Josh and I went kayaking yesterday off of Kailua. It. Was. Amaaaaazing. Definitely one of the most fun things I’ve done on Oahu (and I feel like I’ve done a lot of fun things). We started out in the morning around 9:30 and came back around 2:30 in the afternoon. It was pretty cloudy and windy…which made it rather chilly with the water spraying us from the wind. Along with it being overcast, there was a surf advisory for the north and west sides of Oahu which made the normal glassy, calm water around Kailua beach and Lanikai pretty choppy.
We loaded up the kayak from Windward Water Sports in Kailua and headed towards Kailua beach. We parked, got the kayak off Josh’s car and headed towards the beach with all our stuff. Neither of us had kayaked before, but we successfully launched off the beach (probably our most successful launch of the day) and headed towards Popoi’a (Flat Island). It is located about a quarter mile off of Kailua Beach Park and is about four acres in size. Flat Island is a State Seabird Sanctuary where about 3,000 wedge-taled shearwater seabirds call home. The birds nest in the many sink holes on the island so you have to be careful where you step, stay off the center of the island and walk only around the edge. You also have a great view of the Mokulua Islands (our final destination on our kayak adventure).
After taking some pictures and walking around the island, we got back in the kayak and headed towards The Mokes. This was a bit longer of a journey and definitely a good arm/back workout with the wind and waves. We also had to navigate around the reef and the snorkelers. We finally arrived at Moku Nui (the larger of the two islands) in a rather adventurous landing. A pretty large wave pushed us all the way up into the beach and we had to scramble out and drag our kayak up out of the surf (we were soaked). After getting ourselves together, we gathered our stuff and headed off to the right side of the island to see what it could offer. The terrain was rocky, but nothing that we couldn’t conquer in flip flops. We found a spot, sat down and had a snack and hung out and dried off in the sun.
After about a half hour, a tour came by and the guide pointed out a place where people could jump into a shallow pool. It was pretty cool, so Josh decided to jump and I took pictures.
After Josh jumped, we headed back towards the beach to visit the other side of the island. Â We had a pretty good view of Moku Iki, which is off limits to visitors as it is also a State Seabird Sanctuary (so is the middle of Moku Nui), along with great views of Lanikai Beach. Â After venturing the other way a bit, we headed back towards the kayak to take off and head back to Kailua Beach. This is where it gets interesting…we packed up our stuff and had the most adventurous launch off of Moku Nui. What we thought was a calm area turned out to be where all of the waves from both directions around the island converged into the perfect storm approximately right when Josh and I tried to launch off the beach. This resulted in us doing a 360 a few times and being completely owned by the ocean. Our water bottle went flying off the kayak, the dry bag somehow stayed attached and we both were dying laughing (along with the rest of the people standing on the beach watching us). A very nice person caught our water bottle in the waves and gave us a nice shove and we were off! It was absolutely hilarious…not a single part of us stayed dry. After that, we headed back to Kailua, loaded up the kayak (harder than it sounds) and drove it back to the rental place. All in all, a HUGE success for our first kayaking adventure!
365 Days Of Hawaii 
What a great day! Thanks for sharing. Xo
it was such a great day! xoxo
Great post! I love all the adventures!
thank you!!!