Paddling Hard, Paddling Fast

Yesterday I did the Maui Canoe and Kayak Club race in the Stand Up Paddle Board division from Napiili Bay to Canoe Beach. Favorable wind and small bumps at first, followed by wind in our faces and swells from all directions for the last two miles. Ugh, what a grind. Finished third overall and second in the unlimited class, which was cool, but this isn’t a race report, this is about a paddling revelation.

I’ve been working hard on the Tahitian stroke that Dave Kalama taught me. Had a tune up session along with Jeremey Riggs a few days ago. Some of the challenges I’ve been having are:

• Reverting to my old “whatevertheheckitscalled” stroke when I get a little tired
• not engaging my shoulders and trunk
• applying power to the stroke for too long
• not reaching far enough.

What I discovered yesterday was that near total exhaustion makes me clean up my act. And my act was faster. Here’s what happened

About a mile from the finish I was kind of flailing. A OC-1 that had been slowly gaining on me went by. As they passed I decided to try a different stroke. I switched to the upper arm punching stroke that todd Bradley espouses. I got in about twenty strokes and my arms went to jelly. So I went back to the Tahitian stroke but decided to get more shoulder and torso twist into it–I simply didn’t have any arms left. With no arm strength remaining I couldn’t pull the paddle back very far, it was pretty much ALL shoulders and torso.

Since I was only using my shoulders and torso I needed to twist them further forward so I could get a full pull. I extended my reach and stacked my shoulders. Bam, Bam–short little strokes reaching way out, all done with the big muscles I had remaining. It was relatively effortless, and to my great surprise I gained on the canoe. I pulled in behind to draft, and continued on. In the draft the swells that were coming towards my board were flattened, I was able to maintain my cadence with less power in the pull, and my left shoulder, that was aching before I even got into the water, started loosening up and relaxing.

With a half mile to go I was pretty much used up everywhere. I looked behind me and saw the next SUP competitor was a pretty good distance back. I slowed, losing the draft, but keeping my stroke as pure as I could make it. The last hundred yards really sucked, but I made it.

So here’s my takeaway. Doing the Tahitian stroke right is very efficient. Yeah, you probably already knew that, but now I know that in my guts. The most important thing (after you get all the other most important things assimilated) is getting your shoulders and torso to do the work. In order to do that, you need to stack your shoulders, which gets your paddle vertical, and reach like mad.

If you have strength in your arms you’ll be tempted to extend the stroke. I’m going to work really hard to discipline myself not to do that, even if it feels slower. I know now that it isn’t. If I had been doing the stroke as well at the beginning as I was at the end, I might have had a chance against the front two guys. At the very least I would have had a lot more reserve when I hit the last mile.

John Zapotocky: Father of Stand Up Paddle Surfing

Last year at the Battle of the Paddle, just before the first race, an older gentleman came on the PA system and told the crowd about John Zapotocky, and how he was the true father of Stand Up Paddle Surfing. It was a good story, but at the end of it he said that John had no idea of how popular Stand Up Paddle surfing had become, because he was in a rest home, and wasn’t doing that well.

Turns out that John “Zapper” Zapotocky is doing pretty well for a 91 year old surfer dude, as this video from C4 clearly shows. Pretty inspirational stuff. Neat to hear that Duke Kahanamoku was a sweeper.

There’s a story on the C4 website: http://www.c4waterman.com/latest/demo-day-feb-6.html

Kihei Downwinder: Stand Up Paddling The Easy Way

Just how spoiled are we downwind Stand Up Paddlers on Maui? Outrageously spoiled. Not only do we have the incredible Maliko Run, but Kihei can toss off a pretty good run when the winds are right. South side downwind runs don’t have the huge swells of Maliko, but they can get knee to waist high once the wind has some time to work on the water.

This video is of a run from the Canoe Hale at the Kihei Pier to Makena Landing. the camera fogged after the first few minutes, and an hour of watching a guy glide on swells is a bit much, so I took five minutes from the front of the run, and a minute from the least fogged section with bigger swells. My paddling throughout looks like wimpy little dabs at the water (sorry about that Dave). That’s because it was all I needed to do and I was feeling lazy. Actually, I should have done more to link up swells and increase my speed by finding the peaks. The folks I was with–Randy, Chan, Dave, Jack, Devin, and probably a few others–all got to the other end long before I did. That’s a little hard to believe when you see the kind of rides I was getting, and they never stopped. But these folks are fast, and when their boards hit the water it’s game on. I was just having too much fun to paddle hard.

Enjoy. the music is Pink Martini, in honor of their recent visit to Maui.

