Ethel tried to kill us today.

                     
Sure - this picture doesn't show us near death. It looks like we're happy. But don't let the smiles fool you - these are three people who know that they are in trouble.
 
This picture was taken on North Mokuloa Island, off of Lanikai Beach - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The day started off pleasant enough - we got the kayaks and gear and headed up river (no current - low tide) just to get the feel for the equipment, then turned around and headed out to sea (Our route reads out in Gmaps as 5.35 miles, but that's not counting all of the lefts and rights (and, Lord knows, the ups and downs).

After relaunching on the beach, we paddled from Kailua Beach Park out to Flat Island, which is an island that is, well, flat. It's a bird sanctuary (yes, I couldn't help it - I walked around dragging one foot and moaning "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!") that is the first stop for most any kayaker heading out from Kailua.

As I said, Flat Island is FLAT:

                                        f

Just a few minutes out of the beach park, two things became apparent -

1) Paddling an ocean kayak into the wind, into the surf, is NOT the same as paddling up and down a river, and
2) Silas shows the same propensity for kayaking that he shows for most anything else aquatic - he immediately seemed proficient and at ease in the kayak.

(Silas is quite the anomaly - his body grew too fast, and he hasn't caught up with it yet, so he still walks and moves like a Lummox on land; but go snorkling with him, and it's hard to imagine that it's the same young man. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "In the water, I am beautiful")

                                      

It was a tough paddle out to Flat Island, but we made it just in time to get pelted by what felt like sideways hail (it wasn't. I don't THINK it was, anyway) - I decided pretty quickly that I was warmer in the water than I was on land, in the wind, so I just bobbed in the surf while we waited to keep paddling.


Then we headed off to Lanikai Beach.At this point, things got rough, as we were heading directly into the wind and surf. I recall, while being on Flat Island, that I was seeing paddlers heading for Lanikai Beach; they seemed to be paddling vigorously, but they weren't actually making any progress towards the south. When we got out there ourselves, it stopped being a "seems like" and became an "is".

So we rested for a while on Lanikai and had lunch....

                                    

... while Ethel debated with herself about trying to make it to Mokuloa - that was obviously a lot more distance, and all in the teeth of the wind, but I encouraged her to Go For Greatness(tm) and she decided that she'd regret it if she didn't do it. So we headed for Mokuloa.

That trip was one of those times in my life when, as I look back at it, I wonder what in the world I was thinking. It was a LONG way to paddle, and there were places where the waves were breaking over reefs and they would broadside the 'yak, or we took them on the bow and they stopped all forward movement.

It took a long time.

A long time.

But eventually we got to Mokuloa, and it was very nice being out there (see the first picture, above) and we all decided that we were glad that we had gone ahead and done it. The location was really amazing - we had waves breaking around both sides of the island, and meeting just in front of our beach and forming wave corners; we had a view of the Pali from Makapu'u Point all the way up to Chinaman's Hat, the sun was warm and the breeze was cool.


                                   
But then we had to stop congratulating ourselves, and make it back in to Kailua.

I don't have any pix of the trip back - nobody felt like taking any. Now, the truth is that the wind was behind us, and the surf was helping us - but the rest of that truth is that we spent seven hours on kayaks, and by the time we go the yaks turned back in to the rental outfit, nobody was talking much. We. Were. All. Very. Tired....we ate out on the way home, as nobody felt like cooking, either.

Ethel says that she's glad that she did it, but I don't know if she's going to do it again.

However, Silas wants to buy a lake kayak as soon as we get home.