fetchinketch

OK, This one is tough.  I’ll give some hints, but first here is the object:

Feel free to click on it and get a full size image.

This was found in a shop on one of the very shi-shi shopping streets in Waikiki.  It was not for sale, it was a tool of the trade.

The shop sold a single type of item that varied in price from $350 to $1500. The proprietor was very proud of this thing, and explained that is was very rare and made by only one old family in Japan.  Since it had a description of what it was clearly printed on it, I had to smear that out to make it a challenge!  I left the manufacturers name  visible just in case somebody is better or more persistent with a web search than I was…

This morning as I was pouring my coffee I hear engines maneuvering a boat in the fairway.  I poke my head up and see a very large (47 feet) catamaran setting up for an approach to the dock in a strong cross wind.  They abort their first landing attempt, and back back out with the skipper making a phone call to the harbor office asking for help to get into the spot they assigned him because it is really tight.  Everywhere else in the world marina staff would jump to help a boat coming in.  After all the last thing they want is for a new customer  to play “bumper boat” as he tries to fit into a slip.

Not here…  The state of Hawaii “can’t accept the liability to help.”

Really???  It seems to me that marina staff SHOULD have a DUTY to help.  They SHOULD be skilled and they are available, and it is THEIR marina.

I know I always get in trouble with my lawyer friends when I say “but it SHOULD be that way.”  Well, it SHOULD be that the marina staff sitting on their hands when somebody asks for help SHOULD incur liability for problems resulting from their inaction. Let’s imagine the courtroom scene for a second…

[Lawyer] What did you do when the skipper threw you that line?

[Marina Staff] Nothing, I can’t accept liability for doing anything.

[Lawyer] You saw the boat drifting toward a collision with the other boat?

[Marina Staff] Yes

[Lawyer] And you did nothing?

[Marina Staff] I can’t take the liability of tying off that line.

[Lawyer] So you let the boat crash?

[Marina Staff]  It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything.

Our dock neighbor who used to manage a marina in the Seattle area just shakes his head…

How did they get in to their spot?  I “incurred the liability” of helping them handle their lines like any sailor, anywhere in the world, would. Just like any responsible marina would help their customers.

<Morning time rant complete.  Back to our regularly scheduled programming!>

Our running joke here has been the weather forecast.  It has been the same every day.  82 or 82 for a high and 72 or 71 for a low. Then the big change-up, with the showers be “scattered”, or “isolated”?

But our forecast has now switched to “winter”. It is still 82 every day, but the forecast lows are all the way down to 65!  Oh! The horror!

I’m betting we aren’t getting much sympathy from the people who are living where there is real winter weather…

First is in the “It’s a small world” category: On Tuesday evening I discovered that I had let the holding tank (where the toilet water goes) fill to the tippy top.  So just as it is getting to sunset I rustle up Karen and we head over to the pump out station.  Nothing exciting, its pretty routine.  As we pull up to the pump-out dock two women are standing there to help catch our lines.  As we tie the boat up and pull in the lines, one of the women looks at me and says, “Bill?”  Turns out it is Anne, a former sailing student of mine who, after sailing around the world, lives on a boat here in the marina.

On the way back to our space we had a less pleasant surprise… I back the boat in toward the spot, and Karen uses the boathook to grab our bow line from the mooring ball. This is way harder than it looks, and she can’t quite get the line picked up.  I pull part way out, and this time I try, but with longer arms and a longer reach, I have no better success.  Now we are getting a bit crooked in the wind, so I pull all the way out into the fairway to set up for a second pass.  The sun has set now, and it is getting quite dark.

As I slowly idle down the fairway getting the boat lined up for another try, the engine stops.  It doesn’t falter, or sputter.  It goes from smooth running idle to absolutely nothing instantly. Hmmm…  we now have what we might call a “situation”.  We are pointed away from our slip, coasting toward a deadend on the dock, with a cross wind, with boats to the left and to the right. Karen gets on the phone and gets in contact with our neighbor to let him know we have a problem and to get his help from the dock.  I am looking for an empty slip I might be able to coast into, but not finding anything. I am trying to figure if I can sail myself out of this problem, but it is such a tight space I am not at all sure I have the turning radius to make it happen.

One thing about diesel engines.  There is almost nothing that causes them to stop that allows them to restart.  Almost always the cause is a problem in fuel delivery.  Almost always. Until you fix the problem, there is no point is trying to start them again.

