Nice Captain Cook Kona house and land for sale...

I mentioned earlier I'd run a house 4 sale post, this is my big real estate sales pitch.  Way back in '97 my wife and I took a trip to Kona for a 10 or so day vacation. By day number two, Pat, my wife, said "wouldn't this be a great place to live?"... well, it took us a year and a half, but the rest is history.

On that trip we fell in love with South Kona.  It was rural, yet close in if staying in the area of Captain Cook.  We spent much time down around Kealakekua Bay, checking out Napo'opo'o village, the Place of Refuge, Napo'opo'o road, the stretch from Honolo to Capatain Cook, and the surrounding area.  I remember clearly us taking a ride up Napo'opo'o road after hanging out at Kealakekua Bay and Pat mentioning she wasn't sure if she'd want to live at the top of the road near the highway, nor at the bottom of the road in the village.  I remember pointing out the window and saying "somewhere around here would be ideal".  We didn't intend it, but after we moved to Kona in '99 and house hunted for a couple of months, checking out areas from the  Palisades subdivision up by the Kona airport, on up to the Holualoa area, and all the way down to Capatin Cook, we ended up choosing our future home... our driveway is probably within about 300 feet of where I said would be the ideal place to live. Cool coincidence.

We've been in the house for 13 wonderful years now, but we've decided it's time to downsize and move a bit closer to my work (Pat works from home and can be anywhere).

Location:

 The property is located roughly half way down Napo'opo'o road above Kealakekua Bay, at what we consider an ideal 900' elevation.  Kona is unique in that there are numerous micro-climates.  If you are near sea level, it can get quite warm at times, if you are away from mountains it can be kind of a desert, if you are on a mountain at a high elevation it can be a humid and wet jungle a significant portion of the time.  At our elevation you still get sun in the morning, then cloud cover around mid-day to where it cools off, and live in a green jungle without it being a humid wet mess. It's a great place to visit the coast, then cool off a few degrees after a day in the sun.

One of the great things about the location is that it's 5 minutes to the ocean, 5 minutes to a gas station, 6 minutes to groceries and restaurants, 18-20 minutes to movie theaters and more shopping, and no more than 30-45 minutes from anywhere else in Kailua Kona, often quicker in non-school traffic drive times.

The property:

We're situated on 1.72 acres of land overlooking the ocean above Kealakekua Bay. Unlike many properties in the area, most of our property is gently sloping, as opposed to straight up and down, and affords having an extensive yard out front of the house for lawn, fruit trees (we've got breadfruit, jackfruit, white pineapples, mangos, bananas, limes, navel and valencia oranges, mandarins, honey tangerines, papayas, jaboticaba, mac nuts and a few varieties of avocodos, as well as coffee and quava and lillikoi and such that grows wild around the place) without having to look at the roof tops of your neighbors... we pretty much own our view (excluding the coastline and ocean down below of course) for the most part. 

There is nothing like sitting on your lanai, sipping a maitai in the evening and listening to all the bird songs (we have doves, cardinals, finches, mynahs, pheasants and more wandering through most every day) and enjoying the view, without the trappings of being surrounded by loads of neighbors (to be fair, we just cut down some trees for a view and can see our next door neighbor for now, but that'll grow out).

The house:

The floorplan is large and open, with roughly 1900 feet of living space (not including the lanais which surround the house) on the main living level upstairs. There is an additional living space I'm taking the above photos from I'm not showing that we currently use as an office, the original owner had a pool table in it, it's plumbed for a wet bar as well.

The house features  an extremely nice koa wood kitchen.  Koa has become a very expensive exotic wood in recent years and is highly sought after.  You'd pay a pretty penny for a koa kitchen these days

The master bedroom is large, with twin skylights over the bed, with an adjoining koa wood and marble bath featuring separate shower and partially sunken bath tub.

The second bedroom and bath, on the opposite side of the house from the master, both open to jungle views, with the bedroom also getting a coastline view as well.

The downstairs:

Downstairs is a completely separate one bedroom one bath living area of over 700 square feet.  When we purchased the house we took a look into fixing it up and renting it out as a vacation rental.  That is probably one of the smartest things we've done with the propety.  Fully updated, it has a huge bedroom and a nice sized bath with a nice little living area and a kitchenette/wetbar.  One could live there quite comfortably.

 The Kealakekua bay area is quite in demand for vacation rentals, and it's done us well.  We've run it since about a half year after we bought the house.  It was slow going for a while, but we started picking up and in a few years we were bringing in roughly 2K a month and keeping it booked full time... that really helps with the bills. 



