SS Minnow Lands in Kahului Harbor 54 Years After Last Episode {NRL}

KAHULUI, MAUI - The SS Minnow, made famous in the classic television show “Gilligan’s Island" in the mid-1960s, mysteriously washed ashore in Kahului Harbor last week.

Pacific Ocean experts cite recent strong trade winds for nudging the little yacht off a secret Northwestern Hawaiian island, and a temporary shift in currents for dropping the famed boat onto north Maui shores.

“It took a perfect storm of atmospheric events to make this happen, actually,” said Peter K. Fink, meteorologist with the U.S. Oceanography Department based in Honolulu. “The winds blew just strong enough and just at the right time for the current, and boom, the Minnow was freed and finally found.”

The TV series last aired on April 17, 1967, starring Bob Denver as Gilligan, surrounded by skipper Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Tina Louise, Natalie Schafer, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers, who many viewers believe was hotter than Louise as Ginger the movie star.

In the show, the crew embarked on a “3-hour tour,” only to get caught up in a bad storm, which drove the Minnow to shore. Everyone survived, and even though the Minnow remained where it landed on an uncharted tiny island for years, the survivors never thought to just fix the boat and float home.

So the series endured 3 seasons of Gilligan’s goofy antics, the Skipper whopping him aside his head for silly ideas, the 2 millionaires complaining about island life, the Professor coming up with wacky scientific inventions to try to get them off the isle, and Ginger and Mary Ann just, well, looking cool.

The original series was filmed at the CBS Radford Studios complex in the Studio City mailing district of Los Angeles. However, just before filming for the 3rd season began, the stars felt cooped up on the hot Valley set and demanded to mix work with some pleasure. They wanted to film on a real "desert island."

Note that the show’s original pilot was filmed in Hawaii, which convinced Schafer, who played the millionaire’s wife, to remain with the show even though she doubted its potential for success. Later she admitted to going along for the pilot as “nothing more than a free vacation.”

So for the 3rd season the studios found an island among the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which to this day remains a secret.

The new film location did not help, as the show slowly dropped out of the Nielsen ratings’ top 30, and just before Season 4 episodes were about to be filmed, the studio chose to keep “Gunsmoke” and nix “Gilligan’s Island.”

Episodes for "Gilligan's Island," like “Star Trek” and other ‘60s TV shows canceled too early, went on to air thousands upon thousands of times as reruns into the 1980s, spurring wild televised reunions and even television movies and motion pictures.

Once the "Gilligan's" series was canceled, the producers and studio just up and went, leaving behind some of a mess, including the famous Minnow.

Where it remained, for more than half a century until it slowly drifted into Kahului Harbor, and came to rest near that gigantic homeless encampment that Maui County officials said must be cleared by May 31.

On Maui, the old Minnow was hoisted onto a trailer, and parked not far from where it was found. A small group of the boat's "discoverers" hope to restore it so it can finally be steered off an island. “Any island, really,” said Kimo Grant, who started a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for the restoration project. “I think by this time the little Minnow is sick of islands. And silly humans trying to get off islands.”