Channels of the Hawaiian Islands 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby." The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide. The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the
Hawaiian Islands the Earth's mantle. The islands are about from the nearest continent. Captain James Cook visited the islands on January 18, 1778 and named them the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was one of his sponsors as the First Lord of the Admiralty. This name was in use until the 1840s, when the local name "Hawaii" gradually began to take precedence. The Hawaiian Islands have a total land area of . Except for Midway, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States, these islands and islets are administered as Hawaii—the 50th state of