Pat Wood and her husband, Gordon, have lived about 12 years on their boat at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor, a unique community with a front-row seat to the sunsets in Waikiki.
It’s a life where they can watch mullets jumping in the water and see manta rays surround their Celestial 48 cruising boat, the Orion. It’s a place where they can sit on the aft deck with a glass of wine and relax on a calm night or nervously prepare for a approaching hurricane or tsunami.
“It isn’t nirvana. Sometimes it can be hell,” Pat Wood said. “You either love it or you don’t. We love it.”
Now they fear that their live-aboard lifestyle could soon end, not just for them and their harbor neighbors, but for others, too. The state has allowed people to live on boats in only two state harbors — the Ala Wai harbor and the Keehi Lagoon Harbor — for the past 30 years.
But Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation Administrator Ed Underwood abruptly announced in late June that officials have taken the position that “we are moving away from live-aboards.”
Underwood, whose remarks came during a June 23 town hall meeting with the community’s state legislators, said the state has stopped issuing live-aboard permits — a situation that blindsided boaters on the Zoom meeting and has resulted in new community pushback.
On Friday, DOBOR told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a statement, “We are not phasing out (live-aboard permits), but reducing the number by attrition.”
DOBOR said it has not issued a new live-aboard permit to anyone at either harbor for approximately three years “due to the fact the majority of the live-aboards were not in compliance with the Hawaii Revised Statutes and Hawaii Administrative Rules.”
The Ala Wai harbor since 1991 has allowed up to 129 live-aboard permits, but DOBOR said that there are only 66 now. DOBOR said up to 35 live-aboard permits have been allowed at the Keehi harbor since 1991, but currently there are 17.
DOBOR said those with live-aboard permits that expire this year would be allowed to renew their live-aboard status; however, “no one is grandfathered.”
Anxiety about the future of the public recreational area is nothing new.
DOBOR begin trying to redevelop Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor sites, including the current harbormaster’s office, the adjacent parking lot and the old fuel dock, more than a decade ago.
The first attempt at a partnership failed after Honey Bee USA went bankrupt in 2016, leaving fewer harbor amenities for boaters and a wake of creditors, including the state.
In 2019 DOBOR came up empty-handed after a committee reviewed proposals for redevelopment of the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor.
DOBOR said Friday they expect to begin another request-for-proposals process for development of parcels of land at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor at the start of 2022.
Upping the uncertainty for live-aboard boaters is Senate Bill 795. The bill, which passed this session, raises live-aboard fees sharply, on top of other already significant boating fee increases over the past few years.
State Sen. Sharon Moriwaki (D, Kakaako-McCully-Waikiki) voted yes to Senate Bill 795, which she said was based on a fair-market appraisal of the harbor and is needed to address deferred maintenance.
State Rep. Adrian Tam (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) said he understood why the fee increase was needed but voted no on the legislation, which he said was “divisive” and “needed a little more vetting.”
Tam said boaters have told him that they understand the fee increase but want to see it come with a return on their investment. He said some also have worried that the increase could price them out of the harbor and that it would be difficult to sell their boats because they can’t transfer their permit in the sale.
The Woods expect implementation of Senate Bill 795 will increase their monthly moorage cost to as much as $1,430 from the $985.55 they currently pay.
The Woods said their moorage fee already was increased 40% in 2019.
Some might view the monthly costs paid by the Woods as a good deal considering that they are below the market rate for housing. But Pat Wood said boats aren’t “floating condominiums,” so such comparisons are skewed. Also, boat owners face high maintenance costs, she said.
Moriwaki said she has asked DOBOR to consider waiting until Jan. 1 to implement the fee increases so that harbor residents have time to adapt.
The situation has grown so contentious that Moriwaki put together a small working group of harbor officials and harbor citizen patrol members that met for the first time Thursday.
“We are looking at what can be improved,” said Moriwaki, who along with Underwood and Tam joined the citizen patrol on its weekly walk around the harbor. “The goal is to identify the things that can be done so there is a better relationship.”
Gordon Wood said he hopes that a goal of the working group will be to clarify live-aboard status in state laws and administrative rules.
Joanne Weldon, resident leader of the Honolulu Police Department-supported citizens patrol at the harbor, said she wants the state to recognize that she and other live-aboards contribute to keeping the community safe and to alerting the harbor about sinking boats and other concerns.
Pat Wood said, “They complain about the condition of some of the boats, and yet they are the ones who do the inspections yearly and issue yearly permits. They also already have rules in place that can limit the ‘hoarder,’ ‘sidewalk interference’ situation that they do not regularly enforce.”
Longtime Ala Wai harbor live-aboard Renee Miller said she was “optimistic about the working group,” and characterized the Thursday night meeting as a “really good first step.”
Moriwaki said she expects the situation will continue to improve if all parties seek resolution.
But there are a lot of issues to address, including pending litigation.
Local attorney Erik Rask, who has been a live-aboard in the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor since 2013, said he sees the latest bill as a way to hurry the attrition process, especially given previous harbor rate hikes.
“It seem like it is in bad faith to seek to double the live-aboard fee, purportedly so that they can fund maintenance projects, when the real reason is because they want to drive out live-aboards so that they can hand over the harbor to a private entity carte blanche without live-aboard permittees,” Rask said.
Waikiki Neighborhood Board member Kathryn Henski, who lived in the Ala Wai harbor in the 1970s, said she is disappointed by DOBOR’s stance against issuing new live-aboard permits.
“Ed Underwood basically lit a bomb by telling us that he had arbitrarily decided to stop live-aboards. As far as I am concerned, he has not got the right to do that,” Henski said.
Henski said the decision represents the loss of a way of life that she has treasured since she was an 8-year-old child in Ohio listening to sound of waves pounding the surf on the “Hawaii Calls” radio program.
“I’m heartbroken that I won’t be able to experience it again and that others, especially young seafarers, won’t get the chance,” she said.
