I went to Hawaii, island of Kauai, for my first time this past 2 weeks. I went with Sara, her sister and sister’s husband, and our two nieces and their husbands. We went to spread Sara’s younger sister Jane’s ashes, as Hawaii was her happy place.
I didn’t know what to expect, really. I thought it would be crowded beaches with tourists everywhere. Kind of like Juneau in the summer. Boy, was I wrong. Most beaches had few people, and the beach adjoining the house we rented was used by mostly local people as best we could tell.
I was immediately struck by how remote the islands are. Alaska has always seemed remote, but not this remote. We flew about as far west from Seattle as I would fly east to go to New York State, over nothing but ocean, and then there are these islands. People found these not all that long ago in human history, without GPS or even rudimentary navigation tools. Maybe they could read the stars and sun and moon to navigate. But how did they know where they were going? Amazing, really.
I was a bit tentative swimming or snorkeling in the ocean surf until we went out on a snorkel charter. I hadn’t been snorkeling since I was a kid, and hadn’t done much swimming since then, really, either. The snorkel charter gave me a good refresher for swimming and snorkeling. After that, I went down our beach to some quiet water almost every day until we left and snorkeled in an area that was not over my head anywhere I swam. I saw all kinds of beautiful tropical fish, and usually saw new ones I hadn’t seen each day. I saw sea turtles there, too. Now I had something I enjoyed doing every day, as traveling to a different beach to sit in the sun has never been my thing. Plus, I burn easy. Sara got sun most every day in the yard.
Fishing Charter
We also went on a fishing charter. We were scheduled to go on a Wednesday, but the winds were too big to go. Weather there really is sort of wind or no wind. Not rain or no rain. Or cold or warm. It’s not cold. And rains were intermittent, cooled things off a bit, and sort of not a thing for rainforest dwellers like us. We rescheduled to the following Monday, which meant half the crew couldn’t go, but decided that was best since it was the first calm day in the forecast.
We headed to a small harbor near Lihue. We went for an afternoon of fishing. We met our boat, about a 30′ charter boat with twin diesels, with the people aboard who fished in the morning, and the crew was cleaning their catch. Out of nowhere, a big shark – 6+ feet anyway, I’d guess – porpoised to eat some of the fish remains pitched over. The crew thought it was a Galapagos shark, which I’d never heard of.
The four of us boarded and soon knew we were going to have a good time because the captain and deckhand were easygoing, good friends with each other, and lots of fun. We decided to troll awhile for pelagic fish like tuna and marlin, then fish on the bottom at the end of the trip. We started trolling right as we left the harbor and fished along an uninhabited coast. The land was for sale for 80 million dollars, and we watched a George Clooney movie (The Descendants) when we got back, on the advice of the boat crew, that explained the family ownership of the land, sort of.
We trolled at about 8 knots in a swell with big squid-looking baits right at the surface. They hadn’t caught any pelagics for several weeks, but we were happy to try. Then it happened. A fish was on. I got the rod since this was my birthday charter. I got into the fighting chair and started the work yarding in the fish on the heaviest gear I’ve ever fished. After about 5 minutes, I got the fish to the boat, and the deckhand gaffed it aboard. A skipjack tuna. I had to admit, it was smaller than I thought it would be based on how hard it was to get aboard, but it was a nice fish. We trolled back towards the harbor and caught no more. We tried bottom fishing the last hour. We caught a nice gray snapper, which the crew said was among the best eating fish. We had tacos made from both fish, and both were great eating, especially with the nice avocados and other local vegetables. Sara made ceviche with the snapper as well, but I didn’t try that. I snorkeled each day the next 2 days until we left Wednesday evening.
We had an all-day layover in Seattle. Gail picked us up and we napped at her house after taking a print Sara left at Gail’s once upon a time to air freight to send to Juneau. I arranged to meet my Peace Corps friend Dan for lunch. Sara and I met him and his girlfriend and his son and had a great time.
We got home in the evening, and Kurt was there to retrieve us as always. No sleep sounder than the first one in your own bed after a long time away.