The Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club was organized on October 28, 1924, with the
original Club site on the western side of Kāne‘ohe Bay.
Opening ceremonies at the present site were held on December 17,
1955. Reportedly, Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club
is the oldest Yacht Club in Hawai‘i, in terms of continuous service.
When we were kids, KYC and the Bay were our back yard.
Our house was about a block away.
An entrance gate to the club was at the end of the street of the old
neighborhood.
A significant milestone and rite of passage in life was turning
10-years of age – it was then that you could go down to the Yacht Club on your
own, without adult supervision.
Lots of the club is pretty much the same. (However, to add more mooring spaces, there
is a new parallel dock on the right side of the image below (where the El Toros
are sailing.)
The place was kid-friendly and accommodating to young adults. Back in the day, the Long House was available
for periodic teen dances (hundreds of us packed the place.) (Does anybody else remember the Vaqueros?)
We’d keep the Boston Whaler down there, and on a moment’s notice could
run down and hoist it into the water for running around the Bay.
Back then, the clover-leaf opening in the reefs on the Marine Base side
of the Club was the “ski lanes.”
Two rafts were anchored across each other to keep you high and dry,
while others in the group skied around the loop. (It’s now used for mooring of larger boats.)
The Whaler also took us to all other points of interest on the Bay,
camping at Coral Island, Kapapa and Chinaman’s Hat (Mokoli‘i;) fishing and
diving across the bay; and just general cruising around.
In addition to the ski/cruising outboard boat, we first had the
Mokuone, then Na Ali‘i Kai, then Lanakila fishing boats and regularly entered
the Club’s fishing tournaments.
In addition to mooring and dry storage areas, the Club has two tennis
courts, a swimming pool and a kid-sized wading pool.
And, it has a bar. As a kid,
that was some mysterious place that you were forbidden to enter. We’d gaze in to see what was up.
I swear, looking into the bar, now, it looks like the same people
sitting there sipping their cocktails – they must be the kids of the adults we
used to look at.
There are swimming and sailing classes for kids and young adults
offered throughout the year and plenty to do for the adults, too.
The image shows the Kāne‘ohe Yacht Club as we knew it as kids, in a
pre-1966 postcard noted in “The History of Kaneohe Yacht Club” book. (This is the way I remember the club from
small-kid times.)
I have added a few additional photos of KYC and the area in a folder of
like name in the Photos section of my Facebook page.
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