Molokai Reef
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Synopsis:
Follow Gybe with no last name and his wacky friends, including a doobie smoking scarlet macaw, as they solve a murder mystery on the island of Molokai, one of the less-populated Hawaiian Islands.
Molokai Reef weaves humor, travelogue, environmental problems, sailing, and social commentary into a page turning mystery.
Homepage of Molokai Reef.
Book Excerpt:
Gybe assumed the sun was up as he stared into the clear water beneath the bow of Ferrity, his forty-one foot sailboat. He assumed that the earth was rotating eastward, carrying along Mt. Haleakalā. If true, in a few hours the sun would appear to rise from the nine-thousand foot dormant volcano, the foundation of Maui.
He didn’t like what he saw swaying from the anchor still more than a fathom beneath the surface. In August, he had sailed to the Hawaiian Islands from San Francisco to escape diversions like this.
Last evening, he had steered Ferrity into the small, abandoned harbor marked on the east by a few pilings once known as Kolo Wharf. Gybe preferred not to enter anchorages at night, but he had been here twice before and had marked the entrance on his GPS. The channel through the reef was narrow, but the wind was calm, the sea nearly flat, and the moon was just past full when Gybe eased Ferrity into the anchorage, dropped the twenty kilo patented Bruce anchor, and fed out fifty feet of chain.
Gybe was alone this morning. He planned to spend the next two weeks - until the winter solstice - anchored on the south shore of Moloka‘i, monikered ‘The Friendly Isle’ by travel agents and tourists. Besides Kolo Wharf, he wanted to anchor at Hale o Lono, an old barge harbor about three miles to the west, and Kaunakakai, the principal city on Moloka‘i.
Maybe the water and light were playing tricks. Gybe’s eyes traced the anchor chain from windlass, over the bow roller, and down to the water’s edge. Beneath the water, the two chimeras wavered like a reflection in a fun-house mirror.
Damn and double damn, he stepped on the button that engaged the windlass. The windlass reeled in another three feet of chain. Gybe stepped off the button and backed away from the bow.
Fifty yards to the east, he scanned the old wharf. The ocean, here behind the reef, was as still as a desert mirage. A tuft of cloud drifted across the water before impaling itself on the broken stub of the nearest piling. Ferrity sat motionless though her anchor no longer tethered her to the seafloor.
What to do? His eyes walked the shoreline from east to west, reaffirming the discoveries of his last visit. No one lived on the shoreline along the west half of the south side of Moloka‘i. When he was here last week, he had hiked an old jeep trail that paralleled the coast – the trail began at Hale o Lono harbor to the west and ended here at Kolo Wharf.
Several kayaks, paddles, and life jackets lay under a kiawe tree seventy-five yards to the west of the wharf. Gybe assumed that the Moloka‘i Ranch outfit that owned most of the west end of the island ran a kayaking operation here. This morning no one was around.
He had writing to finish. Last week he had met the local police. He didn’t like them. Nothing new there, Gybe hadn’t liked the police since… Move on. Stop thinking about the past, he told himself.
Back at the bow, he stepped on the DOWN button. The chain crawled out of the anchor well, over the windlass, and ticked across the deck before disappearing over the bow roller. Unsure, Gybe stepped off the button. Silence.
He heard a whale blow out in the Kalohi Channel that separated Moloka‘i from the neighbor island to the south – Lāna‘i. Like Pavlov’s dog, Gybe scanned the water searching for the fountain of water. Now that December had arrived, the humpbacks were returning in large numbers. Yesterday, he had changed course twice to avoid whales - whales that could grow to forty-feet and forty tons.
Beautiful morning shot to hell. Gybe pulled the restraining pin from the other anchor, a fifty-pound CQR plow, guided it past the hanging Bruce anchor and its catch, and eased it to the bottom.
Confirming his fears, Gybe mashed the UP button on the windlass and reeled in the Bruce anchor – an anchor that he had not baited last night. The windlass, capable of lifting two hundred feet of vertical chain, groaned under the load.
Author Comment:
Thank you for considering and/or reading Molokai Reef. Please post comments on bookseller sites and at the novel's homepage: http://molokaireef.com. Dennis
Topics/Categories:
enviromentalism, Genetic Engineering, Hawaii, Humor, liveaboard sailor, Molokai, Sailing, Social Commentary
Genre:
Commentary, Humor, Mystery, Parody - Spoof, Travel
Type of Work:
Publishers:
Purchase From:
Molokai Reef (paperback)
Molokai Reef (Kindle e-book)
Molokai Reef (Amazon paperback)
Molokai Reef (all e-book formats)
Original Publish Date:
September 19, 2009
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