Maui commercial boating industry struggling while waiting for Lahaina Harbor to reopen, tourism to rebound

As Maui firefighter Keahi Ho fought the Lahaina wildfire on Aug. 8, 2023, his own home on Ilikahi Street and his Lidgard 37 sailboat named GungHo that was moored in Lahaina Harbor were being destroyed.

More “scary” news came just a few days later, when Ho was told he was going to lose his coveted commercial use boating permit through the state Department of Land and Natural Resources because he no longer had a boat.

Ho, now 51, said he was “fortunate enough to be able to turn around and buy a boat the next day,” a Hunter 27 for $25,000 that would temporarily keep his business afloat, and allow him to keep his permit.

But like most commercial boat companies on Maui, his business GungHo Sailing is struggling despite less competition due to the islandwide fleet shrinking.

While the fire destroyed all but 13 boats docked at the 101-slip Lahaina Small Boat Harbor, many of them commercial boats, there also are fewer patrons for the remaining operations.

The major reason is due to the double whammy of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the Lahaina wildfire, both of which have kept away tourists, the primary clients of commercial boats that offer Scuba, snorkeling, fishing, whale watching and sunset cruises.

Most companies were just recovering from the pandemic’s six-month shutdown of tourists to Maui, when the Lahaina fire led to visitors being told initially to stay away, a message that still lingers two years later.

“Clearly, tourism took a big hit from the fire,” said Denver Coon, a family owner for Trilogy Excursions.

In July, there were 235,529 visitors to Maui, a 23.5% drop from July 2019, the booming year before the pandemic struck, according to statistics from the Hawai’i Tourism Authority

Senior boat caption Keone Laepa’a, manager for Sail Winona, said he thinks another big reason business is down is the current cost of coming to Maui.

“One of the things we keep on hearing from our customers is how expensive it is. How expensive the lodging is, particularly,” Laepa’a said. “Just to get over here and stay, it takes a lot of their fun money away.”

Maui County hotel rooms cost an average of $573 a night in July, which is up 32% from 2019 and is highest in the state, while occupancy was at 60.5 percent, lowest in the state, according to the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority.

Inflation also has caused prices to rise in restaurants and other places tourists frequent.

“An activity company, we’re kind of the ones where folks say ‘Do we spend that extra money to do these activities?’” Coon said. “And so we start to feel that probably a little sooner than some of the other industries.”

Prior to the fire, 47 permitted operators ran vessels out of Lahaina Harbor, collectively employing nearly 600 residents. In all, 82 boats and at least 562 jobs were lost, according to MauiNuiStrong website.

Before the fire, the business Ho runs with his girlfriend Ali Grimes had four employees and ran charters six days a week, often two trips a day. Now, operating out of Ma’alaea Harbor in Central Maui, the business is down to just two or three trips a week and is run by just Ho and Grimes.

“We know that everything’s reliant on tourism, so we can’t switch from that,” said Coon, who also is president of the Ocean Tourism Coalition that represents hundreds of the small boat operators around the state.

“There’s going to be a lot more pain and heartache for businesses unless we can get tourism stable, get these people back on their feet that lost so much in Lahaina.”

Coon, who also sits on the Maui Economic Recovery Commission, said he is “actively involved in trying to rebuild Lahaina. … It’s going to be a long road.”

The business done at the once bustling Lahaina Harbor near Front Street was a major contributor to the local economy. But the rebuilding of the harbor will not be complete until “sometime in 2027,” the state Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation wrote in an email to Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative.

Coon said he is hopeful that Lahaina Harbor can accommodate offloading and unloading to help West Maui boats get back to business before the full completion of Lahaina Harbor.

With work at the harbor being completed in phases, the state said that would occur.

“We are working with the County of Maui to allow some Lahaina commercial vessels to load and unload passengers at the Lahaina (Small Boat Harbor),” the state boating division said. “We will also do a phased opening approach when new docks are built.”

Coon said that once bathrooms are in place and the demolition of the old harbor master’s office is done at Lahaina Harbor, limited off-loading and on-loading of passengers could be done for boats that can access the harbor wall.

“That could happen by the end of the year, but it won’t be many boats at first,” Coon said.

