Kailua/Lanikai Kayaking

For a while Joe and I had been talking about kayaking out to the Mokes (the Mokulula Islands off the coast of Lanikai off the windward coast).  The trouble is, you have to get a permit to "land" on the islands and no permits are allowed on Sundays.  With both of us working Monday-Friday, that only leaves Saturdays open to do this and things always seemed to come up to keep us from going.  So, while Kathryn was here, her being the big kayaker she is, we decided to plan it out so we could be sure to go.

We rented ocean kayaks from an ocean rental company very close to Kailua Beach Park.  They gave us little trailors to haul the kayaks to the entry canal.  Kathryn had a single and Joe and I shared a double (I think I would recommend using a single just for the ease of getting in and out).  After hauling our kayaks and putting them in the kanal, we made it to the beach where we had to carry the kayaks to the ocean (at high tide the canal and ocean are connected, though with very shallow water).  

There are 3 islands around the Kailua and Lanikai area (Flat Island and the two Mokulula Islands).  Only one of the mokes has a place where you can land a kayak and flat island has a small beach as well.  The ocean report said that only very experienced kayakers should attempt the mokes that day while Flat Island was safe.  We weren't quite sure what that meant as far as difficulty (there are some real motor morons that rent the kayaks and I can understand them being told to stay in shore), so we figured we'd head out there and see what we saw.

We decided to paddle from Kailua to Lanikai first and eat our lunch we packed on the beach there.  From Lanikai we had a better view of the mokes and were able to eavesdrop a little on some paddlers that had made it out to the mokes.  Their stories told of kayaks being flipped, paddlers being thrown, and general chaos with landing and launching.  We still weren't quite sold, so we decided to paddle out that way and see how the surf was.

About half way between shore and the mokes, the surf did start to get big.  The report said 5-8 ft swells and I would say they were about 5 feet.  They were actually a lot of fun to paddle on since they weren't breaking on top of us.  We stopped about a quarter mile off shore to see how it looked and decided the landing would be just a little too rough.  

From there we headed to Flat Island off of Kailua.  On the way there, both kayaks passed turtles coming up for air from the reefs, which was pretty cool.  When we made it to Flat Island, there was a big group there, but once they left it was nice and quiet.  It's an interesting "island" made up completely of porous rock.  All throughout the rock, vegetation had grown to give it a very lush feel, but made stepping very quickly (it was hard to see where the big holes in the rock were when the plants made everything even-looking).  There were a few pretty tide pools as we made our way around the edge, but we weren't able to make it into the middle since it is a nature preserve.

From Flat Island, it was a pretty quick paddle back into Kailua Beach.  Our whole outing took about 5 hours.  The company we rented from offered half (4 hours) or full day rentals.  We chose the full day since it was only a little bit more and gave us a lot more flexibility.  Overall, a pretty fun little excursion.  I think next time we'll check the surf forecast to make sure we can make it to the mokes safely and get our own kayaks.