Sailing the Kona coast on the Island of Hawaii

The sunset from beautiful Kealakekua Bay.

We could have stayed forever in Honomalino Bay, but there was no place to get water, so we headed to the next anchorage, Hookena.

As we entered the bay, a long rock wall with white letters spelling “Aloha” greeted us. We anchored next to a tall cliff riddled with holes and caves. The noise of the water echoed off the wall and back to us. Adjacent to the cliff is a beautiful beach with a popular campground and a dozen or so homes up from the beach.

It's hard to imagine now, but a century earlier Hookena was the major port in south Kona with regular visits from steam ships. We could see the remains of the old wharf and landing. In 1889 Robert Lewis Stevenson came to Hookena to escape the noise and confusion of Honolulu. While we were anchored here I read one of his short stories set partly in Hookena.

We visited the week before school started. There were lots of local families camping there, enjoying their last week of freedom. People are naturally curious about us when we come ashore. We often get peppered with questions. The most common is “What do you eat?” followed by “Do you sleep on your boat?” “How long did it take to sail here?” and “Are you scared?” We answer their questions and, if we like them, them to swim out and visit us, but this rarely happens.

The morning of our second day at Hookena, we looked out and saw three preteens (a brother, sister and the brother's friend) swimming to our boat. We recognized them as questioners from the day before and invited them aboard. We fed them cookies. The next day their older sister and mom swam out to visit us. It was a fun!

Although found on reefs throughout the topical Pacific, yellow tangs must like Hawaii the best. There are so many of them Kona get's its nickname "The Gold Coast" from their great numbers.

We enjoyed snorkeling every day at Hookena. The predominant fish is the ubiquitous yellow tang. There are so many on the Kona side of the Island of Hawaii that it is often called the Gold Coast. We even saw a rare color variant of a yellow tang that was mostly white. Some people call these ghost tangs.

Ghost tang.

We went scuba diving one day with our friend Garry and two of his guests, Ginger and Grant from Texas. We started at the old ruins of the wharf and found interesting rock formations including an arch near the point. The coral is healthy and abundant and so are the reef fish. Virginia saw a reticulated butterflyfish, an octopus, a pair of lined butterflyfish the size of dinner plates and other of our favorite rare fish. Diving the Big Island is always a treat.

Most mornings we were greeted with a pod of dolphins swimming around the boat. They usually stayed a couple of hours jumping and spinning around our boat. Brandon would don fins and mask and join them in the clear water. He would stay in one spot and let the dolphins swim past him. Virginia usually preferred to watch them perched on the deck box. She felt she could see more of the action that way.

Swimming with wild dolphins a Kealakekua Bay.

Some people are weird about swimmers in the water with the spinner dolphins. We are strongly against chasing or harassing them in any way. If you quietly stay in one place the dolphins usually come to you. They seem as interested in us as we are in watching them. A couple of locals who frequent the beach told us that last winter the park was closed because of an outbreak of Dengue Fever in the area. They admitted sneaking in while the park was closed and said they never saw the dolphins come into the bay to swim. Their opinion was the pod wasn't interested in visiting the bay when there are no swimmers to play with.

The Big Island is strict about staying anchored in the same place for more than 72 hours. We pushed our luck and stayed five days before we moved on.

The base of the Capt. Cook monument. 

Our next stop was Kealakekua Bay, best known as the place where Captain James Cook was killed in 1779. The main attraction to this bay is the Marine Conservation District in the north part of the bay and the monument memorializing the spot Cook died. The bay is rightly famous for its coral heads and many varieties of reef fish.

The first morning we were here, Virginia paddled over to the monument on the kayak. Brandon hung on to the back of the kayak for part of the way and swam part of the way from where we were anchored to the monument, about a mile. The effort was worth it. The coral and reef life near the monument was the most beautiful we have ever seen. Snorkel boats and guided groups of kayakers filled the water, but even that couldn't spoil the splendor of the surroundings.

