Swimming With the Hokulea

  Amazing as it may seem, we almost missed the Hokulea during its' Mahalo Tour stop over at the Kailua Kona Pier.  Hokulea is a 76 foot catamaran with Polynesian-style lateen rigged tan bark sails redolent of craft that the native Hawaiians sailed prior to contact with western civilization.

Hokulea rests quietly by the pier Friday evening.

    Had my son, Charles, not texted us an Instagram  picture of the Hokulea tied up to the pier, we very well might not have known.  As Hokulea has been in Kona since Monday, you might ask  "How can this be?"

   First, I have been swimming at the pier one day this week, on Wednesday.  If you live in Kona, or you are a faithful reader of the blog, you will know that Wednesday is the day that the Carnival cruise ship comes to Kona.  So on the day I snorkeled the pier, the Hokulea moved up the coast to Honokohau.  Nobody at the pier, before or after my swim mentioned the voyaging canoe.  And the glad handers that meet the sea going Carnival rats were not offering taxi service out to the Honokohau marina for a look at the famous (at least here in Hawaii) craft.  How

could they take a pass on such an opportunity? 

Hula Keikis and Moms Waiting for the Hokulea

    I will parenthetically note that on that swim I didn't see diddly in the way of interesting marine life.  However, coming ashore I did see Flipper.  This was not the trained dolphin of TV fame, but a young lady of 20 or so.  Fit and trim in a black sports two piece, she took a run at the sea wall and did a back flip onto the sand. If only she had told me what was coming,  I would have taken a movie of this athletic, latter day Donald O'Connor.

    But wait! We have yet another excuse.  A moderate amount of our social contact with the village involves the Hawaii Public Library down on Hualalai Street.  Perhaps you will recall our prior observation that these librarians get as many holidays as the Pentecostal Russians that live in Woodburn, Oregon.  In this instance, in a seven day period they received two paid holidays, one for

Whitemouth Moray Lunges at your Faithful Correspondent

Prince Kuhio Day and one for Good Friday.  Hence, the library was only open three days this week.  And one of those was Wednesday.  So we didn't make it in to kibitz with our friendly librarians.  Surely one of them would have asked, "Have you been aboard the Hokolea?"

   On the other hand, we did drink a lot of Hawaiian punch on Prince Kuhio Day.   Don't try that at home.  You wake up with your head feeling like a coconut and every time you move you hear the coconut water sloshing back and forth inside.

   So thank goodness for Charles.  Following Jeopardy last night (the only state admitted during the Grant administration was Colorado, the Centennial State) we motored down to the pier, took a few pictures of the sailing canoe, made friends with the security guard and ascertained that Hokulea would still be there this morning.

    Which brings us up to date.  It was a warm, sultry morning in Kona, the air so thick you could cut

Is it a Juvenile Spectacled Parrotfish?

it with a canoe paddle.  The Hokulea was right where we left her, tied up to the pier in the area used by the cruise ship tenders.  Thanks to the Department of Homeland Security, this area has a fine eight foot security fence, the better to keep Mexicans and Iranians from sneaking in to Kona, which, somewhat to the embarrassment of the Hawaiian community, is still part of Donald Trump's United States.

    While I was putting on my snorkeling gear a contingent of white keikis under the control of their ha'ole maternal units filed by.  One and all were wearing black Ts celebrating the hula.  The inscription was in Hawaiian, wouldn't you know, so I am unable to tell you exactly what it said. 

    Bidding the hula-ettes Aloha, I plunged into the cool clear water.  Almost immediately, I saw a very large whitemouth moray hunting.  he curtailed his free swim and curled into a nearby coral

Badgered Bigeye Bugs Out

head.  I waited for him to come out, but all he did was look at me from his refuge.  Determined to get a shot, I put the camera on macro, which doubles as a telephoto, and dove down for a handhold about three feet away.  Just as I got my grip, the moray lunged at me.  Simultaneously I snapped a picture.

   I wasn't especially worried, as this is, by reputation, not an aggressive species.  A bit further on, I saw a six inch segment of a classic dark chocolate undulated moray in a coral a couple feet down.  This species is renowned for its aggression, but lucky for me, this guy was taking a nap.

   It being relatively early in the morning, I was hoping for an octopus.  There were no cephalopods to be seen, but out by the fourth swim buoy I spied an unusual juvenile parrot.  We will wait for our diligent fish wallah, Peter Kroppje to bless our identification, but it is at least possible that this dull

Raise the sails!

fellow with the yellowish tail is a juvenile spectacled parrotfish...a very unusual species for Kailua Kona. I found a bigeye hiding under a coral.  My efforts for a photograph were sufficiently aggressive ( perhaps I took a lesson from Mr. Whitemouth) as I chased the bigeye into the open for a quick shot.

    Of course the swim was mostly taken as a chance to get pictures of the voyaging canoe from the water.  While I was swimming, the crew raised both sails and we got a few pictures which I hope you enjoy.

    As I got out, a troop of hula dancers filed by.  Sandra was all over the dancers, who were involved in a ceremony to bless the canoe.  Luckily I finished changing before the beginning of the ceremony.  Sandra and I listened to the chanter chant, the dancers responding  in their inscrutable tongue and watched them dance a bit. 

Both of them!

   For those of you who don't live in Hawaii, you may be unaware of the movement to reestablish the Hawaiian kingdom.  Both the hula and the voyaging canoe Hokulea are symbols, to those who claim
Hawaiian heritage, of  this movement.  For those of us who are on the ground here in the 50th state, we have noticed a difference in civic attitude in the last couple of years.

     One might reasonably wonder just which point in history the Hawaiians would like to return to.  I would love to write you a brief history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, but it is clearly beyond the scope of this blog.  Sandalwood, smallpox, syphilis, two strong Christian women (Ka'ahumanu and Kina'u) and a succession of feckless kings saw the Hawaiian population drop from 400,000 to 40,000 in only 50 years.  By 1840 political control had passed to the unscrupulous businessmen who were the sons
of the original missionaries.

The Flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii Movement

    In an amazing turn around, fueled in large part by the native race mixing with other ethnic groups, native Hawaiians have rebounded.  If one includes these mixed race people, the number of Hawaiians in the state is estimated to be between 145,000 and 289,00. (I realize that is a huge difference of opinion, but this is Hawaii, where facts are up for grabs.) In the United States as a whole the population of mixed race Hawaiians may be as high as 560,000.  (The population of our state is currently 1,400,000.)  The survival of native Hawaiian blood appears to be guaranteed.  All of us who live here are grateful for this and hope that our community continues to live in harmony.

     Enough about demographics and the Kingdom Movement.

Hula Dancers in Fancy Dresses Bless the Hokulea

     Due in part to their intimate contact with the sea and the vast separation of the Hawaiian archipelago from any other major island group, those stone age people were able to navigate using the sun, moon and stars, and their knowledge prevailing winds and currents.  For several centuries prior to the arrival of Cook, Hawaiians were sailing regularly to the islands we now call French Polynesia,  2,600 miles as the crow flies.  The current crew has navigated the Pacific for three years without power or modern navigational devices, like GPS.

    So hats off to the crew of Hokulea and the boat herself.  And while were at it, let's raise a glass of Hawaiian punch to the  the population of the 50th state, the most diverse of them all.

jeff