Cuda vs. Enzo

What’s this got to do with Stand Up Paddle Surfing. Not a thing, except that you COULD stick a rack on that ‘Cuda and you really couldn’t on the Enzo. This is a pretty insane project, a bunch of whacko car guys built a piece of Detroit Iron with a engine that dynos over 1000 horsepower and then drove it the banked oval proving grounds with a Ferrari Enzo pace and chase car. Wot fun!!

Okay, if you’re not a gearhead like me then don’t bother, but I loved this video. Nice to see people still doing really stupid, very hard things.

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Paddling with Dave

So if you wanted to get some paddle coaching for SUP, who would be your absolute, top of the line pick as coach? No question in my mind that my choice would be Dave Kalama, and Dave DOES do one-on-one coaching when he has the time. I figured if I’m going to spend time and money on racing Stand Up Paddle boards that I needed some serious coaching, so I engaged with Dave for a couple of days of training. It’s been pretty remarkable.

Some of you might not be familiar with Dave Kalama. Here’s a little background;

Dave is credited with the co-development of tow-in surfing, along with Laird Hamilton, Darrick Doerner, and Buzzy Kerbox. They pioneered tow-in surfing and later stand up surfing at Peahi (Jaws).

Kalama and close friend Laird Hamilton essentially reinvented and invigorated stand-up paddling. In October 2006, Dave Kalama and Laird Hamilton, biked and paddled the entire Hawaiian Island chain—more than 450 miles—in a week. The feat was featured on Don King’s film A Beautiful Son in support of those afflicted with autism. He appeared in the opening sequence of the James Bond film Die Another Day.

Dave is a descendant from a long line of noteworthy Hawaiian watermen; his grandfather brought outrigger canoe paddling to the mainland U.S., and his father Ilima Kalama was the 1962 world-champion surfer and a lifelong outrigger canoe paddler.

He’s fast as hell, can paddle forever (he once did six Maliko runs in a day just to train) and looks like he’s effortlessly stroking the water while he disappears on the horizon. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about him and literally every surfer I know considers him the ultimate waterman.

He’s a fine teacher–he’s got a real knack for taking complex physical actions apart and showing you how to do each bit. He trained Slater Trout in paddle technique and general physical conditioning. Slater went on to take an upset second place in the Elite category of the 2009 Battle of the Paddle and contended strongly for first.

I guess he’s qualified to give me a few pointers.

The good news is that I have been putting the board in the water the right way–the fin does indeed go down. The bad news is that’s about it for the parts I’ve been doing right. The basic stroke Dave taught me is so counter-intuitive, subtle and complicated that I am absolutely certain that you will be totally confused by the time you finish this article.

Let me give you these words of encouragement–the end result of a few hours of coaching with Dave and a couple of days of practice in between session is that a four mile paddle today going as fast as I can for the entire distance left me feeling no fatigue whatever. I’m not going any faster yet–I’m a long, long way from mastering the stroke–but I’ve already gained a tremendous amount of efficiency

Start by watching this video (shot by Randy Strome of the Standup Zone) through a couple of times. The first stroke he’s doing is the Hawaiian stroke, which is a lot more like what I was doing (though Dave is far more fluid). The second stroke is Tahitian, which is the stroke he taught me.

Notice how much power and effort he’s putting into the Hawaiian stroke. The paddle is pulled hard all the way to his feet, then he wings out his upper hand just enough to clear the blade from the water, twists the upper hand to feather the blade and clear the water, then swings the blade back forward, raising his upper arm back into position.

Now watch the video from about 1:40 where he start doing the Tahitian stroke. In the end of this stroke he doesn’t wing his upper arm at all, rather he pulls the blade up and out of the water like drawing a sword. He breaks the wrist of his lower hand inward and relaxes most of the lower arm, using only minimal effort to push the paddle upwards. The upper hand holds the handle more like a knob than a T handle, with the thumb pointed to the side somewhat to start with. This enables the upper hand to twist the blade to a feathered position without putting a strain on the wrist.

As the blade leaves the water the shoulder, arm and upper torso swing forward in a sort of gentle punch, enabling momentum to stretch the muscles forward and give a longer reach for the catch. The upper arm which has been extended now moves a few inches inward towards the head and the torso rotates to stack the shoulders. At the catch the muscles start to spring back almost by themselves, and a firm torso and shoulder rotation applies power. The upper hand pushes forward and slightly down to aid in the power and position the shaft vertically. Almost as soon as power is applied you relax, and start the withdrawal sequence. The upper arm motion is a fluid rotation, with the hand describing a flattened oval–like an almond. Efficiency is gained by paying attention to when each muscle set can be relaxed. You can literally SEE the relaxation in Dave’s body, at the same time that the board is positively flying across the water.

