Kaneohe Bay Anchorages and Marina’s
Wow,,, an entire week on the “Non-Tourist” side of Oahu, Hawaii, exploring Kaneohe Bay to chill out and look over the Marina’s and navigation through K-Bay. I’m thrilled that we explored it with our personal tour guide (great friend of ours) the entire week (and found at least one micro-brewery in the process). Not only did we get to see the bay from the mountains, we were able to explore the entire thing most of the way around by car, get into the bay on a boat and into some of the shallower areas on paddle boards. If you’re going on a boat (especially for Pacific Cup 2016); (it’s beyond gorgeous), it’s shallow in a lot of places and won’t be fun or wise to navigate at night and there’s ALOT of life in the bay. In May and June, it’s Hammerhead Shark Mating and Birthing season,,,but we didn’t see any or have much fear of them. But we did see LOTS of turtles in one area that our crack tour guides knew about and we were able to see lots of life on the reefs. In fact, our friends who scuba dive on a regular basis were very clear in saying they may have seen more life on the reefs of K-Bay than they had seen on a few of their scuba dives. I was pretty happy to hear this, since I missed the scuba diving to babysit,,,,i.e.: “parent” so my girlfriend could scuba dive trip with our friends.
K-Bay has an entrance on the north side of the bay just down from the small island called ChinaMan’s Hat; but from there it’s going to be a spectacular trip by sailboat through the bay toward several anchorages and marina’s there. With a chart/chartplotter and a sharp-eyed lookout, most sailboats probably won’t have too much trouble navigating the bay, as we were able to easily spot the islets just underwater, even while the tide was up. When the tide is down, many of the islets turn into sandbars that both locals and tourists flock to in good weather. Tourists are herded on and off the cattle boats to wade in the shallow water for their photo ops,,,while locals show up to teach their kids to swim or snorkel. The most inventive are those who show up at the lowest tide and barbecue right on the sandbar as the tide comes through, carefully timing their fun. I like this- K-Bay is well protected, but wind coming through may kick up some wind waves,,,there is wind, especially in the afternoons. There were lots of clouds on this trip, but it literally rained on the mountains and although overcast, we were able to snorkel and paddle board with nary a drop of rain on the bay. I was able to find two small Marina’s on K-Bay Kaneohe Bay Yachtclub/Marina and He’era Kea Marina where the the tourist boats operate out of. Both are fairly small with Kaneohe Bay Yachtclub being the largest with the most services, and both have good anchorages off them, but some shallows in the area. The internet says there’s a third one called Makani Kai Marina, but I didn’t find it or see it, unless you count the one mast next to a house that I did see, a catamaran.
Yes, I would LOVE to do the Pacific Cup someday but San Francisco is a bitch to get to from Southern California by boat and it’s cold,,,but this is where I’d come if we ever make it to Hawaii from the South Pacific. I think renting a car would be easy and the town of K-Bay and Kailua have all the modern shopping, malls, and restaurants you need,,,and one MICRO-BREWERY, besides Kona Brewing Company on the tourist side. I also like this place because if you get to know the locals,,,they make a MEAN Mai-Tai with kick, let your kids play in their swimming pool (ocean shallow enough 500 yards offshore for a 4-year old to play in) and just let you show up and grab paddle boards from their garage. Pretty Kewl
More about the other marina’s I spotted in the next post and some pics.
