Since we’re winding down here, I though it would be best to try and sell the Saab sooner rather than later. It was a great car, when we actually had it back from the shop. In the 9 months that we had the car we had 1 accident, 1 inoperable convertible top, 1 failed fuel pump, 1 broken radiator hose, and 1 cracked radiator. Total time in the shop was probably about 45 days. Not to mention the leaking roof when it rains! But it was still a fun car to drive around when we did have it. Here’s a few pix of it at it’s finest, after I cleaned it up. Hopefully it will hold up better for the new owner than it did for us

The past few weeks the wind has finally died down, so we have been able to do some pretty good paddleboarding. We like to do the Hawaii Kai to Kahala run which is about 5 miles downwind. There are some pretty amazing houses that are right on the water.

The more wind you have on this run, the better. When you get about 20-15 mph wind, you don’t even have to paddle! You just let the wind take you

Sometimes you happen to run into some pretty shallow areas, especially when it’s low tide. Kate has had a little issue navigating thru these areas.

Someone needs to tell her this isn’t the way to ride the board

This past week, we happened to have a stow away. It’s G! We’re still waiting for him to learn how to ride the waves.

We also got to take the boards up to the north shore at both Sunset beach and Hale’Iwa. It was pretty cool to be paddling around where the waves were  up to 50 feet high a few months ago. I was even able to catch a wave or two! We even had a surprise of seeing a few whales breaching off in the distance. We thought it was way past prime time to see the whales. So that was a pretty nice surprise.

When we paddled around Hale’Iwa, we took the boards under the bridge, down the river. We never knew that the river went about a mile back. There were some pretty nice houses and even some peacocks. 

We have also been taking the boards to Waikiki to try and catch some waves (and not be yelled at by the locals). In the past few days, I was finally able to get the ever difficult picture of Kate catching a wave

Last week Win and JoAnn got to visit us from Tampa. They will most likely be our last visitors since we have less than a month to go. I think the highlight of their trip was the sunset cruise that we have taken everyone on. It’s late in the whale season, so we thought there was no way they would see any. When we were getting on the boat, the previous cruise said they saw some whales, but we have heard that every time, and only seen them once. But to our surprise, we saw about 3 whales less than 100 yards away! We were only able to get 1 good picture, but it was a pretty good one!

We also took them to a surfing and sunset place called China Walls. The waves were up that day, and there were a lot of surfers there. This place is pretty dangerous since the waves break right on the cliffs, and we saw first hand what can happen. Some guy tried to catch a wave, tried to bail out, and ended up breaking his board in half on the wall. Luckly it looked like he was fine.

Here’s a great pano picture Win took of the blowhole beach that’s right around the corner from our house. Amazing pictures!

Thanks for all the great pictures Win!

We now officially have a new mascot that has been following us around for the past week. Kate came home one day and found a Roaming Gnome (from Amazing Race) on the countertop. So we have been taking him around with us and taking pictures with him. He’s been spotted at the volleyball game…

Although he did get a little scared when a shanked pass came his way

He has also been known to indulge himself in a nice “pow” drink on the back lanai

Stay tuned for more adventures of “G”

Back in February when Kate was back in RI freezing, I took it upon myself to try out a new hike. It starts by going thru an upscale housing development where you have to check in with a security guard. All of the houses on this ridge are over $2M. Anyway, you drive to the top of the development and start the 2 mile hike that leads to the top of the Ko’olau mountain range.

The beginning of the trail is fairly easy. Here’s a few pics looking back tward Hawaii Kai and Waikiki from halfway up the trail.

The second half gets pretty steep and slippery. There are a few spots where there are ropes to help you up and down! Not to mention that it’s a pretty steep drop off from each side if you fall.

It was a pretty cloudy day when I did it, so you couldn’t really see the views from the top. There isn’t much to the end of the trail, except a 2000 foot drop to the bottom! Here’s what the top looked on the day I did it.

I had been trying to take Kate up this trail for about a month, but because of the wind, the top has been cloudy most of the time. We finally got an opportunity to hike it one day after work. Since we would be running out of daylight we had to hustle to finish it before sunset. But it was worth it. We made it to the top in about an hour and 20 minutes, and it was clear enough to see the backside of the island. I didn’t realize how high up we were until I could actually see the ground! Don’t get too close to the edge

I’m sure most of you are aware that Kate and I purchased stand-up paddleboards a few months back. We’ve been having a great time on them ever since we got them. It is pretty tough to learn at first, but once you get the hang of it, and work on your balance it’s fairly easy. More recently we have been trying to do some paddle surfing. That has been a whole different process all together. Luckly I have been able to pick it up with some success, while Kate is having a little more trouble. We will be taking a lesson before we head home so hopefully we can get a little better. For christmas Kate bought me a small surfboard camera so I could take some action shots. It’s so cool! But enough about the camera, let’s get on to some of the “action” shots!

I picked up a stowaway on one of the trips. I’m sure he was happy to swim up to the board and not drown The little guy just swam up out of the ocean!

