Since it launched in 2003, the Wai'anae Maritime Academy has served 160 students, many of them with troubled pasts. Founded by Kaipo and Donna Pomaikai, the nonprofit academy is intent on not just fixing lives, but having an economic impact on areas such as Wai'anae, where the unemployment figures are more than double those of Honolulu.

This summer, the academy's current crop of students is busy. At sundown at Pier 24, thick vanilla clouds churn in a pale cantaloupe sky, downtown buildings set in black relief against it all — but the 20 aspiring merchant mariners don't have time for pretty pictures.

Commander Don Wiggins, lead instructor for the Maritime License Center, which provides lifeboat and safety training for the academy, is looking for answers.

"Louder!" he orders.

"Lower to embarcation deck!" a student shouts.

"Negative, negative!" Wiggins says.

A look of terse confusion.

"What do you need to do first?" Wiggins asks.

Another student, Bruno, who looks like he could lift the 26-foot lifeboat all by himself, nudges his peer then whispers.

A voice rings out from behind the raised platform. "Let him figure it out on his own!"

It's Donna Pomaikai, the academy's executive administrator and designated "Auntie." She sits at a long table, shaded by a tarp, her expression communicating a single message: "No B.S."

Donna Pomaikai and her husband, Kaipo, have cast themselves as a buttress against the world of distractions, misfortune and easy outs. That attracts these students, who are here looking for an opportunity to turn things around.

While open to anyone who wants to learn the ways of the merchant marine — and get the training necessary for an entry-level position — the academy is intended to help those with troubled or disadvantaged pasts find profitable work, and in so doing provide an economic and morale boost to Wai'anae and other struggling communities.

Kaipo Pomaikai watches Wiggins and the students from the nearby parking lot, his hands occupied with a tangle of rope that will become a welcome mat. He'll sell dozens of these at a fundraiser the next night. He'll sell whatever he can to raise the $2,500 needed for each student to enroll in the academy.

"What do you need to do first?" Wiggins says. "Think."

"Power off!" the student finally yells.

"Good," Wiggins says. "What's next?"

RAISING THE ACADEMY

There are 42 steps to remember when raising and lowering a lifeboat, and Wiggins' students aren't going anywhere until they have committed every last one to memory.

"A ship can sink in three minutes," Wiggins explains. "Quickness and proficiency is needed in every situation. Once they learn the drills and keep doing them, they'll become second nature."

It's dangerous business, this raising and lowering. If someone is going to get hurt, Wiggins says, this is where it happens. So many moving parts.

The Pomaikais will say there is no protocol for raising a sunken life, for finding that perfect balance of encouraging words to the heart and swift kicks to the rump. All they have to offer is their experience.

Uncle Kaipo, the eighth of nine children who grew up in a single-room home in Nanakuli, first learned to work the water as a musician on a tour boat.

"Sometimes the captains would get tired, and they'd let us steer," he recalls. "We'd end up in the bushes a lot of times. But I got good at it."

One night, Kaipo's boss, Sonny Waialeale, caught Kaipo at the wheel. Rather than reprimand him, he asked Kaipo if he was interested in learning how to be a real captain.

The training would cost $900, too much for the 26-year-old cook and part-time musician, but Waialeale made a deal.

"He said if I passed, I wouldn't have to pay him back," Kaipo recalls.

Kaipo kept his money and over the next several years would see the world as a merchant marine, eventually landing in Kwajalein Atoll, where he spent nearly nine years working at a missile range. It was there that he met Donna, and there that the two friends would sink into a manic life of alcohol and drugs.

"Kwajalein for anybody is like Las Vegas," Kaipo says. "Like Sodom and Gomorrah."

"We did cocaine, mushrooms, ecstasy — just to get out with the crowd," Donna says. "That can get expensive, but there was always alcohol. The drinks were 50 cents. It was easy and cheap."

But their friendship ultimately proved redemptive. Kaipo bottomed out and resolved to quit; Donna followed, at first for Kaipo and later, and most meaningfully, for herself.

"On a small island like that, with people trying to put mickeys in Kaipo's food, we couldn't rely on friends," she says. "We relied on our friendship, and that friendship became a relationship."

Kaipo and Donna spent their last year on the atoll clean and sober. A trip back to Hawai'i aboard a tugboat in 1990 gave Kaipo a reason to stay that way.

"I noticed there were not that many local boys working," he says. "They were all from the Mainland. It just didn't seem right that these $50,000, $60,000 jobs were all going to guys from the Mainland. Before, locals owned these jobs."

The barrier, Kaipo learned, was not hiring preference but the cost of training and documentation. He estimates it costs $2,200 to $2,800 to get the training necessary to earn a mandatory Merchant Marine Document (or Z-card).

"And that's just to knock on the door," Kaipo says.

"Before, even if you didn't have the documentation, if you had a hard head and kept at it, somebody would let you in," he says. "Now, with homeland security, you can't even get through the gate without your papers."

For young men and women from lower socioeconomic areas like Wai'anae, where the average annual income is $13,348 and more than one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, the cost of getting started too often is prohibitive.

