Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Thirteen
Lanai and solo voyage.
One year recluse.
A time for inner reflections.
Meeting Susanne.
Trip to Molokai and Kauai.
Back to Kaneohe.
Jeri.
Gavin reembarks.
It was now some years since I had left Cape Town. In fact, it was 1986, and I had just left
Keehi Lagoon and the heartbreak I had had with the sweet and beautiful Liz. I needed to get
away from that place; there were too many memories.
I decided to leave for Lanai the following day. It would give me an opportunity to catch up
on my sleep and prepare myself for the eighty mile trip. It should be an overnighter, but one
never knew. I would have two traveling companions: one old, one new, both named Murphy.
The kitten that I had recently adopted had been named after the friend who had accompanied
me in spirit for so many miles.
Gavin came by for dinner and to say farewell around seven in the evening, as I wanted to
leave early and might have missed him otherwise. I had lashed the dinghy down on the coach
house and had bent on a medium sized headsail, laying out the necessary sheets for it. The
walker log had been taken out of wraps and attached to the taffrail with the impeller cord
coiled up and ready to let fly when I cleared the channel. I had also rowed to Slipper Island
and collected a large bucket of dry, beach sand for Murphy's little messes.
During dinner, Liz had come by with a lei she had made from ti leaves (a Hawaiian tradi-
tional flower or leaf necklace given to someone who has either just arrived or is departing an
island, traditionally by sea). Nowadays, it's of course given to tourists at the airports. It was
a good luck gesture invoking good ancestral Hawaiian spirits to look after the person thus
endowed with the necklace. Liz appeared a little sad, or so I would like to have imagined.
She didn't stay long. I kissed her and gave her a bear hug; she gave Murphy his little present,
a stuffed toy mouse. Gavin left soon afterward, shaking my hand awkwardly, and I patted
him on the arm thanking him for all his help and just for being Gavin. I presented him with
a fine fishing knife which he still has to this day. I was left alone to wash the dishes and to
consider my sins.
I awoke at around five in the morning after sleeping fitfully. I went outside and stretched in
the predawn, star-speckled gloom, turning on the propane for a cup of coffee. I was a little
