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K2 – Kayak Trip #2


Another trip across Kealakekua Bay on a kayak trip, this time with Dawn from Kohala. The secrets to avoiding the crowds of kayakers on a Sunday? Leave early since kayak stores often don’t open till 7:30am, go on a gray rainy day as it looks uninviting to visitors. As it turns out the gray day was just for show as it didn’t rain on us kayaking and provided cool paddling.


Halfway across the bay. If you notice it looks like Dawn is wearing a wristwatch on her left arm but it’s not. She told me she gets motion-sickness (in cars, planes, on the ocean, in the ocean and probably in outer space should she get a ride on the space shuttle). So I let her test my Relief Band which you can get at http://www.aeromedix.com. And it worked! She didn’t get sick on the way over or back across the bay even with the rolling swells on the way back. Amazing gizmo.


We were the first kayaks on the shore and it took a bit longer for some others to show up but not a big crowd at all which was nice.


When you pull-up to shore you’ll find this plaque in the shallows.


Besides the nice trip across the bay I had another motive for going back, a geocache site. Captain Cook’s Monumental Cache is not far from where we pulled up in our kayaks and I wanted to drop the Lost Cheesehead Travel Bug into the cache as I had held onto it for over two months hoping to take it to Oahu.


Another shot of inside the geocache before I added some goodies.


The Captain Cook monument. It’s not often you get to see it up close. You either have a 45-60 minute hike down to it or a nice one-mile kayak across the bay.


The engraving on the monument. As Dawn notes the error where it says Captain Cook discovered these islands. Ah…if he discovered these islands who were all those people that came out to greet him in outrigger canoes?


Another shot of the monument from the landing of the jetty. The large engraved stone on the right (front of the monument) reads:

THIS JETTY
WAS ERECTED BY
THE
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
IN MEMORY OF
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK R.N.
THE DISCOVERER
OF BOTH
AUSTRALIA AND THESE ISLANDS


Yellow Tangs in Kealakekua Bay.


Click on the above image for an underwater video. Filesize is 3.2MB so if you’re on dial-up you may want to pass on this. Also it uses the new H.264 QuickTime codec.

*UPDATE* I’m posting this on the blog itself from the comments so it gets Googled in case people are looking for the answer to this question.

Is the land on which the Captain Cook Monument sits sovereign British land?

Short answer about the monument being on British soil – NO.
Longer answer – National Historic Register shows land in the Kealakekua Bay Historical District is owned by the State and Private ownership. So this was not a definitive answer so I contacted the Kona Historical Society. Land was given by Cleghorn and Likelike to Major James Hay Wodehouse, “and his heirs and assigns In Trust however for the following uses and purposes and for none other that is to say in trust to keep and maintain on granted premises a monument in memory of Captain Cook…” Per the deed of conveyance (copy held at the Kona Historical Society.
Even Longer answer – There is no record showing that Wodehouse or his heirs ever gave the land to the British Government. So the land is still owned by his heirs and with current international laws the British Government can not obtain title to the land.

How did this rumor start?? Seems that the Tax assessor sent the King of England a notice of Real Property Assessment back in 1938. Subsequently, a letter of apology was sent from the Board of Tax Commissioners, Third Taxation Division.
This information is from a copy of a letter to the editor of the Tribune Herald who ran the story, I suspect in November of 1954 (but that is my guess based on the letter.)

That’s it. No British soil in Kealakekua Bay. Mystery solved thanks to the Archivist at the Kona Historical Society.

— Dawn

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