August 17, 2014

Funny how things always come about. In July, I went on a hike with some co-workers. I remember talking to Damian about his boat. He mentions he goes sailing very so often in Kaneohe Bay. He also asked if my family would want to join him one day. I told him okay.

Damian is a man of his word. I think that conversation stayed with him until now. He called me early in the week to see if I would want my family to join him on a sailing adventure to the Kaneohe Sandbar. Of course I said yes. This would be a good opportunity for me and my family as we really haven't done too much on the weekends recently.

Unfortunately as the weekend approached, Michelle caught a cold and couldn't go. As I prepped the night before, I thought to myself, I don't really know how to prep for a sailing trip. The most obvious provisions I needed to bring escaped my mind. I guess I've been real busy at work and its affecting the way I'm thinking. Instead of letting the madness get to me, I decided to get a good nights rest and prep in the morning.

In the morning, I made the lunches and packed the supplies, still uncertain if I was bringing all the correct provisions. I got the kids ready and we drove to the Kokokahi YMCA. This YMCA is a little different than the other YMCA's as they appear to have cabins which makes me think if I were to ever join, I could get access to sleep in these cabins. We met Damian and his friend Dave near the shoreline. Dave was Damian's first mate and I would find out that having a first mate is very important when sailing.

Prepping the boat took some time as we had to uncover a lot of covers tied to the boat. We also had to empty the hull of water. We lifted the boat and the water drained, it took about 10 minutes to drain. In the meantime, Damian checked the lines and sails to see if they were in good working order. Once that was completed, we had to lift the boat on the wheels. It took some muscle, but eventually we wheeled out to the shoreline.

Getting the boat in the water and getting it ready to sail takes effort. Someone had to hold it (so it wouldn't sail away), the other person had to make the adjustments on the sail. And then we had to jump on quickly. The first 10 minutes is exhilarating! The wind just does its job. Damian was steering the boat via this rod. He was teaching Dave how to adjust the sail to maximize or minimize the speed of the boat.

I think it took us 1 hour to get to the sandbar. All the boats were coming and anchoring. Malia and Jared jumped out of the water. Such a cool experience to be at the sandbar. The water is not even waist high. What surprised me was how big the area was. Damian said he takes a bbq there and cooks some lunch. I blew up my inflatable (River Run), tied it up to the boat with a rope and the kids floated. They were having so much fun. Rains threatened, but only sporadic. The experience was once in a lifetime. We ate lunch, sandwiches I made. After about 1 hour, Damian wanted to take us to deeper waters, so my kids could jump off the boat. I asked Malia to jump off first, but Malia wanted me to be the guinea pig. I did. Seeing that I didn't die, Malia followed suit. She kept on jumping off until she got tired.

After the deep water diving, Damian wanted to take us to turtle reef just off shore probably near the Waiahole/Waikane area. We only saw 1 turtle and decided to bail on the idea. About 2 miles away was Chinaman's hat. That would be so cool to sail there one day, but we didn't have enough time.

We headed back. The rains came and it somewhat cold. That was short lived as we encountered another problem. The wind stopped all of a sudden and we couldn't do anything. We waited for about 10 minutes, and then this gust of wind propelled us forward making the sailboat go really fast. Damian and Dave worked hard adjusting the sail so we wouldn't be out of control. We had to avoid the reefs in the area which was hard to do because there were so much. But after about 1 hour we got back to the YMCA shoreline and brought the boat ashore, packed it up and said our goodbyes.

This was a lot of fun. I'm not an ocean person, but the experience is top notch. My next boating experience would be on a jet ski. I want to just do some amazing speed on the jet ski.