Ocean Watch

Friday,  April 02, 2004

A few days ago, I asked a visiting friend to meet me at my sailboat in the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. I saw her approaching from a distance, but she wasn't making much progress.

Soon I realized the reason for her poky pace. Each time a new fish appeared, she stopped to look at it.

"This is amazing," she said, watching a scribbled filefish cruise by.

"It is," I said.

"I see animals here I never see anywhere else. It's like having my own giant aquarium."

"You're lucky to have your boat here," she said.

I am. For me and countless others, the Ala Wai Boat Harbor is a piece of paradise. Besides being full of fish and invertebrates, it's quiet there. Boaters, surfers and fishers use this tranquil marina for a break from urban bustle. Tourists amble through the harbor dreaming of sailing the tropics. I go there to write.

But in spite of the Ala Wai being a little bit of heaven for so many people, the state's Department of Land & Natural Resources has allowed its piers to fall apart. In a marina, this is like saying the roof has caved in. A marina is piers.

This isn't anything new. Managers and boaters have known for years that the piers' days were numbered. Now many of the decrepit docks have become unsafe, and our slum landlord, the DLNR, has moved us to other slips. For sailors who have been there a long time, this is as disconcerting as running aground.

For me the move is heartbreaking. I've lost my longtime neighbors, who kept an eye on my boat, my security, because I have an inadequate site on the transient dock, and my Internet access, which I need for my work.

I asked at the harbor office when the piers would be fixed. Same old, same old: no money, no plans, no manners.

"Talk to your legislators," I was told.

I did that. My two state representatives know the harbors are in shambles and explained that the issue is slip fees. The moorage rates, they both said, need to be raised before the piers can be fixed.

"Then raise them," I said.

"The boaters don't want the fees raised," she explained.

Oh, my aching head. If a landlord can't afford to keep the walls of his complex standing, he doesn't ask the tenants if he may pretty please raise the rent. This excuse is as ridiculous as the low rates. I pay $151.70 per month to keep a 37-foot boat at the gateway of Waikiki, a place so popular 7 million people visit there each year.

Also, the expression "the boaters" is meaningless. Which boaters?

The few boat owners who have the time and courage to go to public hearings are not the majority.

Yes, we all have our chance to be heard. The reality, however, is that besides being busy with work, family and recreation, most people don't have the appropriate skin thickness.

Democracy is an adversarial system often loaded with nastiness and long-term grudges. It takes a brave soul to step up to that mike.

The yellow tape on the Ala Wai Boat Harbor's tumbledown piers makes the place look like a crime scene. And it is. It's criminal that the state has allowed this charming resource on the shores of our beautiful city to go to seed.

The DLNR needs to do whatever it takes to fix the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. And now, not years from now, as is the talk.

My muse awaits.