First of all, we never intended to stay at the marina 4 weeks. Maybe 2, but hey, the dinghy went flat, I needed to see a doc for a follow up visit for pneumonia a while back, and we did want time to be tourists. We discovered the bus system and found our way around Honolulu quite handily, visiting Westmarine to buy boat stuff, visiting Costco multiple times to provision for the next 2 months, and even taking a bus ride to and from Diamond Head so we’d have poop left for the hike.
We were only on the dock for a couple of days when Port Captain Travis had to rearrange folks for an arriving club member with a 50 foot Catana catamaran - so we ended up rafted up against the trawler Snapdragon which was on the way from Fiji to Seattle. Our new neighbor was Graham Roberts, an interesting fellow who has worked in Antarctica for many years building hot water drills to penetrate the ice cap. As the boat engineer Graham had helped delivery skipper Ronnie Simpson bring the boat from Fiji a few months prior. Ronnie had returned to Fiji to fetch his own boat and they were going to continue on to the Pacific Northwest around the end of June. Graham kindly loaned us his car for a lap around the island one day.
One objective of our visit to Hawaii was to consider it for our eventual dirt home, as we really love the climate. Having given the big island a pretty thorough look it was time to check out Oahu, home to the big city, easy air travel to the mainland, the best medical facilities in the state, and many many pleasure yachts. We took Graham’s car and tooled up the East side to check out Kane’ohe Bay then on up to the North side where we had a look around at Waimea Bay then found lunch in Hale’iwa at The Beet Box. It was a vegetarian place and we had great meals, but when we saw the veggie burger get delivered to another table we lamented our food choices. Wow, maybe someday we’ll get there again.
Onwards out to the Northwest bit of the island to check out Dillingham Field where I spent a few days taking friends for glider rides on a previous visit to the islands, and where our pal Joe Giampietro helped start a skydiving operation years ago. There was no flying or skydiving that day but we did observe some badass kite surfers just offshore a bit West of the airfield. From there we proceeded down the middle of the island past the US Army’s Schofield Barracks and on out to Ko’Olina Marina, nestled in a high end resort area. We had attempted to secure a slip there prior to departing French Polynesia but they weren’t interested. Had we succeeded we would have likely spent a year in Hawaii. Turns out that resort is a beautiful environment but it’s hell and gone from a lot of the interesting things to do around Honolulu so best it didn’t work out.
We had been curious about maybe anchoring at Waimea Bay on our way to Kauai, but our time in Hawaii was limited and we elected to blow it off and spend time in Kane’ohe Bay instead. Having finally finished up all our boat chores I spent a day helping Kurt and Meg on SV Hullabaloo sort out their marine air conditioner, a fun chance to deal with some plumbing lines full of sea growth. Good to be learning about such things on someone else’s boat. We became fast friends with those guys over the few weeks we were moored close by, sharing several meals and too much Sailor Jerry rum.
About 10 days before we pulled out Ronnie Simpson sailed in from Fiji and rafted up with us, so we were the meat in the sandwich, so to speak. Ronnie turned out to be a remarkable individual with an amazing story - and a fun guy with a lot of sailing experience and wisdom to share. He’s bright, thoughtful, and intense - all qualities we enjoy and admire. We befriended several other folks there, but one in particular, a former US Air Force PJ, was a stand-out. Isabel baked him a fruit cake and we’ll deliver it at Hanalei Bay.
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