Ocean Watch

A couple of weeks ago, I sailed my boat from Honolulu to Kaneohe Bay because the bay was a good place, windwise, to start my upcoming voyage to Molokai and Maui. During that repositioning trip, I had a harrowing propeller-and-line experience off Makapuu, which I wrote about last week.

I am not alone in battling evil rope serpents. Several fellow boaters e-mailed me their own struggles with line-fouled prop shafts. "I've been there and it's really hard," one reader wrote. "They make it look so easy on TV."

My next adventure was different. Last weekend, three friends and I sailed to Maui and back, and nothing happened. No essential boat parts failed, no one was injured and none of us got seasick, except for one tiny upchuck in the Pailolo Channel.

But that doesn't mean the trip was boring. Marine animals live out there. They don't appear predictably, but anticipation is half the fun. And when Hawaii's creatures do show up in offshore waters, they usually do it with pizazz.

As we made our way along the south coast of Molokai, Josh, a friend's nephew visiting from New Jersey, said, "Where are all the birds?"

It was a good question, one I often wonder myself when I'm sailing offshore. At any one time, an estimated 15 million seabirds of 22 species are either flying over Hawaiian waters or breeding on Hawaiian islands. Yet a person can sail for days around here and not see one.

"It's a big ocean," I said. "They're spread out."

"And where are the fish?" he asked.

"Fish live under the water, Josh," I joked.

"But don't they jump or something? I haven't seen one fish."

"You will," I said. In this I had confidence because I knew something Josh did not: We were heading toward Maui's Honolua Bay, a marine preserve that offers some of Hawaii's best snorkeling.

Inside this cozy bay, we dropped our anchor in the sand and jumped in the water. There, enormous schools of aholehole (flagtails), fluorescent blue rice corals, turtles and countless other reef animals entertained us the entire day.

The next morning, we left by the yellow light of the setting moon to sail along Molokai's north shore, home of the tallest sea cliffs in the world.

And that's where the animals were that day. As we sailed past those towering green cliffs, parted by plunging waterfalls, thousands of wedge-tailed shearwaters surrounded the boat. Some glided gracefully over the waves; others rafted together on the water in flocks of feathery turmoil.

Above, great frigatebirds, or iwa, soared like dark angels, and in between flew red-footed and brown boobies and one radiant white-tailed tropicbird.

The occasion for this communal gathering was a fish chase. Large predators, maybe tunas or mahimahi, were driving smaller fish to the water's surface. Hundreds of malolo (flying fish) shot from the water like silver bullets, some gliding hundreds of feet to escape their underwater predators.

To little avail. The seabirds were snatching them up like kids with candy.

Bottlenose dolphins also fed in this frenzy but weren't too busy to torpedo over to the boat and take a ride on our bow wave.

Did I say nothing happened on my trip to Maui last weekend? That's wrong.

Everything I go for happened.