Running out of options, I figure, what the heck… I turn the key and the engine fires right up.  OK, now I am confused, but I’ll take what I can get.  I start to back up toward our slip keeping everything slow.  I put the boat in forward to slow our backward progress, and the engine stops again.  It starts right back up.  Back close to the dock, I realize that I have reverse gear, but no forward.   To make the boat go forward, I roll out a sail, just long enough to get us moving in the right direction.

Now we are moving toward our slip slowly, downwind.  We have one chance to pick up the line from the mooring ball, which Karen gets on the first try. Our neighbor catches our bow lines, and we are home.  A few deep breathing exercises and a glass of wine, and I am almost relaxed again. We didn’t touch anything we weren’t supposed to touch, and we even looked pretty good in responding to out “situation”.

What happened?  I am not 100% sure yet, but my working hypothesis is we wrapped a line around the propeller.  Anne, (from the first story above) works here at the marina doing underwater maintenance for the boats.  When she gets a chance she’ll be by and have a look… Hopefully a few seconds with a knife and all will be good.

UPDATE:

Sending the waterproof camera over the side of the boat on a pole, shows the problem: That’s the propeller in the lower right of the picture.  And, no, it is NOT supposed to have that big wad of stuff wrapped around it…

Item #1: Is called a “Tuna Missile”  If you  hook a large tuna it is used to bring the fish into the boat without ruining meat by sticking it with a gaff.

The neck opens up, and you slide it over your line.  A heavy line is tied to the missile.  It is then dropped down the line.  When it reaches the fish, the pointy bits close around the head letting you haul the fish onboard without damaging the meat. It is popular with commercial fisherman for whom getting the highest price per pound is critical. There was a fish market in Oakland that I frequented where you could buy fresh tuna steaks for $14 to $18 a pound.  In the next case over were “trimmings” from the same fish for $3 a pound.  Frequently the trimmings were pieces with gaff holes, or other handling bruises. Worth a bit of extra knife work at home for the difference, but you couldn’t send a piece like that to the high end sushi restaurant. https://hiliner.com/product-catalog/gaff-hooks/tuna-missle/

A hint that might help with the second item, is that it is a modification of a traditional Hawaiian lure that was made with a large cowrie shell and a rock as weight instead of a painted egg of lead.

It is an octopus lure.  You lower it down to the bottom, the long pointy legs hold it upright.  In the clear water you watch… When an octopus comes out and grabs the painted part, thinking he has found his dinner, you yank it up, impaling the critter on the sharp upward facing prongs. Presto!  Octopus stew for your dinner!

An excursion today down to Pier 38 which is a central part of the fishing business here.  It is where most of the tuna boats offload their catches, and every morning is the site of the only fresh tuna auction in the United States.  Interesting, but we were there to visit POP, a large supplier to both the recreational and commercial fishing fleets.

A big store with great selection and surprisingly good prices.  If anybody has other fishing stores on Oahu they can recommend, do PLEASE post in the comments section!

But today I do have a quiz.  There were two items we came across for sale that when Karen asked me, “What’s that?” the best I could do was shrug my shoulders.  So her suggestion was that we use her pictures on the blog as another “quick quiz”.  I’ll do the “easy one” first..

First picture is a catalog photo of one ready to use, and the second picture is the one off the store shelf to give you an idea of scale…

Based on it’s name, and it’s location in the store and a close look at it, I did figure this one’s purpose and use.  If it helps, the one in my hand retails for $585.00

The second, I confess had me totally stumped.  I had no idea what it was or what it might be used for. This was in the recreational fishing part of the store. If you had told me they would have something there that would leave me baffled as to its use, I would have laughed…

Karen queried the staff and came back with the answer.  I am holding it in the orientation in which it is used.  To help, under my thumb is a ring to tie a line to, and the short pieces of tubing cover sharp points that would be exposed in use.

I can’t wait to hear your best guesses!  Answers posted here tomorrow…

Normally I try to put things up here that will entertain a broad audience.  I know that most people reading it aren’t going to be very interested by “inside sailing” kinds of stories. Sometimes, I have to make an exception…

“And on the eighth day God created roller furling, and He saw that it was good.” So begins the Book of Jib, a little known book in the Bible, in which God cast His gaze down from the heavens and beheld the labors of the many sailors as they raised and lowered and, with great difficulty, flaked their headsails, always in a grassy area which was supposed to be free of the droppings left by the dogs of Hell but never was found to be so.

God then took pity on the humble workers of the foredeck and inspired His prophets Harken, Schaefer, Hood, and Profurl. To these He gave insight so that they might develop a device that would lessen the burden.

