Big Island - Maui
Big Island - Maui in Google Maps (Webbrowser) and in Google Earth (separate application)
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I had a wonderful Christmas back home in Switzerland. I was able to connect with family and friends. I went on a off-road snowboard tour, went to see the Spengler Cup ice hockey tournament, snowboarding with my God child and to celebrate New Year’s eve on the historic Kappel bridge in Lucerne. Such, I could not only spend time with friends but could also create new memories. Early January also brought two novelties of my circumnavigation: My first speech in the class of my other God child and my first magazine article ‘Auszeit unter Segel
’ (in German and French).
Returning to Big Island I am making the last preparations to launch Blue Bie. Ron, his team and I are quickly ready, but have to wait for the big swell to settle before I could safely pass the harbor entry. Welcome back to real life! Setting sail after a long time on land is always an absolutely liberating feeling and I never feel as free as in this moment. Soon I am connecting again with my friends on Big Island: Kalani, the captain of a Polynesian catamaran, the Andersen’s, who live in the most beautiful house right at the pier, Cartlon and Peggy, who have a most wonderful sense of humour and homepage
, Dick, who runs a medical clinic and a small coffee farm and wants to sail around the world in an Outremer and Melissa and Rhonda, who run the Kona Coffee Outlet, a magnificient coffee boutique. Thanks to Dick, Melissa, Rhonda I will not have to go without coffee for a long, long time. I have never made so many good friends on land as in Kailua-Kona and I could have stayed much longer.
You would think that Moni and I have missed each other more after being separate for more than a month, but we feel confined and not happy together upon our return to Blue Bie. At least we both feel the same and we decide to go separate ways. As much as we love each other, we are just too different in everyday life.
So a new stage of my journey starts when I sail single-handedly from Big Island to neighboring island of Maui overnight. What a start it was: I hear humpback whales singing and blowing at night. Blowing? It sounds more like an elephant snorting. I am a bit scared, but they keep their distance. Hana, my first anchorage on Maui feels like the end of the world and more like an alpine than a Hawaiian village. It can only be reached via the famous ‘road to Hana’ a never-ending twisting road along the ocean and passing many beautiful waterfalls. On the way from Hana to the Maui’s capital Kahului, I am sailing along many waterfalls and later some of the most famous windsurf beaches in the world: Hookipa and Spreckelsville. What first looks like a motor boat jumping over waves turns out to be a humpback whale breaching regularly and eventually very close to Blue Bie. It is majestic to see these 40 ton, 45 foot animals breach. 10’000 humpback whales migrate every year from Alaska, where the feed, to Hawaii, where they breed and give birth 11½ months later.
Sailing along the beautiful beaches under the slope of Haleakala, I kind of decide that I want to live here on day. This feeling fortifies later, when I visit Kahului. Maui is one of the very few déjà-vu of my journey. I have been here twice before on windsurf holidays and very quickly get my bearings again.
