Why You Can’t Travel Between Hawaii’s Islands by Boat

Did you know you can't travel between Hawaii's islands by ferry, even though they're only 100-150 miles apart?

For many travelers, island hopping in Hawaii seems like it should be as simple as catching a boat, but the reality involves brutal ocean conditions, environmental concerns, and a fascinating history of failed attempts.

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If you've ever wondered why planes are your only realistic option for getting between Hawaiian islands or what happened to previous ferry services, this episode is for you. Discover the surprising geographical and logistical challenges that make inter-island boat travel nearly impossible.

In this episode of our travel podcast, we explore the real reasons behind Hawaii's lack of ferry service, from the $178 million Super Ferry disaster to innovative future solutions like hydrofoil sea gliders.

👉In this episode, you will:

• Discover why Hawaii's ocean channels with names like "the great billow smashing channel" make ferry travel so dangerous and uncomfortable.
• Learn the complete story behind the Hawaii Super Ferry's spectacular failure and the legal battles that shut it down.
• Get insights into cutting-edge transportation developments that could revolutionize inter-island travel in the future.

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Scroll up ⬆️ and hit play now to discover the surprising reasons why planes remain your only realistic option for island hopping in Hawaii.

🎧Related episodes:

• Best Island to Visit in Hawaii
• Island Hopping in Hawaii

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💻Related blog posts:

• Avoid These 10 Common Mistakes When Planning a Trip to Hawaii
• 23 Critical Things to Know for Planning a Trip to Hawaii

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🤓Chapters:

• 1:50 Geographical Challenges of Ferry Services
• 4:00 Historical Attempts and Failures
• 6:25 Future Prospects and Innovations
• 9:38 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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This podcast is for travelers looking to plan a trip to Hawaii. Discover travel tips, itineraries, and traveling tips & hacks with guides to help you explore Hawaii. Whether you’re planning a vacation to the Hawaiian islands, dreaming of a Hawaiian getaway, or visiting Honolulu, Maui, Kauai, Oahu, or Big Island we’ll help you travel with aloha.

Edge of the Ocean, Stick Figure (w/ permission)

Ukulele and Chill, Coby G (w/ permission)

Chapters

• 1:50 Geographical Challenges of Ferry Services
• 4:00 Historical Attempts and Failures
• 6:54 Future Prospects and Innovations
• 10:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

167_Why You Can’t Travel Between Hawaii’s Islands by Boat

[00:00:00] Introduction: Why No Ferries Between Hawaii's Islands?

[00:00:00] Bryan Murphy: So why can't you travel between Hawaii's islands by boat? Well, in this episode, you'll discover the surprising reasons there's no ferry linking. Hawaii's major islands, plus the real story behind why every attempt to connect them by boat has failed.

[00:00:19] Bryan Murphy: Aloha.

[00:00:19] Host Introduction and Episode Inspiration

[00:00:19] Bryan Murphy: Welcome to Hawaii's Best. The podcast helping Travelers Plan an unforgettable Hawaii vacation with insider tips in featuring local voices. I'm Brian Murphy, a husband dad of three, and certified Hawaii destination expert. Each week I share local insights, travel tips, and up-to-date news, sometimes with guests across Hawaii and sometimes solo.

[00:00:40] Bryan Murphy: All to help you plan your next trip to Hawaii.

[00:00:47] Bryan Murphy: Hello. Hi and welcome to episode 1 67 of Hawaii's Best. Thanks for tuning in in today. This is a question that I've thought about a few times before and actually what spread this episode on was my family. We were visiting some cousins at a campsite in Crystal Cove and, and my brother-in-law and me, we were looking over, it was a beautiful sunset.

