Kauai: My Crazy Boat Ride in the Ocean

There was really just one thing that I was dead set about making sure I did in Hawaii:  I really wanted to see a whale.  From a boat so I’d be a little closer.  I had heard that the best way to see a whale in the ocean was from a small, inflatable raft type of boat, so I was sure that I wanted to do this.  Humpback whales migrate to Hawaii in the winter, so I was positive that if I could just get myself on a boat I’d see some.  I was even willing to do this all by myself if necessary, but in the end all my friends and their children decided to come along (perhaps against their better judgement).

We booked tickets for a ride up the Napali coast on a rubber raft with a motor.  The raft held 16 people.  My friends and I took up 8 spots.  We left before dawn to get to the harbor to board the raft.  There was a little bit of chaos and confusion with our reservation when we got to the charter office, but it turned out that we all ended up on the same boat and there were enough life jackets for everyone.  The tour guide handed us dry bags for our personal items.  I originally planned on not taking my camera at all, but since there was a dry bag, I ended up grabbing it from the car at the last minute.  The camera never made it out of the dry bag while we were on the boat, though, because it was really a crazy trip.

It turned out that the ocean decided to be a little bit more active on the day of our raft ride than in had the previous few days.  The sea wasn’t so rough that our tour had to be canceled, or  even that our route up the NaPali coast (where sheer cliffs drop 4000 feet down to the ocean) needed to be changed.  However, the swells were, well, quite enormous.  They felt even more enormous from the inside of our tiny little raft.  Even though we were sitting on a cushion of inflatable rubber, it was QUITE the ride!

Before we even made it out of the harbor I looked back at my husband and exclaimed, “My dad could NEVER do this.”  He’s a guy who is quite afraid of being seasick.  The waves were big enough that the raft was flying 5-12 feet in the air between waves.  While even I was a bit worried about getting seasick at first, after a few moments I realized that the motion was more jarring than lulling, and that as long as I faced forward with the wind in my face, I was JUST fine.  In fact, I was having the time of my life!

I’m a prairie girl who loves the ocean wind!  The raft was better than an amusement ride!  We were soaked by the spray of the ocean waves.  By the end I was encrusted with salt.

Unfortunately, not everyone was having such a grand time.  Several people looked quite green after just a few minutes on the sea.  The kids up the hill begged to turn the boat around, but their parents hushed them, and they eventually gave up protesting and sort of just lurched around with sad faces in the back of the raft where it was supposed to be less bumpy.  A lady across from me was either so sick or in so much pain from all the jarring (I’m truly not sure which) that she was in tears by the end of the ride.

No one actually threw up.  That was probably good because the vomit definitely would have landed all over everyone else in the boat.  I wanted to reach across and comfort that lady who looked the sickest and tell her that she didn’t need to worry.  I am an experienced mom of four who has no trouble with people throwing up.  I thought that might be a bit too forward, though.

I was in the front of the boat, where it is bumpiest of all, and having the time of my life!  I’d slam backwards into Dr. Peds and grin at him!  I actually ended up biting my bottom lip to keep myself from gleefully letting loose peals of laughter at top volume.  I really tried to keep myself under control because the people around me were so incredibly miserable.  For a week my lips were so  swollen and chapped from biting down that  it was painful to eat citrus fruit.

It was kind of hard to hold on to the rope handle so that I didn’t fall out of the boat because we were flying over the water with such a vengeance.  My hands and arms and legs were exhausted after five hours on the ocean, and the next two days I was really quite stiff and sore from using muscles a person doesn’t ordinarily use unless they are flying across the ocean on a small inflatable raft.

Even though the trip was arduous, we did see the NaPali Coast, which was amazing.  The raft even went inside a couple of sea caves.  We were not able to snorkel, even though the boat tour advertised this, because the waves were too big.  However, on the way back we did see several whales breaching and leaping. The whales were fantastic.  Seeing whales has always been on my bucket list.  I fell in love with whales while thumbing through National Geographic with my grandmother when I was three.  We also saw a very large (like 14 feet large) tiger shark checking out the whales.  Actually we only saw the top fin of the shark as it zipped around under the water.  Unfortunately because the water was so rough, we didn’t get to spend all that much time seeing the coast or the whales because it took the boat a long time to travel over the water in such crazy conditions.

When we finally got back to the harbor, everyone crawled off the raft, kind of shell shocked, almost like they were hypnotized.  We were all exhausted.  Most people headed straight for the bathroom since the only way to go on the raft was to hang off the ladder and do your business right there, which doesn’t give a person a lot of privacy.

I fervently maintain that this boat ride was one of the very biggest highlights of the trip for me. After I got off the boat I felt like I had REALLY done something, even if it really was only sitting in a boat, holding onto a rope and surviving.  What an adventure.