Perhaps some of you could come up with one:
I arrived in Honolulu early afternoon, after a 10 hour flight from Chicago. Clearing immigration and customs I ventured out to the arrival promenade. It was a broad and wide boulevard that was sheltered by a translucent canopy of tropical plants and banyan -like ferns that dropped away from the hot and high noon tropical sun. Immediately I sensed from my surroundings that I was awash in the tropical greens, blues and turquoise hues of this tropical isle. The air smelled of a sweet scented and natural perfume and nectar while a warm tropical breeze seemed to embrace the psyche. You could almost feel the tension of a hard northern winter ease itself out of every pore of your body.
Calling a cab I travelled down the Nimitz Highway. Only in America – an eight lane highway in the middle of Paradise, through Honolulu, the waterfront, harbour, Aloha Tower, Ala Moana district with its large seaside park and huge but modern outdoor mall then into the concrete canyons of the Waikiki tourist district with its wide Kalakauwa Boulevard, Sky-scraping hotels, vistas, gawdy bars, tacky shops, pizza joints and squawker’s dens with Diamond Head in the far background maintaining its everlasting watch over Waikiki. It was all too surreal for someone like me who had just arrived from the cold arctic wasteland of the Great White North in a way among the towering palms, lagoon and sand of Waikiki. Turning suddenly into a parking lot adjacent to the Ilikai hotel we came to a stop. This was it. I paid the fare, got out and surveyed my surroundings. A yacht harbour, the Ala Wai, with its accompanying Ala Moana Yacht Club.
Krofune lay at berth G35 at the Ala Moana Yacht Club, Waikiki, Honolulu Hawaii in the Ala Wai Harbour. She seemed somewhat tired looking from her long and laborious 19 day jaunt from Vancouver to Oaha. Her 35 foot wooden frame and lines of stripped mahogany clinkered planks, painted white, seemed worn and somewhat riddled through with expansion cracks, flaking paint, opened joints and waterlogged seams. She seemed to me to lay there at G35 in a forlorn, abandoned, and unpretentious state, in somewhat of a sad and lonely profile, feeling out of place among the 40, 50, and 60 foot sailing yachts of the Ala Wei Harbour and Yacht Club. Those sleek, modern and expensive yachts seemed to overpower and intimidate Krofune as she lay there unattended in her 35 foot berth. It was as if that 1900 nautical mile sail from Vancouver had been but a bad dream robbing her and draining her of all of her energy and power. She looked tired, forlorn and beat.
Krofune had had a mad capped crew on that trek. My brother-in-law, Sid, the owner; a Brit, who was professional sailor named Nigel, hired by Sid for his professional nautical acumen; Nigel’s useless tit of a girlfriend, and a couple of other hangers on who knew nothing about sailing but much about the stoner life. Useless! And, to make matter worse, Sid suffered from chronic case of sea sickness. And while he loved sailing dearly and always dreamed of taking Krofune home to Japan, all of his sailing experience to date had been in relatively sheltered waters. The open Pacific was much less welcoming and forgiving for someone like Sid who was prone to the sea malady and was always in a constant state of heaving. Alas for Sid, the dream of sailing to Japan was not to be. He decided at Honolulu to call it quits
Most sailors do get sea sick. If they say that they don’t they’re bullshitting. But most sailors get over the motions sickness fairly quickly and adjust and adapt to the fluid environment. They get their sea legs. But some, like Sid, never get over it. So it was that Sid had to abandon this venture. His vision of coming home like some prodigal sailor’s son came crashing down on him like a tsunami drowning his dream. He asked Nigel to carry on with Krofune from Hawaii, and to sail her to her new home in Nagoya Japan.
Tits had left and the other two stoners flew back to CONUS – literally and figuratively.
And that’s where I came in. Nigel and I would take Krofune to Japan!
Love this song. RIP Leslie West, lead guitarist for Mountain. Their only real hit but a doozy.
Those were the days my friend.
SJ……….Out
