Winnie Basques/Lānaʻi Resident and Family Friend: That's how Hawaiian style is.

Hui!

Pehea ʻoe maikaʻi no!

That's what it is all about.

When you announce, 'people come inside.'

Hu!

Hele mai!

Mai!

Mai!

Mai!

Mai ʻai!

Say come and eat with me.

I give from my heart.

That's where it comes from, inside your heart.

You know, the blood vessels pumping, right?

(laughing) (crickets chirping) Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson: I would remember my dad would kinda get us out of bed and would pick us up and walk us along, outside to the car.

Along the way he'd be doing this kind of a breathy whistle, like a (imitates whooshing) You know, I remember hearing that.

And then we'd get to the car, there'd be a makeshift bed.

My sisters would be there and he'd place us in, kinda put a little blanket or a towel over us and we'd kinda fall back asleep.

Next thing I'd know would be wake up, we're on the boat.

Here we are sitting down, drinking our hot cocoas, eating a cinnamon roll, and just watching the day begin, that pre-dawn light kinda coming over the mountains, and the colors that it would cast on the water, just spectacular.

You know, sitting there groggy 5 year old, just soaking it all in.

(dramatic music) Looking back on it now, definitely some magical moments.

(dramatic music) Lily Campbell/Eldon’s Grandchild: We have to start at the beginning.

Don't you remember waking up so early in the morning and loading into the car, like take your blanket, sleeping the whole drive from Kula to Lahaina, and then get down to the office, just straight into the kitchen.

MeiLi Coon/Eldon’s Grandchild: Straight into the kitchen.

Lily and MeiLi talking: Small little kitchen.

Yeah, it was good memory, but it was hard work working in all those cinnamon rolls, 'cause we had to make enough for the whole week.

That's so cute though, when we say 300 cinnamon rolls for the whole week, I think that would last us like two whale watches now.

Grandma and Grandpa would be so amazed.

So amazed.

To know what it's become.

Absolutely, I think they would be excited to know it's still the same recipes.

Still the same recipes, still the same frosting.

Her famous frosting.

Yeah, still the family.

We still give her the credit.

MeiLi Coon/Eldon’s Grandchild: The beauty of what Elden and Jeanette and our family started was they invited people onto their boat, onto their home, and created a day and experience that felt like family.

Lily Campbell/Eldon’s Grandchild: Absolutely.

MeiLi Coon/Eldon’s Grandchild: And even though, I know we've grown to seven boats now, their spirit of wanting to create that is like still being produced.

I think that they would really feel honored by that.

(gentle music) Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: He was a dreamer.

He wanted to be a world traveler, but life did not make that easy for him.

He made choices that were mostly family choices that thwarted that dream until the very last few years of his life.

We lived in a little Ketchikan.

It's just built right on the coast with mountains right behind it.

So I had literally the forest at my backdoor and the docks, you know, a block below me.

And so I just had the ocean and the mountains right there together.

I had a fabulous childhood.

When I was 11 years old, I had a chance to go fish with my cousin.

I left home the day after school got out.

I got home the day before school started and fished the Gulf of Alaska for three and a half months.

Loved it.

Told my dad, I said, "How come I gotta quit fishing?

I hate school and I gotta go back to school? "

And then my dad said, "You know son, fishing's an honorable profession, but you're still going to fish six months out of the year.

So you still have to have another profession.

And that's why you've gotta go to school."

Mañana II was the queen of the coast when she was launched.

Beautiful boat.

It was a very important part of our life, that boat was.

I know we had about five wealthy circles of people that mostly through word of mouth came to charter with my dad.

He had a chef, Joseph Romatini, he was a Corsican, lived in Paris, flew over to cook for my dad every season, did that for 17 years, was one of Europe's great chefs and just did an amazing job in the galley.

And so he was able to produce a world-class product up there.

And that's why these very wealthy circles of people would recommend him to their friends.

And many of them came back year after year.

You know, he was just a really humble, hardworking, wonderful man.

And I just think people recognize that about him.

You know, he was competent and kind and was really good at what he did and truly cared about these people, wanting to give them just the very best experience that he could possibly give them in this magnificent wilderness of Alaska.

(gentle music) Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: I was working just off campus, Berkeley, California, and I was sitting in a barber's chair and I decided to read my mail while I was in the barber's chair.

And I opened up this letter from my dad and there I read about that the boat had sunk.

And I started to cry as I sat there in the barber's chair and the barber said, "Oh, I'm sorry, did somebody die?"

And I said, "Sorta."

(sighs) (thunder) That moment I could feel my dad's incredible pain.

That was not just our livelihood, which it surely was, but it also was so much of a way of life.

