Boatyard Friends
Gavin & Hari pulling me in the go-kart in the harbor.
While living in Kauai was truly wonderful and a perfect dream of a tropical island, it also had a few challenges. One of them was I didn’t know anyone there and needed to make new friends. Prem and her two sons became these good friends during the first year of the project before they moved to Maui.
At the end of the project, we visited Maui during our shakedown cruise in the Hawaiian Islands. It was precious to reconnect with them in Lahaina.
Hawaiian Islands, Maui - June 1992
“It’s good to see you again, Prem. You look great. Maui agrees with you,” I said as I hugged her. “You still have the greatest hair ever,” I laughed. She had thick brown hair with perfect shoulder-length waves that framed her face. Shorter than I, she was petite and curvaceous, the opposite of my thin almost flat chested physique. The crinkles at the corners of rich brown eyes hinted at an easy-going sense of humor.
“Hey Hari, are you taking care of your mom?” I asked as I gave him a hug too.
“Yeah,” he said bashfully, looking at the ground. “Hey, can Gavin and me go climb the tree?”
Prem and I both pointed to the numerous signs posted around the famous Lahaina Banyan Tree: ABSOLUTELY NO CLIMBING ALLOWED.
“Yeah, and there isn’t a river here to go play in the mud with either,” his mom reminded him, instantly flashing back to all the trouble those two used to get into. “Stay under the tree here, we’ll go eat in thirty minutes. Do you have your watch?” she called as they ran off, easy together as if they’d not been apart for the last few years.
During the first year of the Elixir Project, we had visited weekly, doing the play date thing although it wasn’t called that then. Her son Hari was the same age as Gavin and the two of them shared an over-developed sense of adventure. Adventures like using their bicycles to pull me around the boat yard in the go-kart, like having mud fights in the river by the boat yard, like holding gleeking (spitting) contests in the hallway of our house, like dressing up for Halloween and coloring their skin all black and speckled until they were unrecognizable, for days, as the paint didn’t come off.
“Did you graduate?” I asked her, excited to hear how things had gone since she moved away from Kauai to go back to college and earn a degree in social work.
“Yeah, I got my bachelor’s and I’m just about done with the master’s program. Best of all, I have been able to work as a counselor while I finish up the degree,” she said, happy and shy all at the same time. When we met, she was a single mom raising two boys on a very tight budget despite several part time jobs.
“You did it, I knew you could. That’s awesome, Prem, you’re an inspiration.” I hugged her again, appreciating all she had gone through to get to this point. She’d left Tai, her oldest son, to board with us in Lihue to finish his last months of high school when she and Hari moved to Maui.
And now here they were, schlepping their overnight gear, ready for a sleep-over aboard Elixir and excited to experience the result of the boatyard demolition project they had seen four years before.
The next day, everyone was up by 0730 hours and after a swim and a breakfast of porridge and Postum we were out for a day sail. The winds were fifteen to twenty knots and at one point we clocked Elixir at eight point two knots with the wind off the quarter. This was amazing as her hull speed was only seven knots. When the wind died, we headed back to Mala Wharf to anchor for lunch and afternoon swims.
Feeling relaxed and refreshed after easy visits and three days aboard, Prem and Hari packed up their gear and rowed ashore. It was a perfect and wonderful reunion with old friends.
Hallowe'en costumes and make-up extraordinaire.
