Tag Archives: Boats

Sailboats on blue water

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This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Nostalgia.’ See more responses here.

I wasn’t sure I’d have anything for this theme, but this photo does make me somewhat nostalgic for my sailing days. I liked making passages and being out of sight of land, as opposed to sailing in a bay. I enjoyed watchkeeping, navigation, and my world being simplified to boat, water and sky. I saw more in that reduced world than in my usual busy life. Standing night watches, I didn’t just register the dawn. I noticed a glimmer in the east slowly transition to pre-dawn, and then an almost blinding sunrise. The sight of a bird was an event. There were days of no wind when the ocean was glass and it was hard to believe that the nearest solid surface was thousands of feet below.

Now, had I found a photo with a small boat being lashed by waves on a whitecap-riven ocean, my nostalgia would be less pronounced. One trip, I took a photo of the couple I was sailing with. They were on deck, hunched in foul-weather gear, as water sprayed across the deck, looking exactly as that sounds. These moments are inescapable when sailing longer distances. When I was younger, the discomfort was worth the rewards. Now, I don’t look at it the same way. But looking at this photo, it’s easy to imagine how it could be on that perfect trip no one ever experiences.

Also posted in response to Becky’s July Squares challenge theme of ‘Perspective.’ See more responses here.

SSV Makani Olu

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I was on my way to work one morning when I noticed the sailboat in the top image. The array of white sails caught the early morning sun and stood out against the deep blue water. I pulled over, took this photo and headed on in to work.

I saw later that the boat had anchored in Kawaihae harbor, so on my way home I stopped by to check it out. The SSV Makani Olu is a three-masted staysail schooner (SSV stands for Sailing School Vessel), and is used as a training vessel for various programs run by Marimed Foundation. The boat is based at Kaneohe Bay, on the east coast of Oahu.

In the photo to the right, the boat appears to be four-masted, but that’s just because the mast of the boat behind it lined up perfectly.

For more information about SSV Makani Olu and Marimed Foundation, go to marimed.org.

Unloading a barge

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Containers are unloaded from one of the inter-island barges at Kawaihae harbor. It’s not a forklift doing the work, more of a grip-n-raise, though I doubt that’s its official name. No prizes for guessing that the shipping company is Matson, but I like the repetition of their name in the images.

Kawaihae breakwater breach

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Some recent high surf made a breach in the breakwater of the northern small boat harbor at Kawaihae. Besides punching this hole in the rock barrier, the wooden mooring floats were also badly damaged and boats using the harbor were ordered to relocate since it was no longer safe.

Repairing the damage being estimated to cost around $8 million. Usually these kinds of thing overrun the estimates by a generous margin.

The top photo shows the extent of the damage as a tug and barge approach the harbor. Below, the picnic tables are deserted as the wind whips up whitecaps and a blast of sand across the area.

Incidentally, the tug and barge were unable to get into harbor because of the strong crosswinds and spent the night out at sea. They were still there next morning when I saw them, but were able to finally get into the harbor a few hours later.

SV Kwai in harbor

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I saw this interesting-looking vessel tied up alongside the wharf at Kawaihae harbor for a week or more in the first half of January. When I searched for information about the boat, I learned that it’s the Sailing Vessel Kwai, a cargo vessel operating between Hawaii and Kiribati and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.

I’m not sure what it was doing in Kawaihae. The boat had been in Honolulu earlier in the month, on completion of its 51st voyage. Their 52nd voyage left Honolulu on January 24. Perhaps they were picking up cargo or doing maintenance in between these dates.

According to the first blog from Voyage 52 (here), the boat returned to the west side of the Big Island to search for a ghost net. A ghost net is a large clump of fishing nets that can be very destructive to ocean life and that will eventually wash up on shore somewhere being equally problematic when it does so. This net was estimated to be 50 feet long and deep by 70 feet wide.

A tracker had been attached to the ghost net so that it could be retrieved by a larger boat but, according to the blog post, when SV Kwai reached the area, only the tracker was found and retrieved. I haven’t heard or seen anything else about the net, so it is either still floating in the ocean or has washed up somewhere.

For more information about Sailing Vessel Kwai, go to svkwai.com. For more information about the ghost net, go here.

Better Days: Wreck remains

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The scant remains of this shipwreck lie on the rocks of Kahuway Bay, just north of the Hualalai Beach Resort on the Kona coast. The keel is still clearly visible along with several keel bolts and the bottom part of the hull. I don’t know which wreck this is, but it’s been there a long time and will probably survive for many years to come.

Better Days: Swamped boat

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Yesterday, in certain parts of the island, the wind was honking. 20 miles south, there was a fresh breeze, but up around Kawaihae it blew a steady 40 knots with many higher gusts. Walking into the wind I had to lean forward at the kind of jaunty angle that would have seen me fall on my face on a calm day.

In the late afternoon, I made my way to Kawaihae harbor to see the waves and get a free skin treatment in the form of sandblasting. The very sheltered harbor was roiled with whitecaps from the whipping offshore wind. Most of the boats were bouncing up and down on the choppy waves, but I noticed something amiss. One of the boats wasn’t bouncing because it was mostly underwater. The outboard engine was the most prominent part to be seen.

I suspect that when the wind drops, the boat will still be barely afloat. But it should be able to be salvaged, pumped out, and ready to go again in fairly short order, so long as it doesn’t get taken out on a day like yesterday.