All day in Hanalei Bay

I have been wanting to write a post about how the personality of Hanalei bay changes so much from winter to summer. If you look back on our earliest blog postings about big waves you can get a sense of how Hanalei bay was wracked with massive surf. Now it is a tidal pool with rarely a wave large enough to support a boogie board. Here is Max and his friend Koa playing in the 'surf''. Notice how flat the bay looks. No longer the place for surf competitions, the bay is so calm it becomes home to a slew of sailings boats anchored offshore and canoe races.

Canoe race day today in Hanalei. (say that 3x fast). Obviously the paddle is an important component of the canoe race and here at the races you cannot throw a cat without hitting a canoe paddle.

I found this very intriguing - to warm up before a canoe race the team stands in the ocean and paddles. It is a strange sight to see a bunch of guys paddling about while standing in the water. I love how each sport has its own specific rituals and physical preparations. It really shows our ancestrial past - ritual and display.

This is a single person version of the outrigger canoes that are being raced today. The basic design is from the ancestrial Polynesians but it has been modernized with the use of hyper-poly-ultra-lite-super-strong materials. Propelling these canoes still requires paddles and strokes of syncronicity.  

Not a photofinish race. The yellow canoe has easily won this race. The finish line is the series of flags by the catamaran. These teams move in complete synchrony and the race is from here across the bay and then back.

I love the fact that there are a variety of teams each composed of a unique subset of humanity. There are the teams of macho 20 year-old males, the teams of high-school girls, silver-haired women, etc.

Canoe clubs are very popular on the Hawaiian islands and you can easily find a team that embodies your spirit.

There is a small single lane bridge that connects Hanalei with the rest of Kauai. Turns out that just as we were leaving the beach there was a terrible near-fatal accident (hit and run...they caught the guy hiding in the bushes...sad, pitiful and disgusting) on the bridge that closed down all the traffic from this part of the island (Hanalei and westward) with the rest of Kauai. Why do people feel compelled to sit in their car even when they know there is no future in the trip? We quickly bailed from our car and found ourselves a dinner and great conversation with fellow stranded friends. Even when things go bad it is still good here.

Notice that the incoming traffic lane is barren - nobody is coming into Hanalei, but then nobody is leaving Hanalei either. So why are they still sitting in their cars?

It was over 5 hours before they reopened the bridge and we could return home. I could think of much worse places to be stuck in and watching the sunset is always fun. The kids were cranky and tired, having spent 9 hours at the beach, and fell immediatly asleep once we made it home.

Digital cameras do not like low light situations so this picture is a bit more grainy than I would prefer. But is does capture the moment, albeit grainily.