Dave explained the efficiency this way: Properly done, the catch and first bit of pull is 70 percent of the power in any stroke. The energy applied after the catch can aid speed, but only a little bit, and it comes at a large cost. You get both your hands and your torso out of position for the next stroke, and you have to get them back where they belong before you can start again–that takes energy. The Hawaiian technique is fast, but it takes a supremely conditioned athlete to make it work and compensate for the inefficiency.

The Tahitian stroke is constantly lifting the nose of the craft, and it’s designed to build momentum. Your hands, torso and shoulders return to position automatically, on a circular, continuous path, and only travel a short distance. To build speed you increase the cadence, and it’s a lot easier to do that because the stroke recovery is so much shorter.

The hard part of all this is that every little aspect of the stroke is important, and the subtleties are endless. “Soften your lower hand–you need to relax. You’re lifting your upper hand too high. Reach. No, really reach. You need to stack your shoulders more. Your upper hand has to be closer to your head to get the shaft vertical. You’re pushing your upper hand too late. More torso rotation. Reach.” Good thing this guy is patient.

The format was that Dave taught me the basics for about two hours, then I spent the rest of the day practicing and basically screwing it all up. Then we met for another couple of hours and he got me back on the right path and showed me some of the more subtle stuff I was missing. More practice. Then a hour for a tuneup.

I’m now doing a reasonable facsimile of the Tahitian stroke. I know what I’m doing wrong, and how to fix it. There’s about ten things to be thinking about at any one time, and I know what all ten are, but I only get about six right at once. Of course all this has to get into muscle memory, and then I’m going to need another tweak or two.

Dave does this quick but comprehensive and effective program of one-on-one paddle coaching for $1000 and he has other programs that are more intensive and complete, and he also does one-on-one surf coaching. That’s comparable to pro coaching in other sports and it’s enormously effective. It’s a lot like having Babe Ruth teach you to bat. He’s not always available–he keeps a pretty busy schedule. But if you’re going to be on Maui it’s a really worthwhile thing to try add to your vacation and you’ll leave a greatly improved SUP paddler.

You can contact Dave through this form, which will be automatically emailed to him:

Hmmm, we’re having a technical challenge with the form. If you want to contact Dave before I get this fixed drop me an email at bill at kenalu dot come and I’ll forward.

More on the S16

Mark Raaphorst sent me this short movie on the new S16. Very fast. Sustained speed of 6.5 MPH, comparable to a OC1. Click the little four arrow symbol down near the vimeo logo to see it full screen–it’s HD.

Lonely Kanaha

There’s two words I didn’t expect to use together. Went out at Kanaha this morning. The waves looked big, they were closing out decisively in the middle and off to surfer’s right, which is always a sign of the WNW swell angle that I don’t like. But what the heck, it’s surf. I got out to the lineup without much trouble and found two longboarders hanging out, and that was it. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder why. Perhaps it’s the GREAT BIG F@#*G HUGE WAVE that’s bearing down on us that came out of nowhere!!! I barely made it over the lip, the longboarders disappeared behind a wall of blue and white that fell with a single loud CRUMP. They reappeared shortly looking nonchalant.

I was not fooled.

So that was the deal. Inconsistent. That’s the code word for “every time you move inside to grab a wave a huge monster appears and beats the crap out of you”. I silenced the little voice in my head that was screaming incoherently at me, squared up and caught a lovely wave with a peeling shoulder that gave me a great ripping ride. When I paddled back out a guy with a french accent and a little Naish SUP board had appeared. Didn’t recognize him, but he surfs well. We didn’t get to chat beyond exchanging hellos, the surf required concentration. Most of the time when I was catching a wave he was paddling over it frantically, and vice versa. We got a bunch of fine waves, then I paddled outside to catch a breather. He came out too and said “Good waves, I was worried, but it’s fun.”

“I was kind of nervous too, I thought everyone else knew something that I didn’t”
.
He said “I see you out here so I think its okay, but maybe you don’t know either, eh?”

Yup. You got that right.

We kept catching waves for another hour or so, then I got caught inside, bounced hard on the reef and tweaked my left shoulder. Hurt like hell for awhile, but it didn’t have the burning ripped sensation of a torn muscle. I’m very familiar with the difference. Still, I paddled to the beach, pulled my board up and took a shower. and watched the waves for awhile, gently flexing my shoulder. It made all it’s usual castanet and maraca sounds , but it loosened up some and started to feel better. I thought “there’s no one in those waves” and went back out, just as a few more SUP and longboard surfers paddled out. The wind came up a little. The nice Japanese (I think) girl who’s a good SUP surfer (you locals know who I mean) caught a nice big monster and rode it very well, going way off to surfers right in the reform. As I was paddling out I thought how impossible this would have been at the beginning of winter. I can punch through some pretty big whitewater these days, and I know the channels at Kanaha well enough to be on unbroken waves when I previously would have been flailing in the soup.