He was in his sixties at the time.

He had minimal insurance.

The insurance that he had basically just covered the deposits for the charters that he would have for the rest of the season.

It left him in a very tough shape financially.

He didn't really know what he was going to do.

He did not have enough money to go buy another boat.

And he had a couple, three months of trying other ventures just trying to figure out how he was going to continue on with his life or any living.

(birds chirping) Well, you know, my dad married well, no doubt.

My mom was an amazing woman.

My mom had seen that if my dad was going to continue on doing what he did, he had to have a boat.

Randy Coon/Eldon’s Son: She had a secure job.

She was tenured as an academic.

She had a nice home and was willing to basically give all that up for something as some people would say, irresponsible as building a boat.

And the best sign would be if somebody just out of the blue came and asked them if they wanted to sell the house.

Short period of time, maybe a couple of weeks after they had made this commitment and had asked for divine guidance on this, somebody came up, knocked on the door and asked if they wanted to sell the house.

You know, as I've gotten older, I've grown to appreciate even more the tremendous sacrifice and leap of faith that our mother made when she decided to put her whole commitment into this project.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: The Craig family sailed in on this big power boat.

They had spent a bit of time in Hawai‛i with that boat.

And they told my dad, there's this island called Maui, beautiful island, good harbors there.

And there's a private island across from Maui called Lāna‛i.

And you could actually run a trip from Maui over to that private island.

So my dad was really interested in that.

So he sort of just grasped that plan.

And wherever we went, that was his focus.

[MUSIC PLAYING] I had quit my job in Berkeley.

And I was living in a little cabin north of Juneau.

In the interim, my parents had sold their home.

And my dad was living in this little teeny trailer, just had a bunk and a stove in it.

And I went down to see my dad.

And we started talking life.

And he said, well, son, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

Gosh, dad, I said, part of me just wants to put a pack in my back, go to my money runs out,go back and fish again, and do that for a few years.

And he said, well, you know, son, if we were to build a boat together, you could travel and you wouldn't be a bum.

You still could be broke.

But youʻd pull into port and you got a nice boat.

And it puts you in a different place.

You're not just a bum with a pack on your back.

You've got a boat.

It's just a completely different way to travel.

And he said, look, son, here's a deal.

You know what I believe?

I'm a man.

I'm just trying to live life as morally correct as I can.

And you're a man.

And you've got to make up your own decision on how you're going to live your life.

I realized at that moment, it didn't matter my performance.

Even if he didn't see anything that I did eye to eye, he still would love me.

That was just a huge thing for me.

And I think at that moment, I realized, I said, you know what?

I think I could build a boat with my dad.

(music) Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: Randy was attending the University of Washington, getting really involved in some of the politics there.

So about a few months into the project, Rand finished up the quarter.

He just started working full time.

Randy Coon/Eldon’s Son: When I left university to join the building project-- and I think I can speak for my brother as well.

Neither one of us had really bought in to the dream.

Lack of imagination, maybe.

And it wasn't for several months that we realized this dream could be a reality.

And as we invested more of our sweat equity into it, just over time, it became our dream.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: And truthfully, the project would have never happened without Rand.

I mean, it took all of us.

None of us were working for a wage.

And we were blowing through our money pretty fast, as frugal as we could be.

I remember we had no money to buy food.

And I watched the canned goods just shrinking there in the larder.

And it was down to where I had a few cans of beans left.

And my dad would grind wheat and make bread a couple times a week.

It was really delicious.

Dad's brother, Afton, pulled in with his big, beautiful motorhome.

And he asked dad how things are going.

And dad said, well, we're doing good.

We're working six days a week, 12, 14 hours a day.

But we're running out of money.

We need about $15,000 to finish the project.

Monday morning, Afton went down to the bank and transferred money to my dad andloaned us the $15,000.

And without that, we would have not been able to finish the project.

That was just miraculous the way that it happened.

I mean, we were right at the end.

And that money came in.

And we were able to finish the job.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: When we actually started our cruise, I'll never forget, we were off the coast of Oregon, California.

And we were about 200 miles out to sea.

And it was a really big swell runnin'.

And I looked behind the boat.

And there's this giant wave.

It looks to be as tall as the mizzen mast with this triplicate stripe down the face of it.

The top, maybe 10 feet.

It was breaking water.

And then the rest of it was just the track of the boat going down this big sea.

And we were surfing down the face of this huge sea.

And we'd sort of lose wind as we got down in the trough.

And then we'd come up on the backside, and the wind would fill our sail, which we had way too much sail up, and just almost launch us over the next wave, and then surf down the face of that wave.

