Traveling to and through the island of Hawaii is a favorite family vacation destination. Recently, my family, my wife Myrna, my son Jed, his wife Heather and their children Emery, 12, and Tanner, 10, and I went to Kealakekua to kayak, snorkel and swim. My son and his wife and children secured kayaks through a very nice family just off Manini Beach Road through a fellow “who chatted us up” over at the dock. I’ll refer to this man as Art, but that is not his real name.
It was his intention to rent one of his own, or perhaps his only kayak to Heather and one of the kids. My wife being thoughtful suggested that Jed, Heather and the kids rent from the business at the road end and that she and I should take the other kayak, which was beached over by Monty’s kayak rental.
This was a lucky decision. We are reasonably experienced kayakers, but not as expert as we may have thought. Things were going fine for about the first five minutes then one of the seatback support clips broke. We saw Art on the rocks watching us as we started to come back in but he encouraged us to catch up with our family who now were waiting for us beyond the surf line and said he would refund us some money. OK. We paddled out to the family and by the time we got there the other seat support clip broke and we noticed that we were a bit low in the water.
We went back in to find Art and Jed and the family went to Captain Cook to snorkel. When coming back in we judged the surf break and thought we were coming in just fine. The one thing we didn’t know about was that there were high surf warnings starting that afternoon and continuing for a day or two. It was getting big.
We attempted to land where we launched, but got caught about a yard short from shore, rocks actually, and went over. We had a few valuable items in a dry bag, which broke loose. The kayak was upside down on top of my wife whom I judged to be OK while I attempted to retrieve valuables.
Witnessing all this was a very astute young man named Amontillado and a woman companion. He knew before we were close to shore that we were going to get caught by another set of big waves and he quickly set out in his kayak, as did the young lady, to help us. The man basically is a hero in my book. I told him so with a few unprintable adjectives meant only as complimentary.
Amontillado, or Monty as he is known, skillfully and without regard for his own safety managed to help us retrieve belongings and get to shore safely. We owe this fine young man our gratitude and more. His selfless act expresses the spirit of aloha and will forever be remembered.
Edward Dillon is a resident of Sonoma, Calif.