Sailboarder finds
way home at last

Fisher lands on Maui
after 47 days at sea

By Greg Ambrose
Star-Bulletin

Late yesterday afternoon someone spotted a sailboarder riding off Maui's northwest coast. No big deal, Maui is infested with sailboarders.

But not many are piloting a homemade 18-foot rig with a cockpit and special sails.

By the time he passed the blow hole a suspicion dawned that this might be the crazy sailor who planned to voyage solo between Southern California and Hawaii. When he passed Honolua Bay, observers were certain that Steve Fisher was finally home.

After 47 days at sea, the Maui resident rounded Kaanapali's Black Rock, lost the light breeze and ended his journey the same way he started it when he left Marina Del Rey Harbor July 18: paddling his hybrid sailboard/boat.

No one had seen or heard from Fisher since July 24 when the Coast Guard spotted him 15 miles off San Clemente Island, according to friend Jai On Berger.

His mother, sick with worry, Tuesday had been ready to ask the Coast Guard to find her 37-year-old son, Berger said.

Fisher's two black Labrador retrievers swam out to greet their long-absent master, and by 6:30 p.m. when he touched sand at Hula's Restaurant in Kaanapali, a crowd of 200 friends and strangers welcomed him home.

"He just jumped on me and soaked me when he gave me a big hug," said friend Bill Heywood. "He has lost some weight and he has a scraggly beard, but he looks great.

"I offered to take him to the clinic so they could check him out, but he's having too much fun."

Hula's manager Orrin Cross said Fisher quaffed half a beer and quickly downed a fruit smoothie, then called his mother in Florida to assure her that he was safe.

He then repeated the message to his sisters Julie and Tracy, who were ecstatic to hear his voice, Cross said, and then was mobbed once again by friends and well-wishers.

"Having no wind was the hardest part, it was very frustrating," Fisher said last night. "Today was the hardest wind of the whole trip, it was blowing 30 knots. Most of the time the wind was only 10 knots. I paddled, rowed, did everything but swim the damn thing here, and I was thinking about doing that.

"When there is no wind, you don't have any control."

Fisher said the trip was more difficult than he expected, but not as tough as he dreaded. "Mentally, I had it made compared to someone who spends six weeks in a concentration camp."

Last night, Fisher was vague when asked how he navigated between California and Maui, and why he didn't use his special radios to communicate with passing aircraft during the long voyage.

"I wonder how he got from there to here," Bob Hogan said. "You don't just drift from there to here. It just isn't that easy. And you don't just show up in Hawaii without some kind of navigation unless you are really lucky."

Before he began his attempt to become the first person to pilot a sailboard between the mainland and Hawaii, Fisher said he would rely on his navigational skills and the experience gained on various solo trips among the Hawaiian Islands to get him across the Pacific Ocean.

After yesterday's pinpoint landing at Kaanapali, many skeptics have become believers.