Hi everyone. Hope everyone and their families living in Hawaii are doing well following the quake first and foremost.

I wanted to ask people who have paddled both the Hurricane and new Fuze if they could compare these boats in calm/flat conditions and in surfing conditions. Would like to have a good idea how they match up.

Mahalo,
Danno

Fuzerider
wehuli@prexar.com
10/14/2006

Molokai Report: Recently myself and some paddling friends had a most excellent adventure in Hawaii, who knows maybe even a once in a lifetime experience. Last weekend Al Limberg, Todd Ellison, Mike Vincent,Mike Handa, Randy Drake,Turbo Tim Triebold, John Hugus, Joe Manns and myself found ourselves on the starting line at Hale O Lono harbor Molokai for the 54th running of the Molokai Hoe canoe race across the 41 mile wide Ka iwi channel. The scene was absolutely incredible, crystal clear blue water, hot humid air,and well over 1000 people floating on the water in either the 45 foot long outrigger canoes or the 100 plus chase boats , media boats and spectators. There was a helicopter there too with a film crew inside. The boats made a straight line , 102 canoes wide and moved ahead from the staging area to the start line. All canoes were moving ahead when an officials boat dropped the starting flag. From my possition in seat one , the entire field came off the line together , no boat was dropped. Soon the fastest teams began to move ahead at a pace which only the worlds finest paddlers can provide. The Tahitians wasted no time in putting the hammer down and applying the hurt to everyone. After a half hour or so of racing we cleared the western end of Molokai and headed out into open ocean. Oahu still invisible in the humid air. Our first change is coming up so, the chase boat moves ahead and drops 3 fresh paddlers into the water directly in the path of our canoe. From the canoe , the swimmers are only visible part of the time as they appear and disappear between wave crests and troughs. We approach at top speed and in one movement they haul themselves into the canoe on the ama side while those of us in seats 1,3 and 5 go overboard on the starboard side, the 80 degree water feels cool. As the canoe continues on course the 3 of us in the water swim over to our chase boat which is a 22 foot twin hull catamaran with twin 115 horse Yamaha four strokes hung off the dual transoms. The locals were saying conditions were about as flat as they get in the Ka iwi channel but, I`ve never paddled in rougher water, it must be incredible when the locals are calling it rough. Ever so slowly Oahu begins to come into view out of the haze , first Koko head , then Diamond Head and the finish line. Late in the race we begin to pass lots of canoes as the talents of guys like Al Limberg and Mike Vincent make themselves apparent. At the finish we were 6 th in masters and 40th overall , not too bad really but we plan to go back again next year to try to improve a little. We all met some really nice people while on Hawaii. The Tresnacks, Nappy Napolean, Mike Handas sister Sandy and her husband Clayton, Billy Mowatt , our chaseboat driver and his friend Tom who helped out and cheered us on during the race. These people treated us like ohana and we are grateful. All in all , a totally unforgettable experience, we will be back next year.

Hi, looking for some help. I've been searching unsuccessfully on the web for DVD movies on the moloka'i race(other than 2006). Would you have any idea or information where this is available?

Thank you

hello,

don't we have any considerations in this forum? (tahitians community)

It has been 30 years now (1976), that tahitians did this performance:
1-oropaa
2-tautira
3-mataiea

so, here in tahiti it's crazy, and we are waiting for all hawaiian crews for hawaiki nui 2006.

And I wouild like to know if the weather was more machine washing, would you be able to beat shell va'a?
I don't think so, coz with 16 minutes before the second crew, I think shell was out of reach that sunday.

mahalo, or mauruuru.

It's the time of year to ask everyone's favorite question...when the hell is Beach Boys Choose Your Weapon Race?

thinking about getting one.. some guys at my club use them for OC-1 training and had good results.. is there a paddling specific one around? they all seem to be geared for runnin' bikin' or mountain climbing!!!! (Suunto 639.00???)

what do you use?

Roscoe

Interested to know what some of you do for training? During regatta and long distance I didn't lift any weights- just did tons of endurance training. I'm wondereing if that was a good thing or not? Plus I've been eating plenty carbs. I don't have any other means of comparison except from my teammates who eat spam and corned beef on a daily basis.

I want to say thank you to all of the race officials and volutneers who helped out with the Moloka'i Hoe yesterday. I know that it must be more work than i can imagine. All of those officials out there put there time in because they love the sport-- it seems that a lot of them don't even paddle anymore-- yet they still put in countless hours working to put on these races.

However----
I have a short story to tell.

My crew got disqualified for not putting our race # sticker on our escort. For whatever reason, we couldn't find the race # when we got on the escort.. it probably fell out of our packet somewhere on the way to the escort. To add to that, we were having radio issues. We checked in with the officials verbally as the escort was coming out of hale o lono. But i guess that wasn't enough. Personally, I spent $375 from a very limited budget to do the race (airfare, accomadations, entry fee, escort).
I never realized what a... beauracracy (maybe not the right term...) paddling has become. Usually if a crew gets DQed you assume that they cheated or did something blatantly wrong. We didn't have 10 guys in our crew, we didn't not go around any buoys, we didn't jump the starting line.. we just didn't have a race number on our escort.
After all of the preparation for the race, all of the money spent, all of the time on the water, all of the long drives to go paddle as a crew, we get DQed for something that, ultimately, we couldn't help.
To me.. that is a huge slap in the face from the officials.
In the end.. i paddle because i love to paddle. When you're in the middle of the race, how your team will look on the results is the furthest thing from your mind. I debated posting this because i kept on thinking, does it really matter that we were DQed? It's not like we would've won the race... but yeah in the end it does matter.
I'm not going to go into it.. but this is the third time something like this has happened this season (in three O'ahu long distance races) to our crew.
Paddling has to be about the paddling. I realize that as the sport grows the officials have to get more and more strict about the rules.... but don't DQ a crew (especially in a race that takes so much to get to), because somehow they lost their race # and broke their radio (i'm not really sure what happened to the radio.. just that it didn't work).

Anyway-- goodjob to everyone out there who crossed the channel.. it was not a fun channel (unless you were from Tahiti.. then i'm sure it was great fun).

This would have to be the quietest lead up to the Molokai Hoe ever. Does anyone know of any GPS feeds being done this year like there was last year or instant updates etc.

Cheers Rambo

Aloha Maui Paddlers
Is there any one on Maui that has a list(literal or in your mind)that could be shared showing the distances of some of the most popular paddling routes? One way distance is sufficient.
For example: Kihei Canoe Club to: Haycraft Park, Maalaea Harbor, Lighthouse, Sarrentos, Makena. Canoe Beach to Embassy, S-Turns, Napili Bay, Launiopoko Park. Any other popular routes would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks