A new adventure: Trauma, tragedy inspire a life at sea for Big Islander

KAILUA-KONA — Dustin Reynolds propped himself up in his hospital bed with the only arm he had left and watched bemusedly as a team of doctors and nurses swirled furiously around him. Suffering from shock amid a waking nightmare, his life in peril, Reynolds reacted the only way he could — he laughed.

Kaylyn Costa, his girlfriend at the time, sat in the waiting room at North Hawaii Community Hospital on the night of October 18, 2008, steeped in a heavy, confused fear following news that her boyfriend had been critically injured in a violent motorcycle crash.

Somehow Reynolds remained conscious, even after enduring a trauma that required a nearly total blood transfusion and set him inches from his grave. Doctors told Costa exploratory surgery to determine the extent of his internal damage was imminent, but she could see him before he went under, if she wanted.

She prepared herself for the worst as she made her way down the hallway to speak to Reynolds for perhaps the last time. Costa, then 23, didn’t know what to expect, but the scene she walked in on was something she could never have imagined.

“I went back into the trauma area of the ER, and there he was, sitting in the hospital bed,” Costa recalled more than eight years later. “He was pale and bandaged. There was blood everywhere. And Dustin is sitting there laughing, with a smile on his face, and he’s joking with the doctors. It was like a movie. It was this surreal experience.”

In the coming weeks and months, however, Reynolds’ demeanor on the night that nearly claimed his life grew less and less bizarre in Costa’s memory.

The positivity that shown through in the smile of a man nearly dead, the heart she heard in his laugh, were the same tools Reynolds would use years later to craft a new life — one that would carry him across the sea to every corner of the world.

The crash

Reynolds can’t recall the collision, but he remembers headlights.

“A lifted Chevy Silverado came across the center lane on a straightaway,” Reynolds said. “It swerved right at me. It looked like they were trying to hit me.”

The driver of the truck was Aikapa Kaniho, who Reynolds said blew a .28 after police administered a breathalyzer test — a blood alcohol level 3.5 times the legal limit.

Kaniho would eventually be charged with felony negligent injury and serve roughly a year in prison, Reynolds said, but not before being charged with operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant again roughly six months later.

Reynolds awoke alone in the dark, disoriented on the shoulder of Waikoloa Road. He attempted to remove his helmet, but found he was unable.

“I tried to figure out what was going on,” Reynolds said. “It felt like my arm was still there. It still feels like that. I reached over and grabbed the bloody stump. Then I realized why my arm wasn’t helping. I laid there for a few minutes, screaming for help, and there was nobody. So I called 911 and told them where I was.”

Reynolds had finished dining at Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar in Waikoloa with Costa and two friends only minutes before saving his own life.

The crash tore Reynolds’ left arm completely off. The collision punctured his spleen and forced his stomach through his diaphragm into his chest cavity. He vomited into his lungs and aspirated. His left foot was so badly damaged, it, too, was eventually amputated.

“It was a bad accident, and it’s something nobody walks away from — really, nobody walks away from,” said Costa, who described Reynolds’ mere survival as a miracle, to say nothing of the life he’d come to live.

Reynolds’ father, Dick, was living in Arkansas when he heard the news by way of an early morning phone call.

“A doctor told me about the accident. I asked what Dustin’s chances were and he kept changing the subject, so I knew he probably was not going to make it,” Dick said. “Nerves through my whole body made me go into shock, knowing my baby was probably going to die.”

A long road ahead

The magnitude of Reynolds’ new reality didn’t strike him until solitude did.

“Once I got back home, I remember waking up one morning after (Kaylyn) had gone to work,” he recalled. “It was my first time really being alone. I had those big sliding mirror doors, and I sat up and looked at my reflection. I’d lost 20 pounds. I was thin. I was frail. My arm and foot were gone. That’s when it became real. … I looked like I’d been photoshopped or CGI’d (like) in the movies. I didn’t look like me.”

Doctors conducted Reynolds’ internal surgeries at North Hawaii Hospital, after which he was flown to The Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu. There he spent three days in the intensive care unit, followed by another week on a regular floor.

He dodged secondary infections, save for a bout with pneumonia because of the trauma to his lungs, and after another week at an impatient rehabilitation facility on Oahu, Reynolds returned home to Hawaii Island.

“When I knew he was going to live, I was still devastated because I didn’t know if he’d be depressed or what,” said Kathi Reynolds, Dustin’s mother.

“But he was trying to be strong for everybody else. I was amazed. I never saw him feel sorry for himself. I was broken up inside, but he never seemed to be. His attitude was that he was going to get better. He was going to get up.”

There was no shortage of setbacks for Reynolds as he clawed his way back to normalcy.

Costa struck a balance between girlfriend, friend and caregiver, wanting to encourage Reynolds while tempering his expectations of his capabilities in the interest of safety.

“I remember thinking it was going to be tricky getting him to understand his limitations without clipping his wings,” Costa said. “But he didn’t have a lot of woe-is-me moments. Moving forward and acceptance were his attitude the whole time.”

Reynolds’ previous routines were completely shot. He could barely stand, let alone wait tables or operate a carpet cleaning machine. Unable to work, Reynolds took to rehabilitation like a job, clearing the hospital’s standards for discharge with uncanny speed. He continued to pursue his rehab goals with an unrelenting persistence.

But then came problems with insurance, and his routines changed again.

Ultimately, Reynolds’ bills amounted to nearly $500,000. The health insurance he received through his job at the Sheraton Kona Resort and Spa at Keauhou Bay paid the lion’s share of his bills, but he was eventually hit with a lien that forced him into bankruptcy.

The insurance company began denying all his physical therapy and allotting him only one prosthetic fitting every three months, which he said was grossly deficient as the swelling in his leg subsided and his muscles began to atrophy.

Frustration and the daunting prospect of reclaiming his prior financial status loomed with increasing unpleasantness in his mind, and that’s when he decided.

It was time to leave his old life behind.

Until you have a boat, it’s just a dream

Reynolds first experienced the volatility of the open ocean aboard a 35-foot Alberg sloop on a short voyage from Oahu to Hawaii Island through the Kaiwi Channel.

“Right as we got into the channel a squall came through,” Reynolds said. “It was pouring rain, thunder and lighting, and there’s shipping traffic around. You can’t see anything, but you know the ships are out there. And I was like, ‘What am I doing? This is such a bad idea.’”

The idea to sail around the world was born years before his accident and always resided in the back of Reynolds’ mind. With little left to his name and unable to pick up where he’d left off before the crash, he sold his car and his fishing boat — the only moderately valuable possessions he retained — and purchased a near 50-year-old sailing vessel.

“I called (the seller) up and told him I was a double-amputee who never sailed before and that I wanted to sail around the world by myself,” Reynolds chuckled. “He laughed a bit. It was kind of a crazy cold call.”

Reynolds spent a year rendering the boat seaworthy, setting sail from Hawaii Island on June 18, 2014, for Palmyra, nearly 1,000 miles away. He had $20 to his name.

Reynolds was apprehensive the day he floated away from the Big Island, but he was also broke and absent any other options.

He couldn’t afford to pull the vessel out of the water and his time in transient slips for the year was spent.

It was now or never.

“I tried to talk him out of it,” Kathi said. “I begged him not to go. But he did.”

Reynolds never considered the difficulty of sailing with only half of his limbs because he had no memory to which he could compare it.

“I’ve never sailed with two arms,” he laughed, “so it’s hard to describe the challenges.”

Living the dream

It isn’t during long periods of solitude at sea, but rather when Reynolds drops anchor that loneliness catches up to him.

“It gets lonely at a perfect anchorage at a beautiful beach. You go catch a few fish and lobster and think it’d be nice to share this with someone,” he explained.

It’s been more than 2 1/2 since Reynolds, now 38 years old, departed from Hawaii Island.

During that time he has not only become an adept sailor, but has seen things and met people he never imagined.

Reynolds spent two weeks on a remote island in northern Vanuatu with the natives, hosted by a tribal chief’s family, who took him hiking and spearfishing.

“When I left, they were crying,” Reynolds said. “My family doesn’t even cry when I leave.”

On the open ocean, he relaxes in good weather and works on a book he’s writing about his experiences. And when he makes port, he’s curbed his loneliness by developing a network of “yachties.”

His father now lives in Thailand, where Reynolds has spent time preparing his new vessel, a 35-foot Bristol sloop built in 1983, for the long voyage across the Indian Ocean.

He’s also had a few visitors during his journey, including Jamie Steinhilber, a friend from the Big Island who recently spent more than two months island hopping with Reynolds.

She spoke of a time the two docked off the uninhabited Thai island of Koh Bitsi for five days. She practiced yoga on the beach, while Reynolds spearfished for their dinner. They drank beer and enjoyed fish tacos next to a bonfire every night until a park ranger spotted them and told them they needed to vacate the area.

“Time didn’t really matter anymore,” she said. “You don’t worry about the days of the week. Everyday, it’s just simple.”

Steinhilber met Reynolds on Hawaii Island after his crash.

She echoed the sentiments of his friends and family members about the man he is — generous, magnetic, unrelentingly positive.

Still, she said when she saw him again all those months later, something about him had changed.

“When I met him, he’d just got his sailboat. He’d always talk about how he wanted to sail around the world, but I could tell he was nervous and unsure,” Steinhilber said. “He seems so much more confident now.”

Reynolds currently lives off of a $900 monthly stipend from social security and maintains his prosthetic leg through Medicare. He’s also operating a GoFundMe account entitled “Save the Single Handed Sailor” to help with the current repairs needed for his new vessel.

The GoFundMe page can be accessed at https://www.gofundme.com/2stbmqc?r=52618.

“As long as I had the opportunity to quit my job and tell myself to go sailing, I probably would go back and change things,” said Reynolds when asked about any regrets from that fateful October night more than eight years ago.

“But if it was a choice between going back to my old life and sticking with this one, I’d stick with this one.”

Costa, who has since left the island, keeps up with Reynolds’ progress, as do all of his many friends and family. He’s the kind of person you never really lose touch with, she said.

“He’s so selfless. He’s so thoughtful,” she explained. “I remember him saying once that he was glad that it happened to him and not someone else because he survived, because he was capable of surviving. That struck me because I could never imagine anyone saying that.”