O'ahu briefs

Advertiser Staff and News Services

LEEWARD

Battleship talk set for Rotary

Alan S. Lloyd, a retired professional engineer and national director of the Navy League, will be guest speaker at the Kapolei Rotary Club breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Thursday in the Kapolei High School faculty/staff lounge.

Lloyd will give a presentation on the USS Missouri Memorial Association, which operates public tours of the retired battleship at Pearl Harbor.

The $7 breakfast fee includes a buffet. For more details, call Van McCrea at 672-3924 or e-mail him at vanmccrea@aol.com.

The Rotarians meet every Thursday, except on holidays.

WINDWARD

La'ie canoe fitted on land

The 57-foot double-hull canoe built by the La'ie community and launched in November has returned to land so it can be fitted with modern navigational equipment required by the Coast Guard.

Safety gear, solar panels to power the radio, satellite equipment and lights are among the required gear necessary to take the canoe Iosepa on ocean voyages, said William Wallace III, director of the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies at Brigham Young University-Hawai'i, which built the vessel to be used as a floating classroom.

"We're getting into bad weather, so we decided to pull it out of the water and put it into dry dock at the building site," Wallace said. "We found minor areas we need to check and repair."

The work will be completed on the Iosepa during the winter semester, and it should be ready to sail in early spring, he said.

"Our first trip will be from La'ie to Kualoa because Kualoa is one of our most sacred Hawaiian voyaging sites," Wallace said.

Interisland trips are being planned for Moloka'i, Maui and the Big Island. About 35 students will be involved, with half of them on the canoe and the other half working as the advance team to set up camp on the Neighbor Islands.

NORTH SHORE

Surf may reach 25 feet

Monster waves still are expected on the north shore today, beginning in the late afternoon or evening, National Weather Service forecasters said last night.

The big surf, which is expected to continue through Tuesday, should peak sometime tomorrow with wave faces measuring up to 25 feet high.

The surf on the north shore is expected to run lower on Wednesday.

Surf on the west shore also is expected to increase today through Tuesday, reaching heights of 8 to 12 feet.