Packing for the Trip

The adventure on Maui wasn't really like being shipwrecked, because we had plenty of time to plan what to take. Crusoe and the Robinsons had to forage from the wrecks for their building materials. We had months to complete drawings and compile extensive lists of what we wanted in the containers. The challenge we set for ourselves was to see if we could pack every single item we would need to build the first house and furnish it. We included a solar water heater, stove, refrigerator and even our old Kubota tractor. We were trying to prove that small shipping containers could be packed and converted into disaster relief housing. As we found out, one container would have worked, but the second got us started on the elaboration of our concept to include more local resources. Once we sourced materials available within our immediate vicinity the construction expanded to a laundry room, shop and several other auxiliary buildings adding, those elements to our building palette.

In January of 2002 the experiment began. We trucked the first two containers to the port of Oakland, then flew over to Maui to meet them. When we first purchased the land for our project, it was so overgrown with cane grass and wild guava trees you couldn't see the ocean, but we'd cleared a quarter of an acre where the first house was going to go and where the containers would be off-loaded. The idea was the containers, once emptied, would serve as temporary shelter and job trailer.

Getting the containers from the port in Kahului out to the building site was a challenge. For one, the road is narrow and winding. The bridges are one-lane and packed with a constant flow of tourists circumnavigating the island. The second, they were too heavy for a single forklift to off load them. The first problem we solved by hiring local hauler Lloyd Redo who makes the trip before dawn. The second problem we solved with 2 forklifts balancing each container delicately as they danced them into place.

Once the containers were on the ground, lined up precisely with mountain and ocean we were ready to start. The photos in this post show the containers loaded on the truck in Napa, being off-loaded, and our new friend Bullets, our backhoe driver. The first photo is a view of the island Alau wearing a rainbow.