Safely anchored in Nishimura Bay
Nishimura Bay is located about 12 miles north of Kawaihae Harbor, and it’s primarily used as a jumping off point for crossing the ‘Alenuihaha Channel. It’s less of a bay and more of a small notch between a couple of rock outcroppings, but it does feature a decent-sized area of sand (with good anchor holding) in between the rocks and coral heads.
That sandy bottom turned out to be a great feature, because we pulled up to Nishimura Bay right during the peak of the afternoon reinforcement of the tradewinds. By the time we arrived, the wind was a steady 30-35 knots with gusts between 35 and 40.
Sunset over the ‘Alenuihaha Channel
With wind like that, it’s difficult to position the bow of the boat exactly where we’d like when dropping the anchor. But Angie did a fantastic job of picking exactly the right spot in the sand patch, we quickly dropped the anchor and just enough chain to not rub on the coral at the edge of the sand, and the wind did all the work of setting the anchor for us.
Despite the howling winds, Nishimura Bay actually turned out to be a nice anchor spot.
