“I’d take a cocktail with my toes in the sand and a stunning sunset, over a crowded city bar any day. And Rosewood Kona Village’s Shipwreck Bar nails it.”
The travel advisors at Travel + Leisure recently included Shipwreck Bar at Kona Village on their “10 of the Best Bars Around the World” list. Much like the resort itself, the bar has a colorful history.
In the early 1960s, the resort’s founders Johnno and Helen Jackson sailed their boat—the “New Moon”—to Hawaii. When they started building Kona Village, they anchored the schooner in the nearby Kahuwai Bay. During a routine cleaning, the boat sank. Efforts were made to bring it back to the surface with inner tubes, but it was destroyed in the salvage attempt. Soon thereafter, its remains were turned into the Shipwreck Bar.
More than half a century later, the “New Moon” has been restored, and its legacy lives on at Kona Village.
Photography: Douglas Friedman — Historic Photography: Save Kona Village