You can't anchor or land a kayak anywhere in the marine conservation area near the monument, so we took turns: one of us staying with the kayak while the other climbed a badly-corroded steel ladder to view the Cook memorial.

Up to this point we hadn't encountered any other cruising boats in Hawaii, But we did meet an ex-cruiser while anchored at Kealakekua Bay. One afternoon, after returning from visiting the monument, a woman named Gretchen swam up to the boat and introduced herself, She said she cruised the South Pacific for a couple of years about a decade ago. We invited her aboard, handed her a towel, and had a wonderful visit. She now lives nearby Kealakekua, but she was born and raised on Kauai.

We enjoyed two beautiful sunsets and a very protected anchorage in Kealakekua Bay. There was almost no motion at night, almost like being in a marina -- not like most of the other anchorages that are open to waves and swell.

We weren't about to push our luck with the 72-hour rule at this anchorage and only stayed two nights then sailed on.

Sunset at Kailua Kona.

Our next stop was the busy town of Kailua Kona. We anchored just out of the harbor and next to a popular swimming lane. All day local people swam by our boat. Many of the swimmers would stop and visit with us. We enjoyed talking with them and several of them told stories about other boats who anchored without regard for the coral. They were impressed that Brandon always dove on the anchor to make sure it or the chain was not a danger to the coral.

Kailua Kona is the tourist hub of the Big Island and we enjoyed walking around this cute shops and historical sites. We ate some pretty good fish 'n chips at a restaurant with a great view of our boat. We also called our Uber girl, Gigi, and arranged for a Costco run and to pick up other supplies.

At anchor in rolly Kailua Kona.

The anchorage is well known for being one of the most consistently uncomfortable anchorage in the islands. We are pretty tolerant of rolly anchorages and were comfortable for the first four days. Then the wind and waves started coming from different directions and we soon learned why no one stays long in Kailua Bay. We decided to leave the next morning.

Alas, our charmed life turned against us. Our engine didn't want to work well. We messed with it all day and got it to function well enough that we could leave the next morning. It wasn't working perfectly, but we were able to get out of the harbor, put up our sails and head to Nishimura Bay, which is on the north end of the Big Island.

There we would wait for fair winds to cross the Alenuihaha Channel. This small bay had a rock wall and beautiful trees amid big lava rocks. Underwater was beautiful as well with plenty of coral and fish. We wished we had taken a picture but we didn't. The wind howled the two days we were anchored so we didn't dare go ashore or snorkel. We were safe in our little bay: while the water was calm in the anchorage, just outside we watched the white caps and big waves march by.

Short drying time in windy Honomalino Bay.

We finally met another cruising boat. They were a California couple who sailed their Hunter 45 sailboat to Hawaii four years ago. They now keep it in a Honolulu marina for most of the year while they are home in California and cruise the islands for a couple of months in the summer. They were headed to Hana on Maui. The day they left the winds looked wicked.

The U.S. Coast Guard warns the “channel is generally regarded as one of the most treacherous channels in the world because of strong winds and high seas.” The channel creates a venturi effect between two of the world's tallest mountains – on Maui, Haleakala and on Hawaii, Mauna Kea. The current generated by 2000 miles of trade winds is forced to funnel in between the two islands making for a strong current.

Our fair winds showed up the next morning, Aug. 16, and away we went. Like many of our passages, we were told how bad it would be. Once again, nothing evil happened and we actually enjoyed the windy sail to Maui. After all, why have such a great sailboat if you can't have wind to sail? Five hours later we dropped our anchor in a big sand patch at Big Beach on the south end of Maui.

Crossing the Alenuihaha Chanel was a blast!

Riding out DARBY in Honomalino Bay

Oceanus anchored in beautiful Honomalino Bay. The bay could easily accommodate six cruising yachts, but we didn't have to share.

If Honomalino Bay were anywhere else in the United States it would be continually overrun with cruising boats. It has clear beautiful warm water, perfect depth and a sandy bottom for holding an anchor, good protection from prevailing wind and waves, great snorkeling, coconut palms, and a black sand beach. Most days there are only a few beach goers. There were a few fishing boats that came into the bay for an hour or two, but for the most part, the eight days we anchored there we had this gem of a bay to ourselves.

