The seas were completely flat and we powered across the channel at 17 knots. To keep things in perspective, I have done this trip a number of times by sailboat, but never by power boat and never in such calm weather. On a typical windy night, the crossing by sailboat takes about 12 hours, of pounding. Make that rough, wet, half the crew seasick, pounding.
I stayed up with Larry for about an hour and then about midnight crawled into the cabin and went to sleep, the rapid slumber aided by some seasickness medication, ok so I am a wimp.
Kaluapapa Harbor at Sunrise
I awoke at about 2:30 a.m. to the sight of the steep sheer cliffs of Molokai’s North shore bathed in gray moon light. From my perspective, it looked like we were about ten feet from those cliffs. Normally I would have gotten up and directed Larry in the anchoring drill. However, I have decided to concede that Larry may have anchored a boat a time or two (or ten thousand) without me and all evidence exists that he was able to complete the task without incident. Along this same line of thinking, I was considering bossing him around a bit less than normal on this trip (no, no change of personality, just too many rocks sticking out of the ocean on that coastline to abandon me upon). Finally, I was just too lazy to get up, I was on holiday this weekend after all.
At sunrise I emerged to discover that the cliffs were actually about a quarter of a mile away, but no less spectacular than the night before. We pulled the anchor and Larry shoehorned us into a very small cove, big enough for one not very big boat. The reason for this cove, as opposed to the many others to choose from, is that about ten feet up the rocky beach was a small waterfall, which went all the way to the top of the cliffs. On our last day the surge calmed down some and we were able to go ashore and confirm that the freshwater pool was not bath water, but icy cold.
Our only mishap of the weekend occurred soon after anchoring when one of the legs of our one burner propane cooking source, which looked like something a citizen of the third world would have thrown out, broke off. We were able to stabilize the unit with diving weights, only to find that many of the little holes where gas flame were meant to appear were rusted shut. I did not see this as a disaster. We had about one day worth of food that did not need cooking and after that we could simply motor over to Lanai and check into the Manele Bay Hotel, no problem. However, as the weekend wore on, more and more of the holes cleared as propane was forced through them and the fire from the other holes burned off the rust and each day we had a better fire, which was a good thing, because Larry had speared us a lot of fish. We soon settled into a pleasant domestic routine which involved Larry doing most of the gathering of the food, spearing of the food, cooking of the food, cleaning up after the food and I did most of the eating of the food. It seemed to be a pretty good division of labor.
Our cooking apparatus in full function mode, including the dive weights for balance
After breakfast and a swim we did a little exploratory boat ride. We found another similar cove, less the waterfall and Larry picked us some opihi while I swam. After lunch and a nap we did a scuba dive and Larry speared us a fish.
Real Men Catch Fish
Our big adventure day was Sunday. We motored along the North Shore which is primarily very steep sea cliffs and occasional small coves. I have never done this trip by sail boat because of a number of logistical difficulties. While the winds for this trip were very light, the prevailing winds are a pretty stiff Easterly trade wind, which would have meant going into the wind. On a sail boat this translates into more tacks that the normal person has fingers and toes to count and on a power boat it translates into a wet bumpy ride. Larry’s boat is primarily set up for bottom fishing so it has fairly sophisticated depth gauges and recorders. Did I mention that it does not have a head or a galley. I have been on very few sailboats with reliable depth gauges and GPS’s. While a depth recorder may not tell you of shallow rocks until they are right under the boat, a GPS shows rocks long before they become an issue. They appear on the screen as a little picture of a rock, with the words “rocks” right next to them. There are a number of rocks near shore that would easily take the keel off an unsuspecting sailboat.
Master of His Domain
We went all the way to end of the North Shore until we could see West Maui. A little way further we came across some rock formations and a lovely cove. We anchored in the cove, swam, went ashore, saw a monk seal sunning on the rocks and then swam back to the boat and had lunch. I had not wanted to get too carried away with provisioning the boat so I had packed some bread, mayonnaise and some sort a lunch meat. It is amazing how good a simple mystery processed meat sandwich tastes when eaten on a boat in the middle of the day. The cookies were good too.
We Love Lunch Meat and Mayonnaise
It became time to head back and we concluded our day with another scuba dive, another speared fish and then margaritas back in our cove. This was also the day we got to see a shark. Soon after Larry speared the fish a white tip reef shark came by to see us. Actually, it circled us four times. Circling four times is sometimes considered aggressive behavior in shark language. However, reef sharks are not actually considered aggressive. This guy probably just wanted our fish and I figured since we had a spear and he did not, if he got too aggressive we would eat him too. As for the margaritas, they were actually rather rudimentary margaritas, but I did crush ice by putting it in several plastic bags and hitting it with a hammer. The ice part was great.
That full moon I had mentioned in the beginning was to be the source of great romantic evenings, sitting on the deck, watching the moon, the stars and sipping our tequila from the bottle. This dream did not take into account that the sea cliffs are on the east side of the North shore. Meaning that moon had to travel a very long way to be overhead of us. About three in the morning I crawled out of the cabin, it is technically a “cuddy cabin” so crawl really is the correct word, and just peaking over the cliffs was a great big wonderful full moon. Really romantic. I got up, saw it and went back to bed.
Our Cove
Monday was our final day of adventure. My sister, Heidi, had asked me to try to collect some Loulu Palm seeds from a sea stack off the coast. When I spotted said rock, I said “Oh Really?” Upon closer examination, with great care, and the help of the calm water we were gifted with this particular weekend, we managed to climb up onto the rocks. This sea stack had almost the topography of an upside down nail. The trees were growing at the very top of the formation, which was a diagonal type table formation approximately 200 feet from sea level. There was absolutely no way to access the trees. The area we could access rose out of the ocean ten to twenty feet, with sheer cliffs between us and the trees. Fortunately, the diagonal growing surface allowed a number of seeds to roll down to us. We picked seeds and hiked the perimeter of the sea stack and on the inland side of the formation Larry stopped and picked a few Opihi.
Our errand completed, we returned to the boat and began our voyage home. Initially we kept the boat at trolling speed (about 8 knots) and dragged fishing lines on the off chance any fish wanted to go to Oahu. We got bored before any fish took us up on our benevolent offer and pulled in the lines and fire walled the throttles. The design of the cabin that keeps us dry while underway also made this windlass channel crossing very hot. While it is common for seas in the Hawaiian channels to be eight to ten feet high, on this particular day there was not a single ripple. The phase “you could water ski across the channel today,” was true on this day. Running at 23 knots, in perfectly calm water, we were home in two hours.
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