Longtime residents of Hawaii are often sentimental about Boat Day, an island institution that died in the 1960s with the advent of the jet plane.
Today, with the aid of a Mexican coastal town named Ensenada, Boat Days almost seem to be coming back to Honolulu.
And cruise lines appear to be scrambling to rediscover Hawaii along with several other parts of the Pacific and the Far East. Pacific passengers will pay upwards of $200 a day for these excursions in 1991. Cruise fares generally include accommodations, food, entertainment and, of course, transportation, but not alcohol, tips or shore excursions. Air fares to and from certain cities to the port of embarkation/debarkation are sometimes included.
During the 1940s, when the Royal Hawaiian Band, a group of hula dancers and an army of lei vendors showed up at Pier 10 next to the Aloha Tower to meet a ship in from the West Coast, Boat Day seemed to be all about music, dance and flowers.
It was also about families and friends: old friends returning to the islands, and, later in the day, new friends bidding aloha to those they had met in Hawaii. College students from Hawaii went away and returned on Boat Day. So did newlyweds and others who wanted to visit the rest of the country. Passengers sailed out, and the band played ”Aloha Oe,” that haunting melody written by the last queen of Hawaii. They threw their flower leis on the water to see whether they drifted to land or out to sea. According to legend, this was a sure sign that they would or would not return to the romantic Islands of Hawaii.
Incoming passengers threw coins to watch young Hawaiians dive for them in the clear water. As they stepped ashore and received leis, the notes of
”Aloha Oe” became an upbeat greeting, promising that a happy, leisurely island experience awaited them.
Enjoyment wasn`t the point
These trips were not cruises but ”line voyages.” Passengers traveled with the principal purpose of getting from one place to another, in this case between what was called ”the States” and the Territory of Hawaii. Any fun they had along the way was just plain serendipity.
The authentic Boat Day is gone forever, and no one will dive for a quarter nowadays. But with the vastly increasing cruise traffic in the Pacific over the last few years, something approaching this old-time spirit has been returning to Pier 10, and sometimes to Piers 8, 9 and 10, when two or three floating pleasure palaces manage to tie up in Honolulu at the same time.
”Cruise traffic to Hawaii declined a lot in 1990; I think it was about 50 port calls,” said Karen Neville. Neville is manager of the passenger division of TheoDavies Marine Agencies Inc., the port agent for all foreign-flag vessels landing in Hawaii.
”But in 1991 it is going to be about double that, with more than 100 port calls scheduled,” she said. (The number of port calls also include stops in other Hawaiian Islands.)
Neville says violence in China caused a sharp drop in the number of Pacific cruises in 1989 and 1990. That situation stabilized at the same time the Middle East became uncertain again. So the number of cruises scheduled for the Pacific, including Hawaii, will continue to rise, she said.
Over the last five years, cruises to the Far East are up 463 percent, from 19 cruises in 1985 to 88 in 1990, according to Jim Godsman, president of Cruise Lines International, an umbrella group headquartered in New York City. ”And cruises to the South Pacific went from 6 to 99 in that same five-year period,” Godsman said.
He said he could not yet determine the number of cruises in the Pacific for 1991, and he declined to say whether the number of cruises to the Mediterranean is expected to drop.
”The degree to which problems in the Middle East will affect the Med in 1991 is something that is unknown,” Godsman said. ”We get conflicting messages from different people.”
A longtime stopover
Hawaii always has had a share of Pacific cruises, with such world-famous names as the Queen Elizabeth 2 traditionally calling at Honolulu and sometimes at ports on other Hawaiian Islands on globe-girdling itineraries.
Ten years ago, two old U.S.-registered ships operated by American-Hawaii Cruises, the Independence and the Constitution, were brought to a new home port in Honolulu. They began making one-week cruises around the islands, and these continue today.
In the late 1980s, other cruise lines began to be interested in providing programs to and around the Hawaiian Islands. All were inhibited by the Jones Act, a provision of U.S. maritime law that states that passengers can travel between one American port and another American port only on an American-registered, American-built vessel.