[00:01:08] Bryan Murphy: We were looking over and we could see Catalina Island where we were at. And we're just wondering, 'cause there's quite a few routes that go to Catalina Island per day and. I wonder, you know, why isn't that possible for the islands in Hawaii? So that's kinda really what spurred this episode. I thought about it before, and as I started looking into it and doing the research for this episode, it's a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

[00:01:31] Bryan Murphy: So today I'm gonna be breaking down exactly why ferries don't work in Hawaii, and we'll look at the geography, the history, and why every attempt to date has failed. And by the end of this episode, you'll understand why. Planes are still really the only real option for getting around. Hawaii and island hopping.

[00:01:50] Geographical Challenges of Ferry Services

[00:01:50] Bryan Murphy: We're gonna start with the geography. Hawaii isn't just a few islands close together. It's actually 137 islands, islets, atolls, et cetera, spread across the Pacific Ocean, but only four of them really matter. For transportation, we're gonna be talking mainly about Oahu, Maui, Hawaii Island, the big island, and Hawaii.

[00:02:13] Bryan Murphy: I'll talk a little bit about. About Lena and Molokai, which is just off of Maui, and talk about how the transportation there works. But Oahu has about two thirds of the state's population. It's where you'll find Honolulu, the hub of really everything. It's a capital of Hawaii and the other are smaller, but still need to be connected as well.

[00:02:35] Bryan Murphy: And the distances are really the first problem. Oahu to Kauai is a hundred miles. Oahu to Hawaii Island is 150 miles, so it's like driving from New York City to Baltimore, but instead of highways, you're crossing deep ocean. And it's not just any ocean. It's really some of the roughest waters in the Pacific.

[00:02:58] Bryan Murphy: The ocean between these islands. Is brutal. The channels have names like the Nu Haha channel, which translates to the great Billow smashing channel that probably should tell you something. These channels are over 6,000 feet deep tradewinds and power for current surge through these channels constantly.

[00:03:19] Bryan Murphy: This isn't like a ferry system in Washington state or Greece where you're traveling in calm, shallower waters. Hawaii's ferries have to cross open ocean, and that means they just need to be bigger, stronger, and way more expensive to build and maintain. A ferry ride between the islands takes six to eight hours.

[00:03:41] Bryan Murphy: Compare that to a 30 minute flight, and those six to eight hours are spent getting tossed around in rough. Seasickness is a real problem for a lot of people and many passengers who tried Hawaii's past ferry services never came back because they couldn't handle the rough conditions.

[00:04:00] Historical Attempts and Failures

[00:04:00] Bryan Murphy: Hawaii has tried ferries before and the biggest attempt was the Hawaii super ferry in the late two thousands.

[00:04:08] Bryan Murphy: The company spent $178 billion building two vessels, and they started service in 2007, and they connected Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and the big island. The idea seemed solid, obvious, you know, residents and tourists could bring their cars and belongings for cheaper than flying. Planning for the super ferry began in 2001.

[00:04:37] Bryan Murphy: The demand seemed to be there, and in 2001, Hawaii's residents alone took about 4 million inner island flights. The ferry company believed many of these travelers would switch to a cheaper vehicle friendly option, but they were wrong. The Hawaii super fairy lasted less than two years, and it faced many problems from day one.

[00:04:59] Bryan Murphy: Environmentalists warn about whale strikes and the ferry routes overlapped with humpback whale migration paths. And if you're not aware, the migration paths in Hawaii for whales is in the winter months, so usually November. Through March-ish. There were also concerns about invasive species. Hawaii is extremely protective of its ecosystem, and critics feared that allowing cars could spread species across neighboring islands.

[00:05:30] Bryan Murphy: Also, the operation issues were just as bad. Uh, passengers got sick constantly. Saline were delayed or canceled due to rough weather, and the trips were just slow, you know, up to eight hours. Between some of the islands, but legal problems really is what killed the super ferry. The company started operating without completing a required environmental impact statement, so lawsuits started piling up and in 2009, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the ferry couldn't operate until the environmental review was done.

