Thread: Former loves
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Old 09-29-2011, 07:13 PM   #24
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
RE: Former loves

I've posted these photos before but.....***

I did not own one of these boats but I went out on them several times filming their remarkable*aku (tuna) fishing activities.* They were a fixture in Hawaii and have been my all-time favorite boat since I first saw them when I was seven.*

They were so much a fixture that it never occurred to me they would someday be gone, so in all the years I lived in Hawaii I never took a single still photo of one even though I saw them virtually every day.* And now they're all gone save for a couple of derelict hulks.

I have never seen a boat move as beautifully through the water as these did.* Powered by a 6-71, they sliced through the swells and waves like destroyers.

All of them were built locally in Hawaii, mostly in the later 1940s.* At one time the fleet must have numbered near a hundred statewide.* Many of them were based in Kewalo Basin in Honolulu, which is where the big tuna canneries were.* Kewalo Basin is still there but the sampans (the local name for these boats as well as "aku boat") and the canneries are long gone, along with the gigantic Norway rats that used to run the overhead pipes between the cannery buildings.

So I did not take these photos.* They were sent to me a few years ago by another equally enthusiastic fan of the sampans who DID have the presence of mind to take some pictures.

My favorite recreational production boat is the Fleming 55.* But if I could have one of these, either in*perfect-condition wood like the originals or an exact fiberglass replica, the Fleming would be forgotten in*a heartbeat.
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aku boat 1.jpg   aku boat 2.jpg  
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