Rebecca's Interview with Steve Dixon

Author of
The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy

Rebecca :
I hope you're all right with all that rain & flooding. I was thrilled with The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy! Next printing - get it like a cookbook with pages laminated against water so sailing folks can flip open to all your charts & not worry about Mother Sea smearing it! I know - it's got to become a best seller before then.

Steve :
We were fine in Kona and West Hawaii. Hilo had a reported 29 inches of rain in 24 hours. Imagine two and a half feet of water dumped over a thousand square miles. Welcome to the rainy season in Hilo, January 1-December 31, where “Overhead, the ceiling was heavy, dripping, and gray, a typical Hilo sky....the gazillion-pound gray sponge of a cloud system that usually hangs dripping over Hilo.” The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy, p.13.

Rebecca :
From reading The Hawaiian Voyages Of The Ono Jimmy it is clear that you are a grand teller of stories, a raconteur, tell me how you decided to write a book about your voyages around the Hawaiian Islands. Did you keep a log of more than nautical data?

Steve :
I believe that story telling is the most ancient of the arts. Imagine our ancestors sitting around the evening campfires entertaining each other with their stories of love and adventure in a primitive world. It is not that the storyteller has a more adventurous life than his colleagues do, it is that he tells the story so that you can see it, feel it, smell it, fear it and laugh it.

As you read in the beginning of The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy, 1993-1994 was a passage time of great personal evolution and re-creation, a passage of loss, tragedy, death, and financial and emotional destruction. When Ono Jimmy, then called the Aloha, sailed into my life in February of 1994, she was pure grace under white-winged sails.

I did not particularly care if I lived or died, so my early sailing in these rough Hawaiian waters was relatively fearless. I always returned to Kona with wild-laughing tales of Hawaiian sea adventures on little Ono Jimmy. My friend Sam Gaughen, who publishes the Kona Sailing Club Newsletter suggested that I put some of these stories and adventures down on paper in a two-page format.

“Well,” I thought, “ I could do that.”; I have been writing legal briefs and memoranda for about twenty years. I would select a central story theme, develop the facts, characters, suspense and resolution in two pages. After the second issue, people were calling me and Sam and anxiously awaiting the next installment. Sort of like the old Saturday matinees at the theater or adventures that Mark Twain and the writers of Western pulp fictions and their adventure story letters to newspapers in the last century.

After I had written and published eight stories in the Kona Sailing Club Newsletter, I happened to staple all eight stories together one afternoon. I was struck from above: “Wow! This is a book!” I pulled out my envelopes of photos taken on our trips, and I saw the entire book in my mind's eye that day. Plenty Mahalos to Sam Gaughen! I began re-writing the stories to flesh them out from their original two-page format, and the next eight chapters had more meat to them.

I do keep some minimal logs when I sail. But the stories aren't there in the logs. They exist in the universe, independent of me. When Hawaiian sea adventures happened on the Ono Jimmy, the stories were born in the energy created in those people and events on those adventures. Albert Einstein taught us that energy never disappears, it is always there, somewhere, albeit, perhaps, in different form. I simply think about the adventures for a few days, or weeks, or years. Then I sit down to write, and I channel the energy of those adventures back from wherever it is in the universe, and type it into the computer. I have recently found to my great pleasure that I can do it the old fashioned way and put the story-energy directly on paper.

Sometimes friends have criticized me for writing politically incorrect things such as my good friend Tony's drinking days [haven't we all had a few of those?] and the shooting incident at Kealakekua Bay. I have to answer that: “The story tells the story, I am just the channel for that energy from the universe, wherever it is that stories live, through to the computer or paper.”

Rebecca :
When did the salt of the sea first get to you?

Steve :
I was born in San Bernardino, California in 1945. My Dad and Grandfather had an automobile and truck repair business called “Dixon Wheel Service”. When I was about five, somebody paid a debt by conveying a house trailer to my father and he parked it near the beach in Carlsbad, California. A few years later he moved it to Beach Lake Trailer Park in Oceanside, California. I started surf riding on those inflatable canvas rafts that preceded boogie boards, body surfed, skim-boarded, fished and surfed all of the years of my youth. I first came to Hawaii with San Bernardino buddies Don Hudgeons and Phil Swanson in June of 1966, with surfboards wrapped in sleeping bags. I could not then and can not now imagine life without an ocean in it.

Rebecca :
What are the sounds that you hear onboard that turn your blood to water & bring a whoop of joy?

Steve :
There is a certain rushing sound and a perfectly attuned feeling that the boat gets when she is flying under sails perfectly balanced in a good wind. THAT is ecstasy at sea.

Of Course, it is also very good when one of the exhausted, frightened crew spots the island we are sailing for after a tough passage and yells, sobbing, “THERE! THERE IT IS!! WE'RE SAVED!”

Rebecca :
While I am only an armchair sailor I can see how useful is your Navigation Addendum in which you list precise data on significant U.S. Coastguard Lights all around the Islands; almost a come-hither. Is sailing to Hawaii from the West Coast of America possible?

Steve :
Sure, in fact the run downwind to Hawaii is often reported to be one of the best long passages in the world. See the discussion of trade winds and square-rigged merchant sailors of the last century in Chapter 13 of The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy. The West-Coast, Western Canada, Alaska and Hawaii are all served by the vast system of clock-wise Trade Winds of the “Pacific High” [Sounds like a good name for an herb grown somewhere on the West-Coast doesn't it?]. The reliable 10-25 knot east to west blowing Trade Winds generated by the Pacific High pressure system that lies between Hawaii and the North-West create reliable sailing winds to blow you to Hawaii about two hundred days a year.

