Surprises en route to Big Island

Steering the double-hulled canoe opens possibilities

A fisherman, shirtless and sunbaked, took a break from casting off the slender concrete dock. He grabbed the braided nylon line tied to the bow of our starboard-side hull and walked along the pier until he was ready to sling us stern-first into the glistening turquoise water of Puako Bay. I sat, a bull rider waiting for the gate to open. Sweat rained down my forearms, threatening to rinse away my sunscreen.

“OK. Grab the paddle in front of you,” Kiko said, jabbing his finger in its direction.

“Kau warned you that I’ve never paddled a

waa, right?” I asked. “Yeah, he told me. Now start pulling us away from the pier.”

Moments earlier, I had received an invitation from my new friend, Kau, to go out on his father’s “boat.” When I arrived at the Puako boat harbor on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island, it was clear that the term “boat” was a bit of a misnomer.

It was a 28-foot, canary yellow and mahogany waa kaulua —a traditional double-hulled Polynesian sailing canoe. The wooden deck rested on four iako — crossbeams lashed to the two hulls to form a single sailing craft. A 15-foot mast, holding a bambooframed sail, rose from the deck. The ancient Polynesians conducted island-scouting voyages across thousands of miles of open water in vessels built on the same template as this one.

The plan was to sail north along the South Kohala Coast to Pelekane Beach, underneath Puukohola Heiau — a temple constructed by King Kamehameha in order to fulfill a prophecy that the Hawaiian Islands would be united into one kingdom.

With only four people onboard, the boat was less than half full — which meant there were six fewer people to paddle the giant canoe. Just as it felt impossible to paddle another stroke — after what seemed like miles but was better measured in yards — the sail flapped to life and caught the onshore wind like an airplane lifting off the ground. The sound of my surging heart was replaced with white noise of water lapping along the hulls of the boat. In Hawaiian culture,

mana is a spiritual life force, and I watched as it seemed to surge through Kiko with the opening of the sail. Kiko’s mana silently sang, and the boat seemed to become a part of his body as he walked the sailing canoe above chomping water and over shallow reef.

Using a steering paddle, Kiko guided the boat’s bow through narrow keyholes in the reef, threading through treacherous blocks of daggered chocolate lava that waited just below the surface — making what looked like an impassable route possible.

Pairing the paddle and the wind, Kiko swung the bow into a tack — sailing at angles upwind — pointing the boat toward open sea.

Once Kiko delivered the boat beyond the jagged lava-rock point on the north end of Puako Bay, he offered me a turn at the paddle, a chance to steer the waa kaulua.

I crawled across the deck, took the steersman seat in the rear of the portside hull and jammed the steering paddle into the flowing sea. My muscles heaved as I wrestled the paddle into its resting spot on the side of the hull.

“Pull the paddle up, and the bow will swing into the wind,” Kiko said. “Push it down and the bow will swing away from the wind.”

Under my inexperienced hand, the vessel swayed like a drunken tourist.

“It takes a little while to get used to,” Kau said, trying to be encouraging.

After 30 minutes of sweat raining from my face, Kiko took back the paddle and brought us into the half-mile-long crescent-shaped Kaunaoa Bay, home of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel.

Fifty yards from shore, Kau tossed the anchor from the bow of the boat. Kiko plunged into the deep blue, followed by Kau and his girlfriend, Jessica. We swam to shore past resort guests — bobbing in the bath-warm water — who appeared curious about the ancient-looking craft.

After downing icy chocolate milk shakes from the beachside bar, we made a leisurely swim back to the boat, where, while drying off, I mentioned “Kon Tiki,” a book that logged an account of an experimental sail aboard an ancient craft through Polynesia.

“M-hmm, I’ve heard of that,” Kau said. “But have you heard of the book that started it all?”

He talked about “Alone on the Pacific,” a memoir that detailed a voyage from Japan to San Francisco by a lone 17-year-old Japanese boy aboard a craft built mostly from plywood. It had inspired Kiko to choose a life of boat building. Indirectly, it had made today possible.

“If you want to read the original, it’s called ‘Doko Ga,’ ” Kiko said, smiling.

I laughed. “I can’t read Japanese.” “Not yet,” he said. As the mainsail unfurled and spread to life, we set sail from Kaunaoa Bay and headed toward our final destination of Pelekane Beach at Puukohola. I watched water race underneath the deck and along the hulls, and my mind spun around Kiko’s response. “Not yet.” He meant: Anything is possible. Before Kau’s invitation, I never imagined that I would paddle aboard a Polynesian double-hulled canoe, much less steer one. Some of the best possibilities are surprises.

Somewhere deep, deep below, the goldenbottomed bay slid along like a linear timepiece and as I watched it pass, I was grateful for the surprise.