Sailing across to Lanai was so nice, we decided to zip back across the channel to Molokai. Hale o Lono is an abandoned man-made harbor on the west side of Molokai, and a calm sand-bottom anchorage and miles of deserted sandy beach are your rewards once you make it in through the narrow, shallow entrance.
Angie deploying her fishing handline
Like clockwork, the morning sun brought the 20 knot breeze from the east. We enjoyed a brisk beam reach back across Kalohi Channel to Molokai.
When we arrived outside of Hale o Lono, we slowed down to have a look at the entrance channel. The south swell that made the water cloudy at The Needles had built overnight, and the shallow water of the entrance meant that the swell of the open ocean turned into waves in the channel.
The waves were breaking on the jetties on each side of the channel. And although the break didn’t yet extend into the actual entrance channel, the back side of the waves looked like they weren’t far from starting to break.
Ilio Point Anchorage
After watching the entrance for 5-10 minutes, both Mike and Angie concluded that we would probably make it in OK. But “probably” is not good enough when entering a new remote spot, and we unfortunately had to resort to Plan B – Ilio Point, on the northwest corner of Molokai.
Ilio Point is an unbelievably scenic spot, but the bottom is a mix of hardpan (a couple of inches of sand over rock) and coral. We dropped the anchor and then let out almost twice as much chain as normal for that depth to guard against dragging our anchor. Our only solace was that if we did end up dragging, the offshore wind meant that we’d have about 2500 miles of sea room before we ran into any other land!
Madrone at anchor below Ilio Point, Molokai
The reason for our extra care was the wind – we thought Nishimura Bay was a windy spot, but Ilio Point at least ties it. We had 25+ knot tradewinds accelerating around the point, and we took the unusual step of leaving the chartplotter on all night so that we could be sure that we hadn’t moved.
Sunrise over Molokai
This anchorage pretty neatly captures the essence of cruising in Hawaii – beautiful scenery, powerful winds, and marginal anchoring conditions.