Virtually all cruise ships catering to Americans today are foreign-built and foreign-registered. (American-Hawaii Cruises is the lone exception.)
Cruise lines with Hawaii ambitions have turned to Ensenada, Mexico, a port about 75 miles south of the border from San Diego. Passengers flying in to San Diego are met by the company and bused in about two air-conditioned hours to the ship, without ever having to say so much as ”Buenos dias.” With this successful circumvention of the irksome old law, cruises featuring Hawaii were reborn.
One of the first to make regular cruises to and from Hawaii through this Mexican loophole was Royal Cruise Line. Beginning Monday from Ensenada, its 1,000-passenger Crown Odyssey launches 10-day cruise/hotel programs between Ensenada and Honolulu (about $2,000 up) or 16-day round-trip voyages starting at Ensenada or Honolulu (beginning at around $3,000). Calls will be made at three other Hawaiian Islands en route.
Not to be outdone, the Royal Viking Line has scheduled four 11-day cruises between Ensenada and Honolulu this year aboard the Royal Viking Sky or the Royal Viking Sea (beginning at $2,610). Either also will include port calls at Kailua-Kona on the Big Island, Lahaina on Maui and Nawiliwili Harbor on Kauai. (In December RVL will inaugurate a 16-day Hawaii cruise. Also beginning in Ensenada, it will hit four Hawaiian ports before returning to the mainland at San Francisco.)
The Royal Viking Sky also will include Hawaii ports of call on a 75-day Grand Pacific Voyage in 1991. This replaces a similar length cruise it made to South America in 1990. (Fares begin around $15,000.)
Next stop: Tahiti
Princess Cruises, too, will make the Ensenada connection in 1991. But it will emphasize cruises it inaugurated last year between Hawaii and Tahiti and which will be repeated in 1991. These 11-day programs aboard the Island Princess or Pacific Princess include calls on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, the Big Island of Hawaii, then on down to Bora Bora and Tahiti. (About $3,000 up.)
Princess also will offer two 14-day South Pacific cruises between Australia and Tahiti and three two-week itineraries to Asia, including ports in Japan and a return to China.
The Cunard Line has planned several maiden calls in 1991, several of them in the Pacific. The 1,800-passenger QE2 has always visited Honolulu on its annual four-month, round-the-world excursion. Cunard`s 700-passenger Vistafjord also will dock at Honolulu during 1991 on cruises between Hawaii and Ensenada (six days from $2,640) and on a 28-day Polynesian Circle cruise scheduled between Los Angeles and Tahiti (from about $6,700 up for the full circle).
Hawaii-Ensenada cruises (or vice versa) are also set for Cunard`s Sagafjord, sister to the Vistafjord. In addition, the Sagafjord is scheduled for a 111-day, 37-port Grand Circle Pacific cruise to the Orient, beginning at Ft. Lauderdale. It will stop at several South Pacific and Asian ports for the first time. Maiden calls will include Dunedin, New Zealand, Semarang, Indonesia, and Phuket in Thailand.
The big newcomer in the Pacific in 1991 is Holland America Lines, which began on Jan. 8 its 16-day Circle Hawaii cruises from Ensenada (about $3,000 up), along with eight-day Hawaii Discovery cruises (beginning around $2,000)
in the 1,100-passenger Rotterdam, the flagship of its fleet. Calls will be made at Hilo, Lahaina, Honolulu, Nawiliwili and Kailua-Kona.
Holland-America`s eight-day cruises may be extended to a 10-day vacation by adding a two-night hotel package.
Besides its Honolulu operations, the same line has inaugurated a 35-day South Pacific Cruise aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam, sailing from Los Angeles on Sept. 27. Fares begin at about $6,000. In 1992, another new cruise to the Far East aboard the Rotterdam will include stops in China.
Herman van Deursen, marketing manager for Holland-America, says he does not see the four days` transit time between Hawaii and North America as a disadvantage, and that it is not important to make port frequently.
”Experienced cruisers say they really like life aboard ship while at sea,” he said.
