Some days you shouldn't get out of bed......

by W Hoover & E Aguiar,Honolulu Advertiser/Sail-World on 17 Feb 2008 Some days, you just shouldn't get out of bed in the morning. What began as a leisurely ocean cruise Wednesday afternoon ended with Jim Dobson's 54-foot yacht running aground at Poka'i Bay, on the big island of Oahu, Hawaii, and the destruction of the very expensive craft after yesterday's wave surge left it sitting on the beach at the Wai'anae.

Trouble began for Dobson and his three female companions around 3 p.m. Wednesday after the blue and white yacht lost its anchor. Nothing daunted, Dobson kept going.

However, then, as it neared Poka'i Bay, the yacht lost its motor after the props got snarled in the line of a kayak the boat was towing. So now, he couldn't motor and he couldn't anchor.

Adrift, the boat was also unable to turn around by hoisting a sail, and began moving toward the bay's reef. He no doubt thought he was saved when a passing fishing boat attached a line to the yacht and attempted to pull it out to sea.

But when that line snapped, and then another, the yacht finally ran aground. By then, Ocean Safety and Honolulu Fire Department rescue personnel had been alerted, so they quickly moved in to safely get Dobson and the three passengers to shore.

Area resident Patricia Haller, 60, who had watched the drama unfold at the bay on Wednesday, stood by the beach yesterday and shook her head.

'I've never seen anything like it,' she said. 'And we've lived at Poka'i Bay since 1959.'

However, it was not to end there.

Bad as matters were for the yacht, it was still in one piece. William Aila, harbormaster at the Wai'anae Boat Harbor, said yesterday's high surf shoved the yacht across the reef and into the bay, leaving it stranded with multiple holes in its bottom and a hull filled with water.

Dobson, 60, owns a car dealership in Oregon and has lived weekends in the yacht where it has been moored at the Ko Olina Marina. Yesterday he said he had no alternative but to have the yacht cut to pieces and hauled to the dump.

'Well,' he said, looking toward the mountains, 'no one got hurt. All my kids are healthy. And I've still got a few years ahead of me.'

Stoic words, Jim but we're sure you just wish you had gone golfing that day.