Reticulated butterflyfish in Honomalino Bay. 

We really enjoyed the snorkeling here. The number and variety of reef fish are as good as anywhere we've snorkeled. We saw fish we have been searching for in ten years of Hawaiian vacations: reticulated and saddleback butterfly fishes. Our Hawaiian fish identification book call both of them “very rare” in the islands. I also saw another favorite rare fish, the black morph of the long-nose butterfly fish, a fish we've seen in only one other place.

A saddleback butterflyfish; another rare find in Honomalino Bay.

We felt well protected in this bay and we put it to the test. One day, we motored over to the tiny fishing village of Miloli'i to get water. While there, some people Virginia met talked about the tropical storm Darby about to hit the island. “What storm?” she said. “Oh don't worry,” they said. “Hurricanes and storms never come to the west side because of the volcano.”

We were considering leaving the next day to go north, but after checking the weather we decided Honomalino Bay was the best bay all along the west side to ride out the storm. Darby was expected to make landfall on Saturday but we didn't see much wind. In fact we joked around about how vicious the storm was. We should have kept quiet.

That night Darby did what no one thought he would do, he turned left and blew right over the west side of the island. Right over our heads. At one point all was calm and we smiled until we realized the eye of the storm was right over us. Soon the winds picked up again. The winds probably reached only 45 to 50 knots in the bay, but the boat rolled all night so much we couldn't sleep. During the night the dinghy, which I should have hauled up on deck and stowed upside down in it's chocks, turn sideways, filled with water and banged against the side of the boat.

In the morning, the storm was well north of us heading up the Hawaiian chain. Virginia got two or three hours of sleep, by making a nest of settee cushions on the cabin sole. I stayed in the bunk and didn't sleep at all. At 6:30 a.m., our scuba-diving friend, Garry, called us  to check on us. He said he had never seen the winds blow that much on the west side. Darby was only the fifth named storm the hit the island since the government started keeping records in 1949.

Virginia considers the exotic plant life at the beginning of the trail to Miloli'i.

In spite of Darby, we really enjoyed our time here. Garry and his wife Susan really made our stay enjoyable. Gary drove us to the grocery store and, later, gave us 10 gallons of fresh water. They also let us use a house they own and run as a VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) so we could wash all our dirty clothes and have a real shower. (There were no guests staying in it that day.) Garry also took us scuba diving a couple of times. These are great people! If you want a wonderful scuba vacation experience, check out their VRBO on the big island.

After our morning snorkel one day, we met a young lady on the beach doing her homework. Like most people, she was curious about how we got around and how we got food. We told her we usually walk, sometimes rented a car or used Uber. She volunteered to be our transportation while were were on the Big Island. We called her Gigi our Uber girl. The arrangement worked perfect; she got money and time to study while we did shopping and laundry and our feet got a nice rest. We also found her to be delightful and interesting company.

Most afternoons and evenings, after any beach goers left, we watched as a small herd of goats came down to the bay. They were black with brown markings around their faces and legs and blended well with the black lava-rock cliffs. We would watch them from the boat. They seemed to be as curious about us as we were about them, especially the kids.

Most mornings a small pod of spinner dolphins visited us.

Four of the mornings we anchored in Honomalino a pod of spinner dolphins visited the bay. We would watch from the deck or jump in a swim with them. One morning when we motored out of the bay in our dinghy to meet Garry for a dive, the boat drew the dolphins like a magnet. They escorted us out of the bay jumping and spinning just a yard or two in front of the dinghy.

In addition to our dinghy, Virginia has a sit-on-the-top kayak. It comes in handy for many tasks, like recovering our stern anchor after the rode parted during Darby. Paddling it around is fun too.

We wanted to stay longer, but we needed to get to a place where we could refill our water tanks. We were also eager to see more of the Kona Coast.