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Like a good cup of coffee to start your morning? Now imagine that with some tasty pastries and fruit, all while enjoying one of the best views in Hawaii.
You can get all that, along with a touch of local glamour and history, on board the Vida Mia, a vintage yacht that departs from the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor for “Coffee Cruises” off Waikiki. The trips feature coffee and food from the Honolulu Coffee Co., along with occasional performances by local musicians.
“We have a nice mix of local residents and visitors,” said owner Brynn Rovito, who bought the vessel in 2020. “We have a lot of regulars. We have some of our ladies that come down once a week.”
Originally built as a commuter yacht in 1929 in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Vida Mia has operated mostly as a pleasure craft but also served a stint as a submarine-hunting vessel during World War II. It came to Hawaii in 1963 as an escort boat for the Honolulu Transpacific Yacht Race, and since then has experienced a journey not uncommon among old wooden boats in Hawaii — bursts of activity as a tourist attraction, followed by abandonment and deterioration, then rebirth and restoration brought on by new ownership.
The Vida Mia has hosted many celebrities and has appeared in the movies “Final Countdown” and “Snatched,” and most recently was seen in the first season of “White Lotus,” the HBO hit drama about tourists vacationing on Maui.
The show effectively gave the Vida Mia its coming-out party after its most recent revival. Rovito acquired it after the vessel had endured three years of neglect, getting “pretty beaten up by the sun,” she said. It needed major repairs to the hull, a new roof and an engine rebuild.
After all that work, “we started off with a bang,” Rovito said. “We got a call from HBO and they wanted the boat for ‘White Lotus.’ So our first charter was taking the boat over to Maui.”
That history was one of the main attractions for some of the 20 or so passengers who took an early morning coffee cruise recently.
“I just watched ‘White Lotus,’ ” said Victoria Mongeon, a Waikiki resident. “I’d been on (the boat) before, but after watching ‘White Lotus’ it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to go back and fan-girl the boat.’ I didn’t know the boat was a celebrity before, but now I know.”
The coffee cruise, she said, “is the best way to start the day — to see the sun rising over Diamond Head, to see the spread they have here, to meet all the people you meet. And the boat is beautiful.”
Matt Early, who is serving with the Air Force here, said he saw a sign for the cruise at Honolulu Coffee Co. and booked it because “we love the ocean and coffee.” He was bringing his visiting mother on the voyage, hoping to see whales, which he saw the first time he took the trip.
Gabby Snow, who has lived in Hawaii for about a year after coming here from Utah, said she loves being on the water early, “when it’s so quiet. It’s just beautiful to be out here. It can’t get much better than that.”
A nutrition coach, she also works at a jazz club and on board another tour boat, the Kona Star. But she especially likes the Vida Mia, with its elegant trim in teak, oak and cedar, and “because it’s old, and it’s got charm. The wooden exterior, it’s beautiful.”
The adventure did render a useful bit of advice to prospective passengers: Check the weather forecast. Kona winds can roil South Shore waters, tossing and bouncing small vessels and turning the trip into a stomach-churning challenge. In that situation, it’s best to watch the horizon and get some of the ginger candies from the crew.
Dan Mitsuda spent most of the cruise out on the front deck, one of the rockiest spots on the boat — the midsection is considered the most stable. But he was able to handle it because he surfs a lot — “130 spots around the island,” he said. He was invited on the cruise by a friend, and though he didn’t know about the Vida Mia, he was happy to go on a morning cruise. “Sunrise? On a boat? I’m there,” he said.
Rovito herself is an early riser who would find herself “sitting up at 4 a.m. wondering where I could get coffee. I was always up early walking around Waikiki and there would be tons of people up, and there’s nothing to do. So one day it came to me that ‘I bet people would drink coffee on a boat.’ ”
She’s heard online from people who have distant memories of cruises on the Vida Mia years ago, or enjoyed parties and were married on it.
“The boat has a lot of things written about it, and it’s been in the movies, which is great,” Rovito said, “but the storyline is much richer because of all the connections that people here have to it.”
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Coffee Cruise on the Vida Mia
>> Where: Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor, slip 499 (near the Hilton Lagoon)
>> When: Daily departures 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. for a 90-minute cruise
>> Cost: $89 adults; discounts available for children, military and kamaaina
>> Info: thevidamia.com/coffeecruise
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