parade out of Long Beach, California. In the 1985 Ancient Mariners Race from San Diego to Honolulu, she led the race for nine days.

According to her log books, the Intrepid Dragon II is a likely contender for holding the world's record for the most recorded circumnavigated miles for a Chinese Junk lug-rigged motorsailer.

Her voyages have taken her sailing from Hong Kong to the Philippines, on to Borneo, Java, Bali, the Indian Ocean and down to Durban, Capetown, across the Atlantic via St. Helena to Recife, Brazil, up the South American coast and throughout the Caribbean, then along the American east coast and even into the Hudson River. She has, in all total, made two Atlantic crossings and is currently home-ported in Honolulu, Hawaii.

  INITIAL PROJECT

On September 4, 1998, CSVS received an invitation from California Governor Pete Wilson to participate in the California Sesquicentennial event known as "Mervyn's California Gold Rush Race". This grand maritime event's purpose was to bring 99 of the world's greatest sailing vessels together again in California and sail in a Tallship Parade which was to commemorate the 150th Aniversary of the California Gold Rush and the consequential Statehood of California.

The parade was to commence in San Francisco the weekend of July 2-5, 1999. The vessels were then supposed to cruise, in company, to a final gathering in the port of San Diego on the weekend of July 16-19, 1999. Due to budgetary constraint problems, the State of California was not able to produce the event at the scale and magnitude that was originally planned and so the event was scaled back considerably to only 25 vessels, of which unfortunately, CSVS's flagship the Intrepid Dragon II was not one of them.

  CURRENT PROJECT

CSVS is currently working on establishing a "beachhead" venue to assist the "Hawaii Film Office" with a “business platform” to help facilitate the business networking of the film making industry in Hawaii.

website: chinaseas.org

email: csvsorg@yahoo.com

China Seas Voyaging Society
1750 Kalakaua Ave., Suite 3583
Honolulu, HI. 96826


NEWS EVENT: July, 2003 update of 'New World' discovery theory, author Gavin Menzies' book: "1421-The Year China Discovered The World"

China Seas Voyaging Society continually seeks to fulfill its mission and purpose of increasing the awareness of the world to the impact of the Chinese Junk sailing vessel as a living showcase of the arts and culture of the ancient and modern Chinese people and thus presents the following "historically astounding theory" as published in the following book.........

.... 1421 The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies, Pub: Bantam Press, London.

"....On the 8th of March, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. The jouney would last over two years and circle the globe. When they returned Zhu Di lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. They had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans......"

This excerpt and much more can be found at the website:

"The Year China Discovered The World"  http://www.1421.tv



p.11.8.04