AN ODE TO Lahaina

We hadn’t dropped the chute in 2,000 miles since leaving Tahiti. The closer Maui inched, the more we felt invincible. Landfall does that. After days at sea, every South Sea island is an intoxicating rebirth of the senses, a virginal stirring of the heart. Lahaina was all of that.

Neil Rabinowitz

I first visited Lahaina from the south. After 13 days on an unleashed reach out of French Polynesia, I clung to the mast top, my legs wrapped in a death grip. We swung west into Alenuihaha Channel, known to Hawaiians as the river of laughing waters. The sun blazed and the trades howled as 20-foot rollers raced up our stern and frothed over the rails. Flying our heaviest chute was risky because the channel boiled with towering whitecaps, but the Beach Boys blared from the deck speakers, and Maui loomed ahead in all its verdant glory. Cobalt-blue waves cascaded on the approaching lava rocks of Kaupo. Hana stood lush to the east, with the Big Island’s Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea silhouetted to the south. I hadn’t been back to…

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Cruising World (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2023

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