And dad, he was at the helm, and just in his glory.

And, boys, this is just what the boat was designed to do.

Isn't this great?

I remember thinking, you know, dad, you've had a good life.

And you're now well into your 60s.

And if it all ended now, well, you've had a good run.

And hey, you know what?

I'm just starting.

I'm not ready to--I'm not ready to do it yet.

This is dicey stuff out here.

[MUSIC PLAYING] You know, for me, my home was a boat.

I remember the moment we were in Mexico, and we took a trip up to Guadalajara.

And when we came back from that trip, there was our boat sitting there in the harbor.

And I realized that I was coming home.

This was my home.

And wherever I went, my home was with me.

[MUSIC PLAYING] And so as we sailed north, heading towards Hawai‛i, we started getting close.

And we couldn't see any land at all.

So I did a round of star sites.

And that night, when the sun set, and it was this nice glow, and then the glow just stayed there.

It didn't ever go away.

And we said, wow, that is the longest lasting sunset.

Well, as it turned out, it was a volcano.

It was erupting, and it was reflecting on the clouds.

And so we were seeing the red reflection of the volcanic eruption on the clouds.

That was a really cool moment, just sighting land in that magnificent way.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: Then we spent six months cruising through the Hawaiian Islands before we finally settled here in Maui.

Finally got up to Lahaina, where the entrance buoy.

And I loved the vibe of Lahaina.

It was just sleepy little town with good weather.

So I was stoked.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Randy Coon/Eldon’s Son: Well, it's both my brother and I have often said, we not only fell in love with the islands, but a couple of the island girls.

My wife, who's a hapa-haole, she's born on the Big sland.

She was in Lahaina, visiting her great auntie Florence.

And I was just fortunate enough to meet her and fall in love.

And she was a teacher.

She taught several years at Sacred Heart School there, and eventually ran the food and beverage part of our business for many years, and was an integral part of our success.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Randy Coon/Eldon’s Son: My brother was equally blessed with finding a local girl that he fell in love with.

And she also brought her amazing talents to the family.

And her Hawaiian roots, of course, go very deep.

So this multi-generational legacy that we've been blessed with is something that we can continue for many generations.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Winnie Basques/Lānaʻi Resident and Family Friend: They came in to the harbor in 1973, '74, around there.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: My dad's dream of taking passengers from Maui to Lāna‛i and going back in day excursions was a very viable possibility.

And not wanting to presume that we could just do this on a private island without some permission, we went up to see Dwayne Black.

Winnie Basques/Lānaʻi Resident and Family Friend: Jim and Randy came over OK with their families.

OK?

He started talking.

And my mother-in-law and his mother talked their language.

But when I met Jim, I said, Jim is so kind-hearted and really good, he can understandwhat you're talking about, even Randy.

The thing is that when you see the two guys together, they welcome you and they greet you with the Aloha.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: As we got to know local people there, we had talked to them about what we were proposing and said, can you just give us some advice on how we can run our operation in a way that will be well accepted by the residents of Lāna‘i?

Winnie Basques/Lānaʻi Resident and Family Friend: When Jim and Randy came and approached us at the time when we were down there picnic, Hawaiian style is give Aloha.

You welcome them.

Come.

Even though you bringing the malihinis come in, you can come in Monday to Friday.

Saturday, Sunday, and holidays for the local people.

They go down fishing, go barbecue, or camping down there.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: And so we crafted our business around running Monday through Friday, not going over there on weekends or company holidays.

And incidentally, that's something that we still honor to this day 50 years later.

Gabriel Lucy/Trilogy President: Going to the island of Lāna‘i and having that relationship with the community has always been really important to us.

Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson: It's kind of like that kuleana word.

It's part privilege.

It's part responsibility.

If you're going to be working out in nature in Hawai‘i, you owe it to those who are on board with you.

You owe it to them to share.

It's what makes Maui Maui.

So it makes us unique.

Without it, we could just be like any tropical destination in the world.

The company tarted out using trimarans.

And I still remember the original Trilogy Trimaran had some of my early memories on that boat.

And there were still, I swear, items and props that they had on their original journey were still in circulation on the boat.

Randy Coon/Eldon’s Son: And I just realized that we needed to change the direction of the company.

We need to modernize so that we would attract the caliber of captain that I was looking at.

And I think I started sketching out what later became our first catamaran.

And it established a blueprint that we have followed to this day.

Gabriel Lucy/Trilogy President: We do have a new fleet.

We have seven boats now.

Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson: As we moved to catamarans, things just made a lot more sense.

We had a nice large deck space.

The cabins got bigger.

We could have a larger galley.

We had more of a center spot.

