HAWAII

So, Pat and I are off to visit Sam and Glenda at their Honolulu home. Needed some rest and relaxation, and hopefully some decent fishing.

Since Sam didn’t have a boat in Hawaii, first day was spent making the rounds of the charter companies. We mutually decided that they were too expensive, but Sam had a backup plan.

Seems that some shirttail relative of Glenda’s knew a guy named Peter who allegedly had a boat. Turned out that he was an older fellow, but seemed like a nice guy, and he talked a good fishing story. Besides, the price was right. Like free. So we signed on for the next day.

We should have gotton a clue when we saw the boat. It was an ancient 21 foot Bayliner Trophy. With, you guessed it, an even more ancient Force outboard hanging on the transom.

Now all you boaters probably already know that a Force outboard is mostly good for an anchor, and definitely not a good bet to power a boat on the open ocean. In fact, to sell any motors at all, the company had to change their name three times, before they finally went out of business.

Anyway, Peter said that he used to have an auxiliary outboard, for when the Force quit, but that somebody had stolen it. Must have been a smart thief, as he passed on the Force.

By the way, Peter’s excuse for owning this piece of crap was that it only cost him $9000 for boat and motor, while a decent motor would have cost $10000.

Eventually we got the boat in the water and, Force engine wheezing, motored out to the north tip of Oahu. Peter thought he knew where the fish were, but navigation aids were a bit of a problem. Turned out that the depth/fish finder had a cracked transducer, which made it inoperable 90 percent of the time, and the GPS had been forgotten at home. When we went to rig the tackle, we found that was not the only thing that had been forgotten. The toolbox also turned up missing.

Peter finally found a rusty pair of pliers, and we got the tackle set up and the lines in the water. We pulled in a couple of trumpet fish, and several with the improbable name of Humuhumu-nukunuku-g-pua’a. This latter is allegedly the Hawaii state fish, the name said to have been picked by some grade school kids.

Fishing then got kind of slow, and we started running short on bait.
And about that time the Force started really running rough, so discretion being the better part of valor, we headed back to the boat ramp.

As we were cleaning up the boat, one of Peter’s Japanese buddies happened by and gave us a couple of Opaka Paka, which he had caught. So we proudly took home two tasty fish. We were very careful to not say that we had actually caught said fish, only telling people that we had brought them home.