The Around-the-State Race is no more. This classic ocean race circumnavigated the Hawaiian Islands, leaving all 8 major islands to port, and was held even years in early August from 1972-1990.
There were miles of spectacular coastline passed close aboard in the Around-the-State Race, including the Napali Coast on Kauai and the north shore of Molokai with its thousand foot waterfalls plummeting into the blue ocean.
What stands out in my mind was one night in 1988 aboard the 45' Reichel/Pugh IOR sloop INSATIABLE. We had rounded South Point (Ka Lae) at 1310 hours with the 52 foot JUBILATION just ahead, wind 082 degrees, 21 knots. Ahead was the 65 mile beat up the Ka'u coast to Cape Kumakahi, the most eastern point of the Hawaiian chain.
From experience we knew there was less south flowing current on the beach than further offshore. But in the dark, with active lava flows, clouds of sulphur and steam, and a coast line that was changing on an active basis, all navigation was by guess, golly, and tearing eyeballs. We didn't want to get too close to the lava rivers in the dark as we short tacked the coastline. It was a spectacular sight from seaward.
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Nearing dawn the next morning, we could see the loom of the Cape Kumakahi lighthouse, 156 feet high, flashing 15 sec., visible 24 miles. I had visited the Kumakahi lighthouse the previous year on a voyage with WILDFLOWER from French Polynesia back to Santa Cruz, with a stop in Hilo, 26 miles to the northwest from Cape Kumakahi. On my visit to Cape Kumakahi I learned its history and saw an amazing thing.
In 1927, annual petitions for a lighthouse at Cape Kumakahi had gone unfunded by the Hawaiian Territory’s delegate to the U.S. Congress. The importance of a light on Cape Kumukahi was significant, not only to the increase in shipping traffic since the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, but also planes on transpacific flights. At the time, Hilo was the second largest port in the Hawaiian Territory.
Finally, on December 31, 1928, the U.S. Government purchased fifty-eight acres on Cape Kumukahi for the sum of $500. During the following year, a thirty-two-foot wooden tower capped with an automatic acetylene gas light was built at the cape for local use – not exactly the powerful landfall light the Lighthouse Board had envisioned years before.
Four years later, sufficient appropriations were at last made for a primary seacoast light for Cape Kumukahi. An asphalt road was built in 1932 to link the lighthouse to the nearest highway, and the following year, two five-room dwellings, water tanks, sidewalks, and a reinforced concrete foundation for the tower were completed.
Due to the frequent earthquakes associated with volcanic activity in the area, a unique foundation was designed for the lighthouse tower. Lava was first excavated and a massive concrete block was installed in the resulting hole. A second concrete block was placed above the first with a thick layer of sand in between. This design allowed the lower block to move with the earth, without transmitting shocks to the tower.
The following year, a square, pyramidal, skeleton tower was constructed of galvanized steel, and two, thirty-six-inch airway beacons were placed at its top, roughly 125 feet above the ground. To supply power for the light and keeper’s dwellings, three engine-generators units were installed in a corrugated powerhouse located at the base of the tower.
With a strength of 1,700,000 candlepower, Cape Kumukahi Light was the strongest in the Hawaiian Islands, and only the concrete Molokai Lighthouse at Kalaupapa, at 213'. was taller. Veteran keeper Charles K. Akana, who had served at nearly every major light in the islands, was brought in to take charge of the new station. Due to the bareness of the landscape, the keeper’s dwellings were located over a half mile from the tower.
In 1938, Joe Pestrella was transferred from the lighthouse tender KUKUIi to the barren station at Cape Kumukahi. On his own time and at his own expense, Pestrella brought in soil and trees and succeeded in turning a desolate spot into a place of beauty. Included in his orchard were lemon, mango and tangerine trees, and a rare bay leaf tree.
Cape Kumukahi is included in Kilauea Volcano’s active east rift zone. In 1955, a lava flow threatened the station, but Pestrella remained on duty at the peril of his life to keep the light running. For his dedicated years of service at the station, he was selected as Civil Servant of the Year for the Hawai`i area in 1956.
On January 13, 1960, a fiery fountain of lava, roughly half a mile long, shot up in a sugar cane field, two miles east of the Kumakahi lighthouse and just north of the town of Kapoho. Bulldozers and fire hoses were used in attempts to divert and harden the flow. On January 21, the flow appeared to be heading north away from the village and the station. However, during the next week, the lava turned south and started to encroach on the station grounds. Pestrella’s wife and infant son were evacuated, but Pestrella remained at the station saying, “When my backside feels hot, I’ll move on. Not till then!!”.
When the lava set the station’s gate ablaze, Pestrella surely felt the heat, and on January 28, he wisely decided to place the light on emergency power and leave the station. The lava flow swallowed the keeper’s dwellings and incinerated Pestrella’s orchard. That same day, the flow engulfed the town of Kapoho.
On February 2, the heat from the flow caused the generator’s fuel tanks at the tower to explode, and the light was extinguished.
As the river of lava approached within a few feet of the tower, it remarkably divided into two streams that flowed past each side of the structure, leaving the tower unscathed. The Kapoho eruption had covered over ten square kilometers and added two square kilometers of land to the island.
It was this astonishing division of lava flow in 1960 around the Cape Kumakahi lighthouse I observed in 1987. Locals were daily leaving gifts and wreaths at the base of the light tower to honor and appease the Hawaiian Goddess of Light and Fire, Pele, who they believed saved the lighthouse.
Today, after surviving the lava flow, the lighthouse is fully automated, and Pestrella, its last keeper was transferred to Makapu`u Lighthouse on O`ahu.
As we passed Cape Kumakahi and bore away to the northwest that morning in 1988 my log notes "squalls, wind 20-34 from 110 degrees. 37 sail changes to date. The boat is wetter inside than out."