The last few years we've been buffering the length of time between bookings and taking the rental out of service 2-3 months a year, but we've still been bringing in about 2K a month when we want to have it booked.  With the tourism downturn, '09 was a slow year, then in early '10 we were looking at no bookings after our typically full winter season we were getting a bit worried... decided to play with our VRBO.com listing for the first time in ages and changed some things and ended up booking up the rest of the year in 5-6 weeks.  We just took the vacation rental out of service to have it available for showings (although we are open to short notice stays if anyone feels like visiting Kona soon) and have dropped our VRBO lising, but we've kept the information and would be happy to pass that along to the next buyer if they are interested in a jumpstart on renting out the unit as a vacation rental.

The specifics:

Land- 1.72 acres
Extensive rock walls on the property
House- 2646 square feet
Built in 1985
Garage- 987 (I think, haven't checked lately, I've lived in houses and apartments smaller than our garage) square feet
3 bedroom, 3 full baths, laundry facilities upstairs and downstairs,  large living areas, nearly a 1000 square feet of lanais
Hawaii MLS Number- 254553
Our agent- Sue Brown, Livingston Realty
Price- 699K   I think there's a good opportunity for increased valuation the next time the market turns around, it was worth in the million + range the last time the market was up.

The house has been well maintained.  We recently upgraded most of the skylights in the house.   We wanted to get away from metal roofing some years ago and had it reroofed with composit shingles (wow, what a difference in both heat in the sun and noise from rain, much nicer).  We're in the process of repainting the eaves and replacing the rain gutters.  Nearly all electrical and lighting fixtures, as well as the appliances and several plumbing fixtures (aka low flow toilets) have been upgraded over the years.

If you are house hunting in the Kona area, and looking for a rural place in good condition with room to entertain (I haven't even touched on our parking) guests or just enjoy a tropical paradise, check out our listing.  Note: It's July 5th 2012 right now, I know how things tend to hang on forever on the internet, so check that MLS number to see if we're still on the market if some time has passed.

Happy house hunting!!!!

The Manta Ray Night Dive is going nutz....

We've been choke with mantas lately.  I ran the dive both Sunday and Monday nights this week, and there were LOTS.... but Tuesday apparently took the cake... 41 manta rays from what I heard Wednesday, oftentimes those numbers go up slightly after all the videographers go through their tape.

It's hard to imagine that many mantas in one spot dive bombing divers repeatedly.

  Later,

   Steve

Whew, busy spring......

Sorry I haven't posted much, or at all, in a few months. I got very busy with a number of things... charters, closing down the retail shop, working on projects at the house, etc. So here's what's been going on.... with the exception of the last couple weeks it's been pretty busy with charters this spring. That late May early June period is always dead, the phone's starting to ring again and the schedule's filling in fast now though. I do have a night dive tonight.

In Wanna Dive news, we closed down the retail shop this spring. I had opened it hoping it would add extra seats to our charters, while selling product, neither really happened, so it's back to running straight charters for now. The shop was a good experience, and if I could afford the additional expense. I think in a couple of years it would have built up to where it was really contributing, but for now it's not worth it.

The other project that has kept me very busy is we're trying to sell our house in South Kona and get closer to work.  We've got a lovely place, large and quiet, but it adds on to the length of my day and we want to get closer to Honokohau harbor and downsize things a bit while we're at it. Now's an opportune time with interest rates so low and prices down.  I'll post a "house 4 sale" post here in a few days... a little advertising never hurts.

 I've got a night dive to get ready for, I have a cement related project I'll work on for an hour or two and then head out.

   Later,

   Steve

Hawaiian Flame Angelfish... I saw 5 different ones in the first 8 minutes of yesterday's dive....

It's interesting how common these fish are nowadays. When I moved here back in '99 I think I managed to find 1-3 a year until 2004 came along. At that point I started finding a few more, then more yet the next year, and it's continued to where I pretty much expect to find flame angels when diving certain types of terrain.

I'm assuming there just are more these days rather than my developing an eye for them, although knowing what to look for does help with spottings. If you are diving Kona and there's a dropoff with finger coral on it, keep your eyes peeled 10-15 feet ahead of you when you are diving roughly 50-60 feet. You almost have to spot them early, as they will dive into the coral if you get close or over them. Once you find them, try to remember exactly where they were, they often keep defined territories, often no bigger than a hula hoop, where you can find them over and over.

The five I ran across yesterday were not ones I knew locations of, although it's quite possible I've seen at least a couple of them before as I know I've seen a few in that area over the years. The corals were pretty non-descript so finding them again would be more a matter of diving at the same depth and hoping to spot them rather than knowing exactly where they are. I chalk the increase in spottings for me to the collection management measures that were put into place back in January of 2000. Looks like numbers are improving nicely. Later, Steve

Water Cold.... Mantas Hot!!!!!!!!!!