I’ll bet you’re asking why are there no action pictures of Kate yet. Well, she hasn’t used my board with the camera yet, but I have been able to get a couple of here with the underwater camera.

Here’s one of the reasons you don’t see too many action shots of Kate

Here’s the best action shot yet. Notice the form! I paid a pretty high price for this picture as the wave that she caught took me down with it!

The sunset is just amazing from where we surf, we like to hang out until sunset. Complete with Diamond Head in the background.

Back in February we were able to take a weekend trip to our favorite island, Kauai. It’s one of the most beautiful islands out here, and it’s not built up like Honolulu.

One of the days we were there, we decided to do a hike from Ke’e beach, which is on the north shore. The hike is called the Kalalau Trail, which is the same trail the use for the movie “Perfece Getwaway”. If you’ve seen the movie, nothing like that happened to us on the trip The first part of the hike is a 2 mile path along the cliffs that brings you to a beach, but in the winter during high seas isn’t swimable.  In fact, here’s the warning!

We’ve done this part of the hike before, and from here there’s 2 ways you can go. Keep going on the Kalalau Trail for another 9 miles (HA!) or go inland 2 more miles to a waterfall. We chose the waterfall. It’s was a fairly easy hike, and the waterfall was amazing. I believe it was about 300 feet high.

And of course when you get there you’re going to want to go in the water!

Did I mention that the water was about 60 degrees? Yeah, that’s kinda important!

What a surprise, we only went in the water long enough to take a couple of pictures!

On the return, we took a break at the beach and found a new friend that hangs out there. Looks like someone was hunry.

The following day was mostly a resting day, so we took a drive to Poipu Beach where we always encounter at least one monk seal. And they didn’t dissapoint this time!

As you can imagine, Christmas isn’t quite the same in Hawaii is it is in New England. It would get a little chilly, down to the mid 60′s! But it’s amazing that so many people get in the holiday spirit here. Almost more so than back home. I surprised Kate with a “Hawaiian” christmas tree that we got to pick out and cut down. Amazingly, we had it up for over a month and it never took any water!

This is the field that we got to pick from.

Here’s what it looked like all decorated. You’d be surprised how you can’t hide the lights as easily when you don’t have many branches

Here’s one of my gifts. No, it’s not that cold that I needed a hat. It’s a paddleboard paddle cover works nicely as a hat as well.

Even Lewy was getting into the holiday spirit!

Every year they hold a boat flotilla where everyone decorates their boats. Pretty different than any christmas parade we’ve been to!

Downtown Honolulu also brings out the Shaka Santa!

And what Christmas day would complete without a trip to the North Shore to see more big waves??

The blog has been taken over I’ll be updating some of the blog since Kate has been very busy with work lately. I’ll start with the Eddie Challenge in early December. Yeah, we’re a little behind! The Eddie Challenge is in memory of Eddie Aikau who was one of the first lifeguards in Waimea. He was also one of the first big wave surfers there. He ended up being lost at sea many years ago trying to paddle to shore from a boat he was on doing an open ocean transit. He was never seen again. This compition has all of the big wave surfers in the world. It is only held when the conditions are right, at least 25ft waves, and the right wind conditions. It’s the 25th anniversary Eddie challenge, but it’s only been run 8 times total!

We went up to the north shore the day before the event to check out the waves and scout a place to watch. Too bad there were thousands of others with the same idea!

This is what the waves looked like the night before the competition.

And someone was cold

The following day was the actual competition. We headed up at around 8am. It ended up taking more time to find a parking spot (which ended up being 2 miles away) than to drive up to the north shore. But the walk was well worth it. We found a nice seating area ontop of the rocks with a good view of everything. It’s a good thing we weren’t on the beach, or we wouldn’t have seen anything. The power of these 40+ foot waves was amazing. We could feel them crashing a few hundred feet away. I can’t believe anyone would surf in these waves. One guy actually got hurt the day before, when he fell in the wave. The power of the water alone caused his foot to become detached from his ankle! Needless to say, he didn’t compete. Enjoy the pictures!

This is why we wouldn’t have seen anything from the beach…

Alas my blogging skills have fallen off the face of the planet and I don’t even know where to start anymore! So….I was just looking through some pictures we’ve taken here and came across the HUGE manta ray we saw out in Kaneohe Bay while renting a boat at the Marine Base. It was such a treat to see! The thing was just doing these large sweeping circles in the water and would be upside down when he came to the surface. Kind of like when you’re in the swimming pool and do a back-somersalt in the deep end….it seemed like he was doing it just for fun. When we brought the boat back we told the folks there about it and they said he had been hanging around for a while. Haven’t seen him again since and we’ve been back a couple times…so it was a nice treat!

The Marine Base was also doing training exercises with P-3′s and they were flying overhead again and again so we snapped a photo or two of the plane flying overhead as well. Pretty cool!

Aloha, Kate & Jay