The island was tiny. As we sailed closer, we smelled the sweet aroma of land. We saw a crowd on the beach.

Chad Baybayan stands about five feet, eight inches tall. He has a swimmer’s body, suggesting a capability of delivering powerful strokes and a strong finishing kick.

To a modern sailor’s eye, she appears strange. Her twin hulls are joined by laminated wooden crossbeams.

Hokule’a is a replica of the vessels used by Polynesians to settle the Pacific Ocean a thousand years before the arrival of Europeans.

On Feb. 26, 2000, we departed Tahiti, bound for the big Island of Hawaii. As we sailed beyond the reef and into the deep ocean, the sea turned azure.

Learjets on final approach ride wakes of noise, the whoosh of traffic throbs off the seawall and the wail of the lumpen mob soars over Circuit avenue.

It’s summer.

It’s time for the earnest toilers of commerce to harvest the golden hordes. In fact, it’s July 21 and the Monster Shark Tournament is in Oak Bluffs and with it the yahoos in their plastic boats, rafted up three, four to a mooring — hundreds of them bobbing in the crowded harbor.