Kawaihae Harbor

Visiting the site of Captain Cook’s first (and last) landing in Hawaii was a fantastic experience.  What was not so fantastic, however, were the anchoring conditions.   All of Kealakekua Bay is a marine conservation area, and there is only a sliver of it that is available for anchoring.  Unfortunately, that sliver is not the part that is protected from the wind-generated waves.  When the wind dies in the evening, the boat tends to lie sideways to those waves – the result is a rolling boat and less-than-comfortable sleeping conditions.

So, we were very happy to find the protected anchorage at Kawaihae Small Boat Harbor.  The main part of the harbor is the primary commercial port for the Kona side of the Big Island.  On the south side of the commercial port, a breakwater was built for a small boat harbor.  Because of budget issues, the small boat harbor only looks half developed.  While that’s not great for local boaters, it worked out well for us because there was a large part of the protected inner harbor where we could anchor.  Finally, flat conditions at night for sleeping!

While Kawaihae is not really a town, there are a few shops and restaurants located near a T in the nearby road.  And easy one mile walk – about half on a closed road, and the other half along the side of the local highway – took us there, and Madrone’s crew were happy to have someone else cook and clean for a change.

Even closer than the restaurants and shops was the Pu’ukohola heiau. Kawaihae is a longstanding site of Hawaiian royal villages – back when Kamehameha was only the ruler of the Big Island it was prophesied that if someone built a heiau on the hill overlooking the village, they would become the ruler of all of the Hawaiian Islands.  Kamehameha had the heiau built (and rumor has it that he actually worked on it personally, as well), and sure enough the prophecy came to fruition.