As a recovering alcoholic, Kaipo was also attuned to another problem.

"Guys would get clean and sober, but then what?" he says. "They had no opportunities."

The issues gnawed at Kaipo and Donna for more than a decade. Then, in 2003, Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona and the Wai'anae Weed and Seed Program contacted trade unions with the idea of establishing a vocational training school.

"Plumbers, masons, ironworkers — all the unions came out for the first meeting in Nanakuli," Kaipo recalls. At a second meeting, "only the merchant marines came. But that's how it is. We're a really close-knit industry."

The Pomaikais took the challenge and looked for grants to get the academy established. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs came through with a two-year grant of $250,000 and Alu Like contributed $38,000, both to cover Hawaiian students. Private donations cover costs for non-Hawaiian students.

While none of the students pays anything out of pocket, the expectations placed on them are high.

Kaipo Pomaikai leads the initial sessions — intensive instruction on the life of the merchant marine. But first things first. On the first day of class, Kaipo lays out $2,500 in cash before the class.

"A lot of them have never seen that kind of money in one place," Kaipo says. "I tell them, 'This is how serious it is. If Auntie and Uncle go begging for this money for each of you, you cannot just drop out.' "

Of the eight classes that have passed through the academy, only one person has failed to finish.

"He came to class smelling like alcohol, so I told him to go home," Kaipo says. "We have zero tolerance for that."

For many, the highly structured program requires a new level of discipline and openness.

"The challenge is their lack of self-respect," Donna says. "The first class we had, two guys got into a fight over a chair. Some of these guys are not used to an environment where it's not about themselves."

LOST AND FOUND

For Gary Kaleimamahu, 44, of Nanakuli, discipline on the job was never a problem. He served in the Hawai'i Army National Guard for six years and worked several years as an electrician.

"I know I have to take this (maritime training) from scratch," he says, "but I'm not afraid of challenges."

Kaleimamahu did not confront the challenges posed by his abuse of drugs and alcohol until it cost him everything that was good in his life.

"I lost everything," he says. "I lost my wife and kids, my job, my house. I lost it all."

Now a pest technician with Environ Control, Kaleimamahu will be clean and sober for 10 years this September. In the process of rebuilding his life, Kaleimamahu discovered a love for the ocean through paddling. He has participated in the grueling Moloka'i-to-O'ahu canoe race for the past four years.

"It's hard work, but I find peace out there," he says.

That love, and the encouragement he got from two friends who are academy graduates, persuaded Kaleimamahu to pursue a new career as a merchant marine.

If he passes the training program and gets his Z-card, Kaleimamahu can enter the field as a wiper, an ordinary seaman or a member of a steward's department. With more experience and training, he can earn an AB (able seaman) designation, which will allow him to advance and make more money.

"It's the right time for the age I'm at," Kaleimamahu says. "I see myself doing this in the next 10 years, but the biggest reward I could ever give myself is to someday do the things that Uncle Kaipo and Auntie Donna are doing — using my knowledge and experience to help others."

Kaleimamahu says he hopes to set a new, more positive example for his children.

"They're proud," he says. "I hear it every day."

CHANCE, NOT SALVATION

The academy doesn't guarantee success in the maritime world — roughly half its graduates work as merchant mariners — but the dedication it takes to complete the program is by itself instructive, Donna Pomaikai says.

"I get letters and postcards from Kuwait, Taipei, Japan, all over the world, from people who have reached their goal and are amazed because they're doing something they never thought they could," she says.

"Donna and Kaipo put a lot of effort into making it happen," says Peter Quigley, interim chancellor of Leeward Community College, where the program is housed. "What they have done has been really positive for young and not-so-young people who come in needing a break, some positive movement, and access to employment.

"They've done good community work by addressing Wai'anae's social and socioeconomic needs, not to mention job creation in a maritime industry that is really growing."

Reshela DuPuis, lead advocate for education for OHA, calls the academy "the strongest and most productive" of OHA's grant recipients.

"They are just extraordinary with what they've been able to do with outreach for Wai'anae and working with Native Hawaiians who might not otherwise be able to get employment. They've gone way beyond what others might do by working not just with the student, but with their families. They find homeless people and people who have drug and alcohol problems and help them get stable and get a good job. They've also been really effective in including women and helping them enter an industry that traditionally hasn't been very open to women."

The Pomaikais aren't compensated for their academy work. Kaipo Pomaikai is an assistant port captain for Sause Brothers; Donna Pomaikai occasionally takes on ship work to make ends meet. Neither has any intention of walking away.

"We'll keep doing this as long as we can affect the economic structure of these communities," Kaipo says. "What we're trying to do is homegrown and grassroots. When they finish, we tell them, 'Make your money, take it home, and send your kids to college. Go and buy that house, because now you can.'

"In the Bible," Kaipo says, "there's a passage in which (Nathanael) asks, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' Well, that's what people say over here. 'Can anything good come out of Wai'anae?' "

Kaipo turns toward the 20 students still gathered around the lifeboat. It's not about miracles or salvation, he says, just opportunity. None of Kaipo's "kids" will part the sea, but with his help, perhaps they will work on water.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.