Becoming the Bali Hai Boys Back in 1959 , Kelley , a lawyer by trade but sailor by passion , competed in the famed Transpac boat race from his hometown of Los Angeles to Honolulu . Once he got to Hawaii , he decided to sail a bit farther and visit Tahiti for the first time .
“ He fell in love with it ,” Kelley ’ s daughter Vaihiria Kelley said about her late father . “ It was like , ‘ This is it for me .’”
The French Polynesian island of Moorea endeared itself so much to Kelley that he immediately started trying to convince his two best friends and former fraternity brothers , Donald “ Muk ” McCallum and Jay Carlisle , to quit their jobs and move to the islands . Eventually , Carlisle left his career as a stockbroker , and McCallum quit his job in his family ’ s sporting goods business . Unmarried and unattached , they headed to what was , at that time , “ a very remote island ,” Kelley said . The trio pooled their money , intending to farm “ black gold ,” also known as vanilla . The only problem ? They couldn ’ t get the vanilla crops to grow on Moorea .
Left with an unusable farm and little cash , they noticed some haphazard bungalows on the island and convinced the owner to let them take over the rental properties as a hotel . The trio named the property the Bali Hai — a nod to Tales of the South Pacific , a novel by James Michener — and quickly earned the nickname the Bali Hai Boys . With no staff , the triumvirate handled all the hotel ’ s operations — cooking , bartending and entertaining the guests with fishing trips and fun .
In 1962 , a group of reporters passed through Tahiti , and the Bali Hai Boys pulled out all the stops . The wooing worked , earning a seven-page
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