LANAI: THE ISLAND THAT LARRY ELLISON BOUGHT

Well, he only bought 98%, for half a billion dollars or so.  (The State and County of Maui retain 2%.)  Larry Ellison is #5 with $43 billion, next to Carlos Helu (telecom, Mexico), Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega (Zara from Spain) and Warren Buffet.   Ellison, of course, is the founder of Oracle, a company where I have doubled my stock value.

An interesting aside is that I was at the Freemantle dock near Perth in 1983 when Australia won the America's Cup of yachting in Newport, Rhode Island, the first non-American country to do this in 132 years.  Then much later, after a decade of non-American success, Ellison spent $100 million in 2010 to win back this Cup.  The Golden Gate Yacht Club and Ellison's Oracle Racing defends in September of this year, challenged by Sweden, New Zealand and Italy.

Interesting that he hired Byron Washom to spend 40% of his time to maximize renewable energy efforts on Lanai.  Watch Byron's TED talk as "solar soothsayer."  A graduate of Punahou, he considers Hawaii to be  his home state, and thinks outside the box, or beyond the reef, sort of like me.  I've know him for a very long time.

Certainly, Ellison and his people are doing something right.  They announced expanding their solar farm and building a new 100 room hotel to complement two Four Seasons now there, and not a murmur of serious complaint.   Maybe it's only wind power that the locals don't like, or mega activities in general.

James Dole bought Lanai 90 years ago and made it the world's largest pineapple plantation.  That is why it is known as the Pineapple Island.  Then when Dole moved operations of this industry overseas, the island turned to tourism.  This transition involved David Murdock, now 90, another billionaire, buying out Castle & Cooke.   For decades he tried to keep the island afloat, then, came up with an idea to build a 200 megawatt wind farm.  Big Wind became a big problem for Murdock because of local opposition, and he just gave up, selling off to Ellison.  (However, Murdock remains alive and well, as he and his family just made an offer to buy all the Dole Food's shares for tad more than a billion dollars.)

Why do I today post on Lanai?  Well, I've decided to go visit the island to see what's happening.  Return for the latest.  A great view of Diamond Head and Waikiki:

I flew Mokulele Air to Lanai:

It took 45 minutes, with one pilot, who also served as steward.

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