And then the bow became a really big focal point on the boats, a place that people love to sit.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Gabriel Lucy/Trilogy President: As a company, we are looking at different ways to offset our carbon, offset our impacts on the land, and work better with the community.

One of the things that we started years ago was the Blue ‘Āina campaign.

Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson: And so it started off as a grassroots idea of crew and friends.

They would just take a boat out and go to different spots off of Maui and just pick up whatever trash they can find.

I remember those early years bowling balls, shopping carts, cars.

Like, you’d be surprised how many cars made it into the reefs around here.

Honolua Bay had like three or four cars.

Gabriel Lucy/Trilogy President: In the most recent years, where we can, we've switched to biodiesel.

And that's made a big difference.

One of the more important things is trying to work with more local farmers.

95% of our produce at our restaurant and our catering is all from local farmers.

That has helped because that doesn't have to be shipped all the way over here.

Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson I've seen a lot of changes in the last 20 years for the better.

Yet one thing really remains steady throughout all that time is almost like a family that you make with your coworkers on the boat.

I remember feeling it when I was a teenager in my young 20s.

That was my friend group.

When we had our wedding, that was like the majority of the people I invited was just the people I work with.

I think that's really what makes Trilogy so special.

It's that culture, that ʻohana, that family that we kind of build with our coworkers.

Gabriel Lucy/Trilogy President: Riley, Denver, LiAnne, Ginger, Lily, and MeiLi, I mean, even for them, they go on the boats.

And the guests hear that they were the grandkids of Eldon Coon, and Jeanette.

And even though a lot of them get to really meet their grandfather, it's special for our guests to hear the next generation is working on the boats, working in the business still.

I believe that's what makes it last as long as it has, passing on from generation to generation.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: What my goal is is to treat people with the Aloha, with respect, as they see the beauty around them, that it will start turning their thoughts to things higher than themselves, to spiritual things.

And this will be a transcendental experience not just a trip on a boat.

Beyond that, where they start giving thanks for life and for the vibrancy that's around them, and that they realize that this is no accident, that they're here for a purpose.

They can make a difference.

And this harmony of nature and humans is a beautiful thing, and it's something that they can take with them when they go back to whatever their life is.

And somehow their life is better.

Riley Coon/Eldon’s Grandson: You never know what people are going through.

Vacations are a really important time for people to reflect inwardly.

So when you get to host somebody, and they're in that headspace, and you get to maybe show them the underwater environment, perhaps it's their first time, and you see them just come alive and they realize, wow, this is just the most amazing thing I've ever done.

For some people, this is the best day of their life on the boat, I've seen that.

Sometimes they'll come back to the office years later, write you a letter, and they just tell you, you have no idea the impact that you did in our family.

It's just one of the most special hings you can do.

And it's an honor to get to do that.

Jim Coon/Eldon’s Son: And I just wanna thank each one of these amazing, amazing people, you, that have cast your lot with us at Trilogy, that you're part of the Trilogy ʻOhana.

You make the Trilogy ʻOhana what it is.

You have the heart that makes this the best company in Hawai‘i that gives us the position in our industry that is the envy of many.

And it's because of you and what you give out every single day, whether it's being a captain and crew on one of our vessels, whether it's fixing great food in our food prep area, whether it's serving customers at Kapena’s, or whatever it is, it's a sacred, sacred trust that I surely treasure.

I know that our adult children that now own the company treasure and together it's way beyond what I can see.

Winnie Basques/Lānaʻi Resident and Family Friend: See, we welcome people the way how we were taught.

Like I was saying, when you do something good for them, they understand and they're not gonna forget.

See, this is the kind of stuff.

You show your appreciation for them because they come to you.

And when you talk to them, they have to end up crying.

they happy and they start crying.

They start crying, oh my God, stop crying, stop it.

You're gonna make me cry, 'nuff already!

But no can help.

Because why?

That's the Aloha right there.

And now we start crying.

(laughs) No, because when you think about this kine stuff here It makes it good.

Amen to that?

Closing song: When darkness tries to pull over my bones.

When sorrow comes to steal the joy I hold.

When brokenness and pain is all I know.

Oh, I won't be shaken No, I won't be shaken.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

Shame no longer has a place to hide.

I am not captive to the lies.

I am not afraid to leave my past behind.

Oh, I won't be shaken.

No, I won't be shaken.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

Oh, I'm standing...

There's power that can break off every chain.

There's power that can't empty our brain.

There's resurrection power that can save.

There's power in your name.

Power in your name.

There's power that can't break off every chain.

There's power that can empty our brain.

There's resurrection power that can save.

There's power in your name.

Power in your name.