Friday, July 25th, 2008
Prepping for Molokai Paddleboard race
This Sunday, July 27 on the island of Molokai ocean paddlers will embark for Oahu. This 32-mile rough water race across the Kaiwi Channel that separates the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Oahu, from Kaluakoi to Koko Head, is one of the top two paddling events in the world. This year will be the 12th Annual running of the QuiksilverEdition Molokai to Oahu Paddle Board Race.
The update that follows outlines how three of my friends are prepping for one of the most grueling races held in the ocean. It is written by Body Glove wetsuit staffer and South Bay ripper Matt Walls (photo courtesy of Body Glove).
Just wanted to drop a line from the Donkey House (our local South Bay, paddleboard crew) here in Hawaii Kai. We have been here for a few days now and are having a blast. Kyle and my trip started out great by volunteering to get bumped off our first two flights to Hawaii and we received $1400.00 each in travel vouchers and upgraded to first class on our third flight. Good times.
Our house is beautiful. It is right on the water in a lagoon right behind the finish line. We have a dock on the back of the house and the finish line is about a few hundred yard paddle away. We did a finish line paddle two days ago. We got dropped off at sandy beach and paddle to the finish line. It is about 5 miles. The first few miles were so rough that it was really hard to even stay on your board. We learned a new paddle boarding term on that paddle,” alligator wrestling”. The next part felt a little better because the waves were only coming at you from 3 sides. After that it started to clean up. We paddled yesterday for a little while and caught some waves. It has been really windy and rainy but we have managed to have fun. We watch the Tour de France a few times a day, Roebee goes to Starbucks about every other hour and then we watch all of Kyles motivation movies that he brought. Today we are watching a documentary on Bruce Lee. Yesterday’s motivational movie was “Road to Paris” a documentary on Lance Armstrong’s battle to winning the Tour De France.
Kyle Daniels in training - courtesy of BarkOcean.com
We checked into the race last night and picked up our race numbers and jerseys. We will do our last paddle today, a three mile down wind run. The paddlers over here have been super helpful in showing us their routes and giving us tons of helpful hints to help us out during the race. The forecast for the race is supposed to be really good. Really windy with some pretty good sized waves. Hopefully it is fast.
Tomorrow we fly over to Molokai.
Many thanks to Matt Walls for providing the update.
Matt Smart
outsideallday contributor
on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am:
Walls kills it. That shot of him surfing is from backdoor, and he flew out of a 5 second barrel prior to that hulking hack.
on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 am:
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