Why not sail down to French Polynesia once again? Like I did a dozen years ago with Pam aboard s/v Pamela.
Answer: because it’s a hell of a long way, 3000 nautical miles, a month of sailing to get to the Marquesas Islands, and two more months getting back home going north past Hawaii and nearly as far north as British Columbia, before finally getting around the great Pacific High and clawing my way back to California. And across the equator twice, with it’s incessant squalls followed by windless doldrums, so hot that you throw all your clothes overboard in a tropical tantrum.
And furthermore, now everything is different. I’m an old fart, a boomeranging boomer. I’m not the same Johnny Depp I used to be. And I would go solo this time.
On the other hand, if I don’t do it, I will always regret it. But if I do it, I will never regret it.
Simple enough, let’s go.
So here I am. Back in Hiva Oa, listening to the evening doves over the distant roar of surf, under the lee of Mt. Temetiu rising nearly a mile over the beach, just down the hill from the old bones of Paul Gauguin a-moldering in the ferrous clay.
A Voyage To Hanalei is a mini-series about rediscovery, being Peter Pan for a season, 60 and solo. It will open up your eyes to what’s going on in the distant land of Kauai, Hawaii. There’s a spirit alive there, and the flooding that occurred there in April, the most severe in living memory, has tended to rekindle that spirit.
It is a separatist spirit. Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian islands and the furthest west. If you’re sailing there you had better make your landfall cleanly, for if you miss it by only ten miles you’ll be sailing on to Midway, Guam, or Japan. Hanalei is the last town as you follow the road west. At the end of the road you will find Wainiha and Ha’ena, a wild region, the last frontier on the last island of the Hawaiian chain.
A voyage to Hanalei is like no other. Your heart breaks wide open when you see the fringing beach with its surf breaks, the taro fields at the base of the mountains, and the peaks of Wai’ale’ale pouring down waterfalls several thousand feet high.
Why grow up when you can grow old in Hanalei? I want to stroll along the beach with a Zen-like half smile, treading the sand yet transcending above it. I want to be in harmony with a cosmic vibration several frequencies beyond the daily hustle. With no possessions other than a shell necklace and Robinson Crusoe pants. Utterly happy where I happen to be.
Na Pali coast, rugged and isolated
Check back with me in a few years and I’ll be a skinny Methusalah with long white hair and beard tied in a knot. I’m looking forward to it. It’s not a bad closing chapter.
I want to sail back here in two years to see if Steve is still standing under the Tree, bent like Kokopelli and staring out at the waves. I want to get here exactly four weeks before the 2020 Singlehanded Transpacific Yacht Race from San Francisco to Hanalei, to start chilling ahead of the curve. Would you like to come with me?
Will Captain Spencer, the twenty-something tour boat daredevil, still be driving his zodiac full-throttle into the Na Pali sea caves? Will Kevin still be stabbing away at his broken guitar in the beach pavilion? Will Sid and Samaritan’s Purse be patching up a flood or hurricane, or be long gone elsewhere in the deep south, maybe Texas or South Carolina, chainsawing their way through another natural disaster?
And the 2020 Singlehanded Transpac Race Committee: will Synthia be clutching the wheel of the Sea Squirrel with Jackie and Christine bouncing about and holding fast to the gunwales? Will Carliane attempt her second solo Transpac race? Will Nightmare Greg punish himself in his microscopic cockpit to make it to Hanalei in twelve days, then sail solo upwind to the California foothills?
I don’t know if any of these things will be there in two years. Better to go flat out in the present moment.
