Pilots and sailors… pilots and sailors.
They find common ground when they step “ashore,” landing in places both planned and unexpected. Hawaii’s Oahu island offered up a bit of both during our recent journey there, with the points in between the stops on the itinerary delivering a lot of joy.
We knew to listen to our friend and recent transplant Jim Barrett, a pilot and sailor both, like us. With a couple of hours to kill while we waited on our flight back to the mainland, we steered in the direction he gave us, trusting him past warehouses and to the end of a nondescript parking lot to wash up at La Mariana Sailing Club.
Timing on our side, we pulled in at 10:55 am on a Tuesday… just a few minutes before the bar (and restaurant) opened. That gave us a bit of loitering time to take photos and soak up the marina’s ambience: decidedly middle ground, neither a working dock nor a high-end yacht club. And a perfect perch from which to watch the aerial activity across the way, landing and departing from PHNL… Honolulu International Airport.
We were but a 7-minute drive to the rental car return. Also strategic.
Admiring the tiki-type totems lining the walkways, I thought back to Jim’s notes: “It has a World War II tropical bar vibe.” Or something like that. Indeed, the nostalgia ooozed from every shuttered window, the lush greenery leading us in, and the tables and chairs giving off that island outpost aura mixed thoroughly within a dark and cozy captain’s lounge.
The hostess led us to a table in the cool, shaded front room. Up in the ceiling, a series of pufferfish illuminated by varying colors of LEDs popped, and scallop-shelled lamps swing from braided cords. The obligatory ship’s wheel, torn off the helm of a grand cutter (or simply ordered from Pearl River), graced an alcove.
We’d already had brunch, so we ordered the two Kona Brewing Company beers on tap, the Big Wave Golden Ale and the Longboard Island Lager. For a bar like this, you want the bog standard ales, not anything fancy, so they hit right on the nose. The food delivered to the tables next to us looked like solid bar&grill fare, perfect for soaking up beer and rum drinks, of which there were plenty on the menu, including a proprietary Mai Tai and their own version of a Singapore Sling. Since I still needed to navigate the Ford Expedition back to the rental lot, I kept it to one pint, sadly.
We settled in for a leisurely hour, free of all time, not yet ready to return to the real world and the crazy awaiting us.