[00:06:04] Bryan Murphy: The company already went bankrupt and shut down that huge failure. Seemed to scare off a lot of future investors and thoughts of trying it again. So since then, no one has really seriously tried to bring back large scale ferry service in Hawaii today, the only regular ferry service in Hawaii is a small one between Maui and Lanae.

[00:06:25] Future Prospects and Innovations

[00:06:25] Bryan Murphy: Now there are some future ideas worth watching. The Hawaii Sea Glider Initiative is developing high speed electric vessels that fly above the water using hydrofoil technology. They lost me at Sea Glider, but in doing research, it is kind of pretty cool. You go to Hawaii sea glider.org and you can learn more about what they got going on.

[00:06:48] Bryan Murphy: They claim speeds up to 180 miles per hour in tickets as low as $30. I. The promise is exciting and making the journey between islands incredibly fast compared to traditional ferries, but the sea glider faces some big questions. Can these vessels handle Hawaii's rough ocean conditions while they've tested prototypes?

[00:07:10] Bryan Murphy: Operating them daily in the rough waters is totally different. There are regulatory hurdles to consider. Hawaii has strict laws to protect its marine ecosystem, and can the sea gliders be produced and operated affordably enough to compete with airplanes? I. So right now it's still in development, but it's kind of cool to check out.

[00:07:33] Bryan Murphy: Again, you can go to Hawaii sea glider.org. Maui County is also pushing for a smaller ferry system, connecting Maui, Molokai, and Lana. This would be publicly operated and focused on local needs, not necessarily tourists or visitors. The county sees ferries as a way to improve access to healthcare. Jobs and essential goods across the neighboring islands there in Maui County.

[00:08:01] Bryan Murphy: But really any future ferry system faces the same basic challenges. A 2017 study found that a statewide ferry system would need heavy subsidies to survive the, the infrastructure upgrades alone. New terminal screening areas to prevent invasive species would cost millions. And without a large, consistent customer base, it's hard to see how a ferry system could survive without government support.

[00:08:29] Bryan Murphy: For now, planes still dominate the option for island travel. A flight from Honolulu to Maui takes about 30 minutes. Just enough time to get up cruise, get your pog drink, and then come back down for landing. Airlines like Hawaiian Airlines have invested in Hawaii's existing airport structure. And obviously now with Southwest in there, I'm curious what's gonna change with the Alaska Hawaiian merger, if that's gonna change inner island travel at all.

[00:09:00] Bryan Murphy: But the reality is planes, they can just move more passengers faster, making them more profitable. And really, Hawaiian Airlines has dominated the inner island flight market for decades. One of the biggest complicated questions to answer it comes down to environmental concerns and planes burn more fuel and produce more carbon emissions.

[00:09:22] Bryan Murphy: But ferries risk spreading invasive species in causing marine life harm. So Hawaii has to balance this connectivity with protecting its fragile ecosystem and really any transportation solution has to respect Hawaii's people and environment.

[00:09:38] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:09:38] Bryan Murphy: So that's really why you can't travel between Hawaii by boat.

[00:09:43] Bryan Murphy: I mean, you can do the cruises and, and that can work. But as far as like island hopping or going from Maui to Hawaii island or Hawaii Island over to Hawaii, really it's gonna be planes and it's gonna be island hopping that way. So I hope maybe we learned something new today. This was eye-opening for me.

[00:10:05] Bryan Murphy: I didn't know the whole story about the super fairy and the failure and all that stuff, and obviously the sea glider. That's kind of a cool thing. But I hope you found today's episode interesting, and that's why Hawaii doesn't have any fairies. If you enjoyed today's episode, would ask you to just hit the like button on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

[00:10:26] Bryan Murphy: All right, and until next time, my friend as always live with Aloha

[00:10:34] Bryan Murphy: Mala for listening to this episode of Hawaii's. Best to stay up to date on future episodes. Hit follow on your podcast app. Hawaii's Best is a production of shore break media group with editing by easy podcast solutions and music courtesy of our friends stick figure.