A Birthday and a Tournament.

Today is Alfhild's birthday. In celebration of this event, I am finally getting around to posting the comics she e-mailed me, and I thought I'd share them with you here. They indicate (accurately) that she leads an Eventful Life.

July #1 & #2
July #3

August #1 & #2
She outsourced her third August comic to her cousin Hans. I sincerely hope it's fictional.

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Last weekend was the Lanai Rendezvous fishing tournament. This is an annual event that draws sport fishermen from around the islands. My cousins compete every year, and place frequently, as did their father before them.

We set out before dawn on Friday, trolling lines out, heading on past Lahaina, past the farthest point I'd ever been on any charter. That first day was 12 hours of motoring, amazing scenery, amazingly smooth water... which still amounted to a bit of bouncing around.

We hooked a marlin that morning, our first this summer. I got to reel up the line while Cousin K sweated it, taking in and taking in whenever the fish gave him the opportunity. (That's legal in this tournament.)

Cousin M and Cousin K gaffed and clubbed the fish. When they smacked it in the head, its dark sides turned iridescent, instantly. The two of them hoisted it onto the swim step (a low platform behind the stern of the boat) and lashed it there. I stared at it for a long time. It had a strong smell that was nothing like what people mean when they describe something as "fishy-smelling." It smelled wild and salty and clean.

We went on, north and then west, around the east end of Molokai, looking for fish or indications of fish: birds or things floating on the water. Any sizeable piece of trash in those waters, say a broken styrofoam cooler, attracts microscopic sea life, which attracts larger sea life which, ultimately, attracts very large predators. We caught one more fish, an aku (skipjack tuna), that day.

The northeast shore of Molokai is steep and green. There is a tiny island there, a jagged rocky tooth sticking high out of the water, topped with a grove of a kind of palm tree found nowhere else in the world. There is a house perched high on a cliff that can only be reached by boat. There is a village called Kalaupapa, in a national park, which is inhabited by about 25 patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy), and about 25 park caretakers. Kalaupapa is accessible by air, by sea, or by steep mountain foot trails. It is off limits to anyone who is not a federal employee unless you have an invitation from a resident.

Could we use the mooring ball in the tiny harbor at Kalaupapa? With the gift of our one aku, and the proper name-dropping (sometimes I think my cousins are only two degrees of separation from anyone in the state), we could. It's not everywhere you can trade a fish for a parking space.

We didn't set foot on shore, but camped on the boat: Cousin M, Cousin K, Cousin K's girlfriend, and me. I lay on the afterdeck across from the marlin, which had been zipped into an insulative fish bag with a lot of ice. It was quiet on shore, but the wind and water and boat conspired to make little slappy and clunky noises all night. Half-aware of my surroundings, I dozed until I heard a splash and loud breathing next to the boat. We all jumped up to see what was going on: Had someone fallen overboard? Did we have a visitor from the shore? No, it was an inquisitive young monk seal: a rare sight.

Zooming away from shore as the sun came up, we continued west around Molokai, with a detour by the appealingly named O Buoy. The buoy has the same effect as a piece of floating trash: it attracts things, and other things that like to eat them. The waters around the buoy were rougher, but we caught several more aku and a couple of ahi (yellowfin tuna) there. Farther on, we caught a small mahi mahi. Now we had four out of the five fish recognized in the tournament, and we crossed our fingers for a clean sweep: all we needed was an ono (wahoo).

But time was short. We had to get the fish in and weighed by 5:00, and the ono felt no such pressure to take our lures. So we swung out around the west side of Lanai and pulled into Manele Bay, already crowded with other contestants, vessels rafted together, fishermen calling to one another. For many of them this is an annual reunion. Here we were met by Cousin M's girlfriend and by my Auntie, and by Cousin K's girlfriend's folks. After weighing the marlin (191 pounds, and not smelling so good anymore), K and M were lost in the crowd, greeting old friends and comparing stories. I walked down the road to the beach, where I scrubbed my crusty self under the cool trickle of a beach shower. Even with low pressure and limited privacy, it was one of those transformative showers, where you feel like a completely different person afterward. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Later there was a dinner, and awards. Our marlin, which I had been assured was not really that big for a marlin, turned out to be big enough to win second place. "The evening is just beginning," a stranger with a few beers in him told me, and I nodded politely. Then I picked my way back across the obstacle course of boats, unrolled my sleeping bag on the deck, inserted earplugs, and closed my eyes while the party shifted into high gear around me: fireworks, voices talking and shouting, competing stereos, bright lights, footsteps back and forth across the boat. In the morning we would get up and take the last leg of the journey home, but now, floating on the din, I set my consciousness adrift and was at peace.