Like Ho, several commercial boat operations that were operating out of Lahaina have temporarily relocated to Maʻalaea Harbor, where the limit for commercial vessels is 29, according to the state. Now, the 89-slip harbor is full. The state said approximately 20 boats have moved from Lahaina Harbor to Ma’alaea Harbor, but did not specify how many were commercial.

There also are 15 boats that anchor at the offshore Sugar Beach mooring pod in Kīhei, most of them commercial. Another 15 permitted commercial operations, the state limit, trailer boats to Kīhei boat ramp to load and unload passengers, according to the state Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation.

Although it’s been more than two years since the destructive wildfires of 2023, there appears to be few signs of the Maui commercial boating industry recovering.

Laepa’a said business right now for “all of us operators” is down, especially in the last month.

Sail Winona, which offers a snorkel at Coral Gardens in the morning, an afternoon sail and a sunset cruise, is down at least 30% to 40% the past month compared to last year.

“We always expect it to drop off a little bit, but this year it dropped off a lot quicker and a lot harder than it has in the past years,” Laepaʻa said.

Laepa’a’s company was fortunate. It bought the Ocean Celebration, a 50-foot Murakami catamaran, from the Pacific Whale Foundation just two weeks before the wildfire. The boat, which was renamed the Winona, was moored just outside of Lahaina Harbor in its assigned spot, far enough to avoid the fire. Now, it’s based in the mooring field off of Sugar Beach.

“Every day we have to run our little skiffs, little 15-, 16-foot skiffs from Ma’alaea Harbor out to the mooring field at Sugar Beach,” he said. “It’s very rare to have that many boats out there.”

The Coon family lost Trilogy VI in the fire, leaving the company with five catamarans that are 55- and 65-feet in length. Two of them are moored and operate off of Ka’anapali and three of them operate out of Ma’alaea Harbor.

Immediately after the fire, Trilogy laid off all 160 of its employees, 32 of whom lost residences in the fire, but Coon said the company is now back to about 150 employees.

But the family-run, multi-boat company that was founded in 1973 is still well down in revenue.

“We were shut down for a month (immediately after the fire),” Coon said. “And most of the following year, 2024, we were probably down close to 50% to 60%. So now only being down maybe 20% over last year feels really good. But we’re still down 40% of where we were just a couple of years ago.”

The cost to replace Trilogy VI, a 55-foot catamaran, could run past $3 million.

The company almost lost Trilogy V, which was docked at the Lahaina Harbor at the time of the fire. But Coon said his brother-in-law, Gabe Lucy, “escaped with that boat in the middle of the fire with smoke on the water.”

Ho is working with a New Zealand designer to replace his Lidgard 37 boat that burned in the fire. While the resale value of that boat was $120,000, the cost to replace it is $450,000.

“It will cost me at least that much to build a new one, which I’m hoping to do,” Ho said. “I’m working with a designer and it’s coming along, but hopefully we’ll start building it sometime early next year, is sort of my goal.”

Ho said the personal value is “priceless” of the burned Lidgard 37 he owned for eight years.” I spent years working on it and getting it how I wanted it.”

Benja Iglesis Buchanan, chief operation officer for ProDiver Maui that operates a 34-foot custom aluminum dive boat out of Kīhei Boat Ramp, said he thinks the boating industry on Maui is in trouble.

In 2022, the company had recovered from the pandemic and was thriving with 11 employees and solid bookings. But now the operation, which primarily takes divers to Molokini Crater, is down to eight employees. Some of them work for two or three boating companies to get in enough trips each week to make ends meet, he said.

“But we could have 16 (employees) if everything was running right,” Iglesis Buchanan said.

While Maui is in the midst of its low season of September and October, many in the boating industry say this low season is particularly low.

“September, October is known to be bad, but this is horrible,” Iglesis Buchanan said.

He hopes there will be more messaging to tourists that Maui is open for business.

“I think they have to push, push, push, push if you want to get out of the hole,” he said. “Because it’s not only the dive industry, right? Like it’s every industry.”

So for the next couple of months the commercial boating industry will gear up for the holiday season, when “we’ll all get a spike again,” Laepaʻa said. 

“And then it’s really about the whale season again. The resounding cry down here is: ‘We all can’t wait for whales.’ ”