Explore the Pacific on the Kai Kea

There's a moment, about twenty minutes out of the harbor, when the Kohanaiki clubhouse shrinks behind you and the Pacific opens up in every direction. The engines settle into a hum, someone hands you a coffee, and the day could still go any way at all.

That's the magic of Kai Kea, the club's 39-foot boat, and of the man who's been running her since the day Kohanaiki opened: Captain Paulo Costa. 

Captain Paulo has spent 28 years on the water in Hawai'i. He started on Oahu, then came back to the Kona side to help build the club's ocean program from scratch. Ask him why he's still at it, and the answer is simple.

"I do love it," he said. "I have a lot of pleasure doing this."

That love shows up in the little decisions. Take a recent morning when a group had their hearts set on Captain Cook. The swell had other ideas. 

"It was pretty rough," Paulo said. "I felt like we should go north."

North it was, and it turned out to be the right call. They found not one but two pods of dolphins, then slipped into the clear, calm water at Kiholo for a snorkel. "They just loved it," he said. Half the job, as he sees it, is knowing when to change the plan. 

Then there are days when everything lines up. Just this past October, Paulo said, it was "the right place at the right time." The moon was perfect, the tide was good, and the current was moving just right. "And then we got lucky."

By the end of the day the boat was carrying a mahi-mahi, a skipjack tuna and a rainbow runner, around 80 pounds of fish in all. 

For divers, Kona is hard to beat. Paulo calls it one of the best places in the country to dive, thanks to the visibility, the water, the lava tubes, and the fish. Kai Kea can reach sites both north and south, so the day's destination follows the conditions. 

Paulo helped launch the dive program in the club's first days, and he's watched it grow ever since. Don't want to dive? Strap on a snorkel instead. It's the same water!

From December through April, humpback whales make the long trop from Alaska to winter in Hawaiian waters, and Kai Kea has a front-row seat. 

Whale season or not, there's always the sunset cruise.  No fishing, no itinerary, just a boat, some good company, and the sun going down over the Pacific. "People sometimes just want to go out and have fun," Paulo said. It's hard to argue with that. 

Contact the Adventure Team to book you adventure aboard the Kai Kea. Paulo and his crew will take it from there. 

His rule for every trip is simple: "Have fun, be safe, and come back home happy."

Aloha and until next, 
The Kohanaiki Edit