Rebecca :
After my two ocean liner cruises, one to Portugal from Southampton & the other to New York, I found myself lurching to & fro for a few days once I was on land, do you get “sea legs” after several days at sea? After the speed of racing before a wind, does land travel seem slow?

Steve :
Yes. After several days at sea, being on land feels a lot like how one feels after several days of drinking a gallon of cheap red wine a day. But the head is better and the stomach settles down sooner. After several days of being at sea in Hawaii on a small boat, the land feels incredibly safe and comfortable. I especially enjoy couches, television, and bathrooms and kitchens that don't move around on me. Of course one loses one's sense of gratitude soon enough and one must then go to sea again to be thrilled, exhausted, and terrified, so that one can appreciate land life again.

Rebecca :
Tell me one of your funniest mishaps aboard the Ono Jimmy.

Steve :
At the moment, the best one I recall is when Tony and I took Lila to Kealakekua Bay the first time. The sun came up in the morning, clear and warm on the skin. The sky and the sea and the land were beautiful to be in. I encouraged Lila to go for an early morning swim. She eagerly agreed. Then “L'il Stevie Dickens” threw handfuls of saltine crackers around her in the water. She screamed as the whole ocean erupted and boiled all around her as thousands and thousands of fish boiled and flashed all around her to get at the crackers. I collapsed in hysterical belly laughter. I do remember Tony eyeing me as if I was weird to do that to a new girlfriend.

Rebecca :
Tell my readers about the sugar mill that flew?

Steve :
Tony had the watch, and I was resting comfortably in the cabin. Suddenly, Tony screamed, “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! ON DECK! ON DECK! MAY DAY!!” I bolted into the cockpit, wildly following Tony's frightened eyes as he pointed back toward Hilo Airport. A HUGE AIRPLANE WAS COMING DOWN FOR A CRASH LANDING RIGHT ON TOP OF OUR HEADS! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

Luckily for us, it turned out to be the lights of the Hamakua sugar mill and the mill was securely fastened to the Hamakua Coast. Funny how your eyes can play tricks on you at sea during the night.

Rebecca :
1993 was, as Good Queen Bess II would say, an annus horribilis for you. A passage of great losses - of love, laughter, family & finances. What is it about sailing the passages of the Hawaiian Islands that brought healing to your wounded heart?

Steve :
I learned that I am free. I am free to pursue joy. The only prison is the prison I make for myself. If I have the courage to sail away from misery I can grow strong, and free, and joyously. I sailed out of a life that had fallen from love, prosperity, and happiness, to divorce, death, financial and business ruin, and misery. I learned that all we have to do is make some small, reasonable, preparations, and we can put the wind in our sails, sea breezes in our faces, and sail away into joy. Sailing is a metaphor for life.

Rebecca :
I like that you tell your readers all sorts of useful information not only about how & where to drop anchor(even which kinds of anchors to use), you also give us places to roam & the best places for foam - beverages that is. Obviously you are madly in love with the Islands. What would you say to readers on the verge of breaking loose & coming out to your Islands?

Steve :
Do what you dream. Follow your passion, follow your enthusiasm. Trust love and joy. Do not trust fear. Fear will imprison you in fear. You can always return to the old grind. The old grind is always there for us. In fact, an adventure or two can make the familiar old grind seem wonderful. Follow love, not fear. If Hawaii calls you to adventure, as it did me, Beautiful Hawaii is here waiting for you, as it has been waiting for people seeking their soul-adventure destinies ever since the first Polynesian adventurers landed here, perhaps a couple of thousand years ago.

Rebecca :
What is the worst thing about saltwater life? What is the worst thing about landlubber life?

Steve :
Life is hard, and it can be brutal, and it is certainly too short. On land you can stop and rest. You can let mowing the yard go for a few weeks and the worst thing that will happen is that the neighbors will give you stink-eye. On a boat, letting necessary maintenance go can kill you, or worse, your loved ones. Life at sea can be very hard, lonely, and dispiriting, especially when that universal boat-fuel, money, runs low. It is quite possible to live a saltwater life with little or no money. There are two kinds of sailors: Sailors with boats who need crews. And crew-sailors who need sailors with boats. The only trouble I have with landlubber life is that lack of adventure takes the zest out of life. So I just go cruising when I get stale. Then I am in a state of gratitude when the cruise ends safely. I find that I am happy when I am in a state of gratitude. I am unhappy when I am bored, stressed, angry or resentful. I prefer to be happy.

Rebecca :
What are your next adventures?

Steve :
I am about six chapters into my next book of Hawaii sailing stories. Hawaiian Sailing Adventures will be much meatier, more classic sea-literature, I hope, because it began intended as a book, rather than a series of short, exciting, sailing adventures like The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy.

Rebecca :
Steve, thank you for The Hawaiian Voyages Of The Ono Jimmy, I have thoroughly enjoyed your writing style, humor & adventures, is there anything else you would like to say?

Steve :
Follow your joy. Beware of duty to fear. It is a miserable prison. There are only two places to come from for us spiritual beings having a human experience, Love and Fear. Have the courage to do the right thing even though you are experiencing fear. Fear is natural, and as naturally, leads to imprisonment of the soul. Operate out of love, follow your joy.

Fair Winds and Aloha, Steve Dixon
http://www.hawaiisailing.com
Rebecca :
Do check out my review of The Hawaiian Voyages of the Ono Jimmy.

(Published December 10, 2000)