It didn't take long for a reader to point out my error in last week's column.

I had written that the Ala Wai Harbor and its surrounding parking lots and access roads had been created by the state in the early 1950s to serve the needs of Honolulu's recreational boaters.

“;Those changes may have been for recreational boaters,”; she wrote, “;but to be historically accurate, they must have been made by someone else as Hawaii didn't become a state until 1959.”;

And of course she was right. The improvements made in and around what was then known as the Ala Wai Basin were done under the direction of the Hawaii Territorial Board of Harbor Commissioners.

It was a small but nevertheless embarrassing mistake, particularly because I had just recently been studying a collection of historic Transpacific Yacht Race programs given to me by Waikiki Yacht Club's highly respected historian, Mike Simpson.

The programs span the early post-war years of that biennial race, from 1949 through the 1950s and '60s. And they not only list the participants, but they provide descriptions of the racers' mooring arrangements on Oahu and aerial photographs of the Diamond Head to Honolulu shoreline.

As a few of Honolulu's old salts remember, the original Ala Wai Basin was little more than a dredged area at the ocean terminus of the Ala Wai Canal. And at the end of World War II, boat access to the sea was via a channel through Kewalo Basin.

That meant that from the race's inception in 1906, except during WW I and II when the race was canceled, the Honolulu Committee never considered the Ala Wai Basin a mooring option until it eventually became a more fully developed harbor.

A story in the 1955 Transpac program points out that prior to WW II, finishing yachts “;were spread out in Honolulu Harbor at available piers.

“;When the race was resumed in 1947,”; it noted, “;a central mooring area for all yachts was desired by the Honolulu Committee.”;

Such an area was established that year, as well as in 1949 and 1953, along the seawall in Kewalo Basin, with the race committee's thanks to the harbor's displaced fishing fleet.

The fleet moored together in 1951 as well, but for reasons unexplained, for that race they were side by side at Pier 2 in Honolulu Harbor. In 1955, however, the program's story announced excitedly that Transpac had new central mooring facilities available in the “;first-class yacht harbor”; at Ala Moana.

“;On March 22, 1955, the Territorial Board of Harbor Commissioners, in honor of this race, passed a motion officially naming the area the Transpacific Mooring Basin,”; the story proclaimed.

The Transpacific Mooring Basin name apparently did not long survive Hawaii's passage into statehood as within a dozen years, local boaters went from calling it the Ala Moana Yacht Harbor to the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, even though the state has officially designated it the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor.

And yes, this time I'm sure it was the state, rather than the territory, that made that name official.