In Pursuit of Magic — The Hawaiian Islands
The beauty, peace, and surreal nature of Kaneohe Bay
I could smell the forest before I even opened my eyes. It was a sweet, woodsy smell with a heavy fragrance of wet earth. If I kept my eyes closed, I could easily have placed myself on the forest floor surrounded by the refuse of the trees that were making their way to becoming soil. When I did open my eyes, the night was still on shift, and I lay there enjoying this unique experience. As the gentle offshore breeze arrived in the night it delivered the fragrance of the rainforest and impressed a memory I will not likely soon forget.
I climbed out of my bunk, started the kettle and popped my head out of the hatch to see the dawn breaking. The anchorage was so still in the night it felt very much as if I were anchored on a lake. I sat in the cockpit with my coffee steaming and watched the sun light up the Ko’olau Range as it broke the horizon. We were anchored in Oahu’s otherworldly Kaneohe Bay, a massive lagoon on the windward side of the island that was protected from the charging seas by a 2-mile-wide sandbar that lay a few feet below the surface of the sea.
Triteia sat some 400 yards from He’eia loko iʻa, a traditional Hawaiian fishpond that is estimated to be more than 800 years old. Fishponds such as this were used for aquaculture of taro, algae and fish, and were an important part of supplying the Hawaiian people with food. At the time of first contact with Europeans, fishponds were producing 2 million pounds of fish a year. Standing tall above the fishpond was the breathtaking The Ko’olau Range. The Ko’olau is a fragmented remnant of a once massive shield volcano that broke apart and slid into the Pacific Ocean. Kaneohe Bay is what remains of the volcano’s caldera. On my arrival, the peaks of the range were obscured in clouds but the brilliant green face of the mountain’s dramatic erosion patterns was clearly visible.
As the day progressed, I readied the boat for the short drive over to anchor on the sandbar. This would be a unique experience the likes of which I had never seen before or after. Carefully navigating my way through the coral bommies that lay in wait, I turned up the well marked channel that offered safe passage through the bay. I took a moment to review the advice given to me by longtime Hawaii resident and cruiser, Cy Henry of SV Luna Pacifica.
“You will want to motor in very slowly watching your depths on the depth sounder. When you see the depths dropping rapidly, put the boat in neutral and coast for a while and just wait for the bump as your hull hits the sand bar. Run forward and let go of your anchor and pay out about 10 feet of chain. Then back up the boat to slightly set the anchor. Next, you pay out more chain, swim ashore and carry your anchor into the shallows however far you like.”
As I motored slowly through the water, my bow pointed out towards what appeared to be the open Pacific Ocean, I thought of how truly strange it was to be driving towards a submerged beach with the intention of running into the sand. The only clue to the depth, aside from the instrumentation, was the rapid change in the color of the water, from cobalt blue to a brilliant turquoise as the sun reflected off the white sand below the water.
This color shift happened very quickly and soon I felt the bump of my hull on the soft sandbar. I hurried forward and let go my 45lb anchor and paid out some 10 feet of chain and reversed the boat to set it. The boat gently sprung on the taught anchor chain as the anchor set and slowly drifted us back to the sandbar. I let out more chain and for the first time in my life jumped off the bow of the boat into two feet of water.
Lifting the anchor up, I carried it back some 20 feet to give it more scope, which gives the anchor more holding power. As I was pushing my anchor in the sand a standup paddle boarder casually glided past me.
Walking back to the edge of the sandbar I stood at the place where the water depth dropped from 2ft to 20ft in less than the length of my boat. I climbed back on board Triteia and deployed a second anchor off the stern to keep us from blowing side onto the bar. The steep drop off meant there was no risk of going aground but the offshore breeze and changing of tides could cause the boat to bump in the night disturbing my sleep.
The Ko’olau Range was on full display with no clouds to obscure its ridges and peaks. As the day progressed the sun heated the forests, and the range created its own clouds that slowly took shape. With the absence of the trade winds these clouds sat still and slowly increased in size until they shrouded the tops of the range. I watched this happen day after day and it was really a sight to see. It is rare to be able to slow one’s life down to the point of having the opportunity to watch clouds be built before your very eyes.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book which is a collection of stories about my time cruising in the Hawaiian Islands in 2021/2022
