From Maui we spent a couple of nights at Molokai before continuing on to Oahu. Erika’s BFF Joanie was flying in to meet us there, and our mutual friend David is clerking for a year in Honolulu, so it was going to be another week of family visits. We made our way to Kaneohe Bay, one of the few cruising yachts we saw there. Such a lovely place we really don’t understand why most people go to the Honolulu side of the island – it’s only a short bus ride away if you need to be there, but otherwise you can spend a very pleasant week exploring the Bay with shallow water, nice swimming, and interesting reefs to snorkel.
We didn’t know if we’d be able to keep the tight schedule between Maui and Oahu, so as a backstop David had arranged a hotel room for Joanie’s first night in town. We did get there in time, but a clean room with hot showers and free high-speed internet was too good to pass up, so we made our way to Honolulu on the bus and crashed Joanie’s party.
Being downtown meant the obligatory breakfast out on the town.
A day in Honolulu was about enough, we headed back to Kaneohe Bay and boat for the rest of Joanie’s visit.
We spent a day or so in Kaneohe running errands and provisioning for our next passage. Not too exciting for Joanie, but she knew coming in that we had some work to do. When the weekend arrived David was able to get some time off of work and joined us for a cruise of Kaneohe Bay.
We spent our first afternoon at “The Sandbar”, the local hotspot for boating. In fact, so hot a spot that the county has banned alcohol on any three-day weekend. Fortunately it was only a two-day weekend for us, so beers were in order. After a pleasant afternoon of swimming and snorkeling (David gave those fins a workout) we headed up to Secret Beach for the night.
The next day we had a rousing sail back to KYC. Alas, our time in Hawaii visiting with friends and family had to come to end, so too our time in the tropics. Joanie left to head back to the mainland and the next morning we hoisted the anchor and headed for the cold and fog of Alaska (what were we thinking?).