I hadn't posted in a long while, just thought I'd make updates. We've been seeing water temperatures in the 74/75 range lately. Last night the mantas were almost half of that in numbers... 34 from the first reports I'm getting. Usually when it gets that thick in mantas the videographers start comparin gnotes and find more. It's been jumping with numbers in the teens and twenties for about a month.

Later,

Steve

Shore diving Kona Hawaii...Some of the best shore diving in the State...

Kona has a number of very decent shore dives. Unlike the other islands in the chain, we're mostly a rocky shoreline and there are no rivers or streams on our side of the island. That makes for very good water clarity on most days.

This was an OK day, nothing special. My guess is I took this video maybe 70 feet from shore. The Place of Refuge is neat in that you can step off the entry rock and be in 6 feet of reef from the get-go. Yellow tangs are often literally eating at your fin tips as you step in. There's a good expanse of 9-30 foot deep reef out front and then it drops to deeper than recreational diving depths in just a short swim.

As much as I like running dive charters, there's good diving to be had for those who are in to shorediving.

Aloha,

Steve

the Big Island of Hawaii and live coral reef... lots of it here...

I was cruising the web and ran across this page I've linked before on NOAA's study of Hawaiian coral reefs. It reminded me of a story from this last fall.

We went to DEMA, the big dive industry show, in Orlando in November and my wife and I went to Miller's Alehouse, a bar/restaurant near where we were staying that impressed us favorably. While sitting at the counter waiting on food, Pat noticed a couple across the way and said "they're divers". I'm wondering how she figured that and she mentioned she could see the necklace the gal was wearing was one we sell out of the office, and the guy had a dive computer on his wrist... maybe Pat should be a cop, I apparently don't notice these things. We started up a conversation with them and by and by Pat says to the guy that he's familiar, we must have met before. I'm doubting it because they're from the east coast, then suddenly she says she thinks we talked to him on the monorail in Vegas on the way back from DEMA the year before. He said "that's quite possible".

Towards the end of the meal he mentioned he had 30 some odd dives in Hawaii, then said too bad Hawaii doesn't have any coral. Well, that's a hot button topic with me because it's simply not true. We've got no soft corals or sponges, but we've got loads of hard corals in Kona. He didn't believe me, but he'd never been to Kona yet, his diving was mostly Maui and some Oahu. Now I've been to both, and Maui has some decent corals in spots, but not like in Kona from my experience as well. Anyway, I disagreed with him and later realized he was definitely the guy from the monorail the year earlier because the exact same topic came up. I've now had two big Vegas monorail coincidences over the years (first one was spoken of on one of my very first posts in this blog, check the history if you're into a lot of reading) and I find it amazing that it can be such a small world at times.

So... if you think Hawaii doesn't have coral, or you think you've seen it all on trips to the other islands, you might want to come to Kona for a visit and check out what healthy Hawaiian hard coral reefs can look like. We've got several types of dive sites here, and most of the dive operators try to vary the dives, so over the course of a couple of days you should run across some of our nicer spots for coral structure. Hurricane Iniki did pull a number on much of the coastline a couple decades back, but there's still plenty of old growth coral to be had. Reef areas that were really trashed from the hurricane nearly 20 years back are starting to come back quite nicely - I wish I'd taken photos of the north side of Honaunau bay when I moved here, it looked like a boulder avalanche, now it's tough to see the boulders and there's an 8-10 inch coating of finger corals over the whole thing, and plate corals are starting to take up residence on that side of the bay as well... that was the one weak part of that bay as a dive spot, now everything's pretty much a tremendous dive.

Later,

Steve

We've had lots of mantas over the holidays and to start 2012

I took this brief video on the 23rd of December. I think there were 14 mantas that evening. It's been running anywhere from 5 to up to 25 mantas a night pretty much since then. Hoppefully it'll keep up.

Yesterday we had a blast. I had a friend that wanted to take friends out for a whale/dolphin watch. We headed up north and ran into mantas on the surface at Garden Eel Cove, then a huge school of dolphins off Makalewena. After watching the dolphins we decided to head out to sea and look for whales, about a half mile out we ran into 6-7 false killer whales (possibly pigmy killers, I can't really tell them apart at this point) and continued out to sea because we could see some splashing in the distance. turned out there was the largest school of pacific bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen out there. Usually we see 2-6 in small groups, this was dozens spread out over a good sized area. There were humpbacks whales in the mix as well. After watching that for a while we headed in to Garden Eel Cove to watch dolphins again.

We've had some gorgeous skies lately. If you check out my facebook page I've got a shot or two of the skies I took with my cell phone, it's been gorgeous.

Later,

Steve