Title. It seems pretty far from land to have reached by a canoe... Was it just a long, random voyage?
It is not known for certain how Hawaii was discovered by Polynesians.
There are two Hawaiian discovery stories as told in Hawaiian oral traditions.
“A fisherman named Hawai’iola discovered the islands on a long fishing trip. He later returned with his family and settled the islands and the largest island is named after him.”
Legend reported in the 19th Century by Hawaiian scholars Kamakau and Kepelino.
“A semi-divine hero named Tafa’i explored North from the Tuamotos. He discovered the island chain under the water and fished it up to the surface. He than brought people from the Tuamotos to live on the new islands. Later, he tried to tow the Hawaiian islands closer to Tahiti behind his canoe. This failed when the crew broke a Taboo and talked or looked back.”
In Teuira Henry’s “Ancient Tahiti”.
(Note: Hawaii is generally thought to have been settled from Hiva (The Marquesas) due to linguistic evidence, though the Cook Islands and Tahiti have also been thought to be possibilities.)
We don’t even know when the Hawaiian Islands were discovered by Polynesians. The date has been the subject of recent controversy. There has been a recent tendency to move the first settlement later, from about 400AD (which was the previous consensus) to about 1000 to 1200 AD.
(Note: This date is from new research (2011) with new radio carbon dating, proposing that the Polynesian settlement of the Pacific was both more recent and more rapid than previously thought. Previous dates for settlement of Hawaii have been as early as 400AD. I don’t know which dates are more accepted. See first Source below for more on the new research.
Source: http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ike/moolelo/discovery_and_settlement.html
See Patrick Kirch, “When did the Polynesians settle Hawaii” 2011, Fromhttp://www.academia.edu/Download for a 24 page pdf on this question. Kirch favors a date of about 1000-1200AD)
The Polynesians had very seaworthy double hulled canoes, capable of making long Pacific voyages. They were also skilled navigators, capable of navigating by stars, by following the flights of birds and the travel of whales, by reading the subtle swell patterns to detect wave reflections bouncing off distant islands, or deflections from waves bending around distant islands.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society of Hawaii has made many long Pacific voyages in a replica double hulled canoe called the “Hokulea”, using Polynesian navigation techniques (which were taught by Mau Piailug, a traditional navigator from the Caroline Islands of Micronesia).
In 1976 the “Hokulea” sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti and back. She repeated this trip in 1980. In 1985, she spent two years sailing around Polynesia, all the way to New Zealand, and home again. In 1999 and 2000 “Hokulea” sailed the very long voyage from Hawaii to Easter lsland and back, navigated by Pi’ikea Millar, the first woman traditional Polynesian navigator of the modern revival.
Source: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/canoe-navigation/page-4
This shows that the Polynesians were quite capable of navigating long distances to small islands once they knew where those islands were. But how did they discover unknown Islands in the first place?
For a long time, the prevailing theory was that most discoveries were made by accident, by voyagers blown off course in a storm.
This theory came from Captain Cook, who, in his Pacific discovery voyages found a canoe load of Polynesians who had been blown a thousand miles off their course in a storm. (from Tahiti to Atiu). Cook said that this, "will serve to explain, better than the thousand conjectures of speculative reasoners, how the detached parts of the earth, and, in particular, how the South Seas, may have been peopled".
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
More recently, Geoffrey Irwin proposed that the Polynesians had a deliberate strategy of voyages of discovery, whereby they would wait for an unusual shift in the pattern of wind which would allow them to sail in the direction which was normally upwind (eastwards in the South Pacific) and then sail that way as long as the wind shift lasted, looking for new lands, and counting on the return of the prevailing winds to bring them home again.
This exact tactic would not have been necessary to discover Hawaii from the Marquesas, as the voyage is across the prevailing winds. (Geoffrey Irwin, “The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonization of the Pacific”, 1994.)
It may be that Polynesian navigators had an hypothesis about Islands to the North from observing the flight of the Pacific Golden Plover, and the Bristle-thighed Curlew, which both track from Tahiti to Hawaii.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
The Polynesians had the ships to get to Hawaii. They had the expertise to find land once they were close to it. What took them so far North that they could discover Hawaii is unknown. It might have been accident. It might have been deliberate exploration.
There's always room for discussion, but perhaps these previous topics will answer your inquiry.