For many years did the men of the sea rejoice at their newfound innovation. But soon they forgot that the miracle of roller furling was a gift from God and instead began to believe it of their own making. They added automatic motors, and applied it to the mainsail as well, which constituted a breech of ancient law, the manual hoisting and lowering of the mainsail being a holy and sacred sacrament.

They furled sails hither and yon, inside the mast or the boom, trying without success to hide the shameful practice from the eyes of God. God, being then displeased with the arrogance of man, jammed the furling units, leaving the sails exposed to the gales, which tore at them and made the sailors cry and gnash their teeth. The sailors brought down their tattered rags from aloft, and with heads hung low did take them to the sail maker, whose prices soared higher than the stars in the firmament. And God laid their checking accounts to waste.

The sailors did then beseech redemption. “From this day forward we shall flake our mainsails and mizzens about their booms like good men!” And God saw that it was good.

Two  weeks ago ( it seems like forever!) I reported our landing of a big mahi-mahi.  At the time I posted I couldn’t post a photo over the satellite link, but now I can:

This fish is everywhere in the tropical oceans, hence it has collected a huge number of names in different languages. The traditional English name is “dolphin”.  When it started showing up on restaurant menus the marketing guys pretty quickly figured out that people might think they were being served Flipper steaks, so they nixed the “dolphin” name and picked up the Hawaiian name, “mahi-mahi”.  In Spainish it’s known as the “dorado”, and “coriphehe” in French.

These fish grow REALLY fast.  One this size is only about a year old.  In the picture it certainly looks a pretty fish, but while still alive, and in the water, the colors are beyond belief.  I could go on trying to describe it, but it’s not possible.  Green, blue and gold that are brighter than they can possibly be with the sun shining on them. Not just bright, but also dynamic, changing and flashing as you watch.

This one met his end biting on that plain cedar plug that has been our “go-to” lure so far.

If you want to go to that spot and catch more, it was at 26 deg 47 min North, 135 deg 34 min West, a little past half way to Hawaii.

[Pictures at the end of the post…]

The Ala Wai Boat Harbor is an interesting place.  It has been here for a long time.  If you have ever seen a Hawaii Marina on a TV show, it was this one.  It featured in Hawaii 5-0 and the S.S. Minnow left from here for her three hour tour.  Like almost all marinas here is is run by the state. The good part is that it is here, and they do welcome transient boats, but you can only stay for 120 days in a calendar year.

The not so good, transient boats are banished to a remote corner of the marina, in what the locals call “Tahitian Docks”, or what the rest of the world would call a Med Moor.  Good part is that they have moorings for your bow so you don’t have to drop an anchor.  The bad part is that the moorings are in such bad shape that in the last few weeks three of them have broken loose.  Also, the mooring buoys do not have permanently installed lines.  You have to use your own, or trust the one that the last boat left behind.  Imagine backing into your slip while your crew has to tie a line to the mooring ball as it goes by…  Ouch… They tell you when you come in that you are in slip 858.  What they don’t tell you is that you can’t see the slip numbers from the water! Really?

The staff is friendly, and helpful in their own way. Being a government operation, they follow the rule book rather than think. We just sailed 2200 miles to get here, and to prove our boat is seaworthy the rules say we have to take it out and round the entrance buoy while they watch. The “new kid” has worked here for three years, and couldn’t tell us where the holding tank pumpout was.  There are 4 people working in the office.  For some reason they ALL have to take lunch from 12 to 1, so the office closes.  Customer service at its finest.

Now for the ugly:  The Ala Wai Canal drains into the back of the marina.  It receives all the stormwater runnoff from Downtown and Waikiki.  There must not be any kind of catchbasins because the amount of trash that drains down is truly awful, and it accumulates in great floating rafts in some of the stagnant corners of the harbor.  I would guess only about half the boats in the slips are seaworthy.  Some of they are truly floating junk piles.

But you know what?  A little of the proper attitude and the good is better than the bad and the ugly.

We are getting adjusted to Island Life.  We are settled into the marina.  Here is the evening view from our deck…

It’s rough but SOMEBODY has to do it!

We have had the price shocks at the grocery store. $7.99 for a gallon of milk (Ouch!), $2.25 for a crappy little head of lettuce and so on.

The marina is nice, mostly.  It has a few “issues” but we have nice neighbors so all seems good.

So far our exploring has been limited to the urban environment around Waikiki as we try to find necessities within walking distance.

There are some boat projects we want to get done. It’s so different from San Diego where there were boat suppliers around every corner.  Here we have to plan ahead and any trip to the store is a project in and of itself.  Fortunately, Amazon delivers, and one of our first projects was to set up a local mailbox so we can get deliveries.