There is a huge variety in the number of the "spikes" of each round. in the eye.
The construction of the Eye is the following:
The most inner one is a black eye-bug,
there is a white and a than a red ring around it,
than comes the first black star (I saw one boat with blue inner star as well).
Based on the ones I collected this inner one has 5, 6, 7, 8, or 12 spikes.
It is surrounded by white fields, and around the star there is the next red ring.
Around that there is the outer star with 8,10,12, 14,16 spikes.
Surrounded by white field and one thiner black ring.
The position of the two starts can be different.
at even numbers the spikes of the inner star can be placed right under
the spikes of the outer one, or exactly in between two spikes.
My idea is to create an online boat-eye generator for your family, with two stars,
where you can tip in how many spikes each star should have
(outer has always equal or more than the inner ones).
You can download this as vector pdf, or print it out onto paper or sticker.
People could learn about the tradition through this action, even if this action
is very far away from connecting your action with the tradition in true sense...
Boat-Eye is commonly used as a symbol on Lanyu. It can be found on all boats
(I saw one exception where it was substituted by a cross though).
Eye of the boat can see where the fishes are, and can see the way back home.
The symbol is widely used on the islland not only on boats, but also on paintings of boats and even on houses, milestones as some sort of decoration (as far as I know, these hava less importance in spiritual sense)
The eyes are different in every family. I collected a few of these.But still need to learn how to put all of the correctly here:
