Our days passes by here in Maui as quick as you can imagine. We´ve been here since more than 8 weeks now and we love Maui. Maui provides all we ever wanted. The people are so friendly we make new friends almost every day. Doesn´t matter if we are on the boat and people just swim or paddle by, in the lineup at Coves, the surf spot right next to ZERO, or on shore. The people are so interested in our travel stories, many people invited us for dinner and offered us help in any kind we ever could need. Even the firefighters offered their help when we met them at the beach. Kyle gave us an old firehose we can use as shave guards for our docking lines or anchor bridle. We met Christin on the beach the first day we went ashore and she offered us to use her motorcycle if we want. A couple weeks later we called her and asked if the motorcycle offer is still good. She apologized that she just sold it, but offered us her car instead. So we had a car for around 5 days and explored the island of Maui. Road to Hana is a popular attraction and you can find beautiful waterfalls, breathtaking views over the ocean, lots of fruits and strange things like Red Sand Beach and Venus Pools.
While you drive along the coast the nature changes its face every time you drive around a corner. Depending how much Haleakala shades the rain, it can vary from dry desert to tropical rainforest within a couple minutes. Haleakala is the volcano on Maui´s eastside. Its peak thrones 3055m above sea-level. The last eruption is over 500 years ago, but some areas around its base are still black lava fields. The north and east side is covered with lush rainforest. It’s raining there almost every day, but on the south and west side of Haleakala the amount of rain is reduced to a couple showers a year. We anchor south west of Haleakala. So we have almost no rain here. The weather is hot! Very hot today, because the typical wind doesn’t blow today. Out thermometer shows 37° C and were melting.. The ocean temperature is around 30°C. We can spend ages in the water and never feel cold! Rebecca loves it!
We met Dale Zarrella. Dale is a local but world famous Sculptor, Painter and Master Artist. We met him while he was working on a huge mermaid sculpture in front of his house. Her could see ZERO all the time from his terrace and invited us to his saturday dinners. Besides the fact that he is a very nice person, it´s unbelievable what skills he has to create these masterpieces of wood and bronze sculptures. Go to his website because I´m not able to describe his work with words. www.dalezarrella.com
Mad Mike is a German who immigrated to Australia 30 Years ago and now lives in Australia and Maui. He paddled by one morning and since then we spend a lot of time together. Thanks to Mad Mike I got the chance to windsurf Hookipa 2 times now. Hookipa is one of the most famous windsurf spots in the world and if the wind and waves are up you can find all the top pro surfer here. I surfed with Josh Stone and Robbie Naish and probably many other pros I didn’t recognize. The day I went out we had around 4-6 meter waves. It was so much fun and I surfed my first masthead breaking waves. When I approached the big wall of water, coming in full speed on the windsurfer, I had to circle around two surfer sitting in the water. They didn´t like me getting their wave, but first comes first serves and I definitely got it first! I was at the perfect position. The waves was way bigger than my 4m mast and when I did the bottom turn it looks like I got the biggest wave of the day. It was AWESOME!!!
It feels like we live here in Kihei for a long time. We know so many people, shops, farmers markets and even the post office staff knows what I want when I open the door. We ordered a lot of stuff and let it deliver to the Kihei USPS office. It worked perfect.
Willy took us out with his powerboat to swim with dolphins in La Perouse bay. We found a little school with around 30 Dolphins and swam with them for over an hour.
The last 2 days we spend with Christian and his Family. The first day we took them out for a little sailing adventure. His two girls are 6+7 years old and loved to take a day off school and sail to Molokini. Molokini is a tiny bird sanctuary just 5 miles of Maui´s south coast between Maui and Kahoolawe. We set sails towards Kahoolawe, tacked close to the shore and a little later tied ZERO on one of the free moorings in Molokini. The moorings are placed there to protect the coral. There are plenty of them, but because there are around 6-10 feet underwater you don´t see them until you are very close. The crystal clear water helps to find them. I pointed ZERO´s bow above one of them and Rebecca and Christian jumped into the water to tie our bridal to it. Engine off, snorkel on! We had a great day swimming, snorkeling and chilling in Molokini and came back way after sunset. The second day we spend at his neighbor´s pool, playing around like millionaires! What a life!
Since all packages are delivered, it`s time to explore some of the other islands. Lanai, Molokai and Oahu are next. We´ll leave Kihei probably tomorrow and sail to Lanai first. Lanai and Molokai are very rare inhabited which contrast sharply with Ohau. Its capital Honolulu has a little less than a million people living there. We hope to find a good new or used inflatable dinghy there.
It’s hard to say goodbye to all the friends we met here, but we have plenty time to come back and will come back maybe to celebrate Christmas here.
We´ll see..
Thanks to all of you!

ps: We added a lot of pictures to give you a good idea how it looks like here.. enjoy!