Tag: pier

Whittington County Beach Park

A picture postcard perfect setting… Brilliant blue water, waves crashing on black rock, palm trees overhead, the old pier jutting out from shore. Whittington Park is a beautiful stop along the Mamalahoa Highway as you round the south end of the island.

Honu'apo Pier
The old pier at Honu‘apo slowly succumbs to the battering surf
Like Mahukona at the north end of the island, this is an old sugar port. Here the small inter-island steamships loaded cargoes of Ka‘u cattle and sugar bound for Honolulu and shipment to markets across the Pacific. Bulky cargoes are best transported by water, thus these busy little ports were once found across the islands, today only a few ruins remain.

Honu‘apo Pier 1908
Honu‘apo Pier in 1908
Known as Honu‘apo, or turtle cove, the port served area ranchers and plantations until the middle of the twentieth century, when better roads and trucks allowed shipments to the port in Hilo. Numerous ruins remain, seen in the wave battered pier, scattered foundations, and the ruins of a sugar mill across the highway. The pier has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, pounded by winter storms, once blown up by the army to prevent use during a feared Japanese invasion.

A large pond and wetlands sit alongside the mown lawn at the center of the park. Once maintained as a fishpond by ancient Hawaiians it is now a rich marsh. The park encompasses over half a mile of shoreline and over two hundred acres of land. There is plenty to explore along the shore north of the main park. Numerous archeological sites scattered across the low coastal plain testify to the centuries of use, from a large pre-contact village, to the plantation operations of the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is a pretty park with decent facilities. Camping is available here with a permit that can be purchased online. Stop by and enjoy the scenery and have lunch. Much of the time this beautiful park sits empty, the isolation of this coastline exemplified.

A Backyard Telescope Pier

Complete Pier
The completed pier with a telescope atop
Have you ever wanted to have a place to set up your scope easily in the backyard? with instant polar alignment? no tripod legs in the way? Even for someone with little handyman experience a pier is an easy weekend project that can be completed for around $60. Add the cost of a wedge for your scope, about $125-$400 new, less used, and you have a usable pier. A few bags of concrete, a little rebar and a sonotube will do the job. I know, we ATM’s usually use sonotube for telescope tubes, but this is what it is really meant to do, cast concrete.

A pier is also the first step in a real backyard observatory, build the pier first, then a building around it. The process shown here works for any pier and can be scaled as needed for larger scopes. The pier shown in the photos is intended to hold an eight inch SCT.

The plans and photos shown here have been used for several piers here in the Tucson area and have been refined with the experience. Feel free to improve on what is here, and if your idea works well send photos!

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