Kaneohe Yacht Club | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

The Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club was organized on October 28, 1924, with the original Club site on the western side of Kāne‘ohe Bay.

Opening ceremonies at the present site were held on December 17, 1955. Reportedly, Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club is the oldest Yacht Club in Hawai‘i, in terms of continuous service.

When we were kids, KYC and the Bay were our back yard.

Our house was about a block away. An entrance gate to the club was at the end of the street of the old neighborhood.

A significant milestone and rite of passage in life was turning 10-years of age – it was then that you could go down to the Yacht Club on your own, without adult supervision.

Lots of the club is pretty much the same. (However, to add more mooring spaces, there is a new parallel dock on the right side of the image below (where the El Toros are sailing.)

The place was kid-friendly and accommodating to young adults. Back in the day, the Long House was available for periodic teen dances (hundreds of us packed the place.) (Does anybody else remember the Vaqueros?)

We’d keep the Boston Whaler down there, and on a moment’s notice could run down and hoist it into the water for running around the Bay.

Back then, the clover-leaf opening in the reefs on the Marine Base side of the Club was the “ski lanes.”

Two rafts were anchored across each other to keep you high and dry, while others in the group skied around the loop. (It’s now used for mooring of larger boats.)

The Whaler also took us to all other points of interest on the Bay, camping at Coral Island, Kapapa and Chinaman’s Hat (Mokoli‘i;) fishing and diving across the bay; and just general cruising around.

In addition to the ski/cruising outboard boat, we first had the Mokuone, then Na Ali‘i Kai, then Lanakila fishing boats and regularly entered the Club’s fishing tournaments.

In addition to mooring and dry storage areas, the Club has two tennis courts, a swimming pool and a kid-sized wading pool.

And, it has a bar. As a kid, that was some mysterious place that you were forbidden to enter. We’d gaze in to see what was up.

I swear, looking into the bar, now, it looks like the same people sitting there sipping their cocktails – they must be the kids of the adults we used to look at.

There are swimming and sailing classes for kids and young adults offered throughout the year and plenty to do for the adults, too.

The first image shows the Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club as we knew it as kids, in a pre-1966 postcard noted in “The History of Kaneohe Yacht Club” book. (This is the way I remember the club from small-kid times.)

When working for the State meant moving from Waimea on the Big Island back to Oʻahu, we ended up on the windward side (where I grew up as a kid.)

We re-joined Kāneʻohe Yacht Club (when I was a kid, the Club was our backyard and ‘go to’ place.)

Wanting to get a boat, we put our name on the waiting lists for ‘wet’ or ‘dry’ slips. After a few years, the call came – our name came up for a slip.

They asked me what kind of boat I had; I asked, ‘What kind can I have?’

It turns out, the slip I was assigned could accommodate a boat up to 28-feet (from tip-to-tip.) I went shopping and found a 27-foot Ericson; more of a cruiser, rather than a racer.

I call it a bathtub in the water; it is definitely not a speed-racer.

Anyway, the boat was called “Ballou Hawaii;” I had to change the name.

However, since the beginning of time, sailors have sworn that there are unlucky boats and the unluckiest boats of all are those who have defied the gods and changed their names.

Fortunately, there are ceremonies that one can use to appease all.

According to legend, each and every vessel is recorded by name in the Ledger of the Deep and is known personally to Poseidon, or Neptune, the god of the sea.

Some people might not know that there is a formal ritual in name-changing a boat; actually, there are several rituals.

If you wish to change the name of your boat, the first thing you must do is to purge its old name from the Ledger of the Deep and from Poseidon’s memory.

It is usual for the renaming ceremony to be conducted immediately following the purging ceremony, although it may be done at any time after the purging ceremony.

I don’t find it coincidental that all naming, purging and renaming ceremonies include ample use of alcohol (fortunately fermented grape juice is an acceptable beverage for these tasks.)

Anyway, rather than smash a perfectly good bottle of wine on the bow, I did incorporate most of rituals’ key parts and splashed a bit of the chardonnay from my glass on the boat and renamed her “Mokuone.”

Mokuone was the name of the family’s first boat when I was a kid. Its literal translation is “Sand Island” and refers to what people now call the Sand Bar. (As a kid, we called it Sand Island; the traditional name is Ahu O Laka.)

I even had a special flag made for the boat – kind of cartoonish, but it works for me (an image of it is attached; it’s the top flag.)

I try to get to the boat every weekend. Sometimes, I would just go down and “fix” stuff; most often, though, I try to go out for a sail.

It’s rigged for easy single-handed sailing (Nelia goes out only occasionally,) so I can raise/lower and control most of the lines and stuff from the cockpit.

I hope the weather and wind are favorable this weekend; I’d like to go for another sail on the Bay.

The image shows Mokuone at her mooring. I raised the boat’s flag, as well as my own nautical flags. Today is the 4th anniversary of getting the boat.