On the Open Ocean

On Sunday, Miike, my friend and a photographer from the newspaper, took us out on his boat. I've been out on it three or four times, but it was Peggy's first time out on the water. Mike grew up in San Diego and spent years in the Navy, so he's knowledgeable about the ocean. We met at Honokohau Harbor to start the day. It's just a few minutes from town. Here we fueled up and bought sandwiches and drinks. Then it was out to sea! The missions were to look for humpback whales, troll for fish and maybe find a spot to jump out and snorkel.



This is Mike's boat. It's about 17 feet long, so it's not particularly big, but it handles fine in the ocean. We probably wouldn't want to be out on a day with huge waves and wind. One time I went out with Mike there were good size waves coming in, and we had to time the space between waves just right to even make it out of the harbor.



Here's Captain Mike and Peggy talking as we cruise along.



This is a shot of the coast just north of Kailua Bay, the heart of town. We spent about five hours out on the boat. First we headed north toward the section of coast where whales are commonly seen. It's such a cool perspective on the island from out on a boat. You pass all the places you have been before. But as we reached Keahole Point, a part of the island that sticks out, the winds strengthened and waves grew larger, so we turned around to head another direction.



This is a shot of Kailua Bay. You are looking at the heart of Kona, the town of Kailua. The church in the picture is the oldest Christian church in the Hawaiian Islands. The long red building is the Kona Inn, which used to be a hotel but is now converted to shops and restaurants. You can probably see Lowe's in the background — not a premier tourist attraction.



This is a couple miles south of the previous photo. This is still the Kona coast. The town of Holualoa, where we live, is located on the top of the hill in the background. That's about 1,500 feet in elevation making it nice and cool, with great views of the town and ocean below. And it's just a 10 minute drive.



Here we are pulling back into the harbor. After we cruised south to work on the fishing mission, we headed all the way back north again. This time the ocean had settled down and we were able to reach the area where whales usually can be found. But no luck on this day. We'd have to settle for a relaxing day on a boat off the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. Not bad.