I picked up a few more good waves. Then picked off a real monster that was closing out on the right, but reformed just as things looked bleak. I got a nice top turn off the little foam that was left, got a couple of very nice quicker turns–I’m trying to speed up some turns to slash and dig more and not do all the same slow wig-waggle top and bottom turns. Rode the wave all the way to the lagoon and decided “I’m done.”

Didn’t chicken out, didn’t listen to the little voice babbling away, had a great time, caught a lot of really nice waves. While I was putting my board on the jeep a couple of longboarders I know asked if it was crowded. “Nope, hardly anyone out, but the waves are fine, just a little inconsistent”. One of the guys said “well I know why that is, on the wavecam it looks like death and destruction”.

How cool is that. And they say wavecams ruin surf spots.

Two Malkios

The wind has been blowing trade on Maui’s North Shore for the last two days, and the swell from the Northwest has gone down enough to make Maliko runs possible. so naturally we gotta do ‘em. Randy called me Wednesday while Diane and I were hanging out in the Department of Motor Vehicle waiting to pay my registration. I’ve gotten two tickets lately for expired tags–an expensive reminder that when you don’t live in a place full time, there are things that slip through the cracks. There was a big group planning to go, and they were going late, which meshed well with my plans. Diane wanted to look at a bicycle, and naturally once she got one she’s want to go for a little test ride. So we got all that done, got her a very cool city bike at the shop in Kahalui, and picked up a kid trailer so Sam could go along too. He’s about as good in the trailer as he is on my Stand Up Paddle board–he moves around a lot and bails every so often. I’ll have to work on that.

Diane was as happy with her new bike as any ten-year old. I think we’ll be doing a lot of riding in the near future. For me bikes are kind of utilitarian–a way to do downwinders by myself. But it’s a nice adventure for Diane and it’s fun to see her enthusiastic. She named the bike Giuseppe. No idea why.

I got to the harbor just as Randy was getting the logistics sorted out. I can tell by his body language that he sucks at that, but everyone expects him to do it for some reason, so he does. With the rigs sorted out we headed for Maliko. Randy and Chan, Devin, Bill Foote, Livio, Donna, and probably others I forgot. I also forgot to take any picture or set up my GPS. Ah, well, I was pretty excited to be doing a Maliko run.

We got to the gulch and started rigging stuff. I got ready pretty quickly so I decided to head straight out since I expected to be slow. I was riding my Foote Maliko 14, and I really haven’t gotten the hang of it yet. I’ve been spoiled by rudder boards and I’m doing a lousy job of steering this board. Sometimes I think I’ve got it nailed, and then the next time I get on a swell it goes off in some random direction. On the plus side it’s super responsive, I can jet into a swell really quickly. Now if I can just stop steering out of them I think I’ll be cooking.

I paddled out into the maelstrom, trying to get pretty far out before I let the swells and wind take me. I wanted to pass well out from camp one and upper Kanaha–I have a thing about getting caught inside there. I started getting pretty wobbly, so I decided to settle for angling out, and I turned and took off.

The first swell you catch on a Maliko run is always a revelation. Somehow I had forgotten how powerful and big everything you face there is. My board took off like a rocket, I angled into the swell and got a really great long ride. Then I fell. I said “I’m not doing this dammit, I’m not going to spend half this ride remembering how to stand in these conditions” and then I fell again. Now I’ve been on some pretty hefty southside runs lately, and in most of them I didn’t fall once. I was feeling pretty prepped. This shouldn’t be happening. And I fell again.

I finally calmed down and started riding again, getting some good swells. Chan caught up to me at Ho’okipa and passed, then Donna and Devin. Bye ladies. Right about at Baldwin I saw Livio go by on the inside. I started getting more good rides and felt like I was staying with him pretty well. Then I fell. And fell again. Randy came zooming up in his canoe, did a big swinging turn and stopped to talk and wait for Bill Foote who was also in a canoe doing his first OC-1 Maliko run. Bill came up a few moments later. We talked a little while. Randy said that we should head a little further out to avoid the Camp One swells. Bill said “nah, look the reef line is well inside us”. They headed off, I headed for the horizon. You only have to say the words “Camp One” with even a little bit of concern to get me headed for open water.

I think I got a little carried away, by the time I was catching swells again I could see the windsurfers at Kanaha–they were tiny sails waaay inside of me. I drew a line on downtown Wailuku and started catching rides. I got a nice little rhythm going, felt pretty good about everything, then two whales popped up about 100 feet away and I fell. Got back up, fell. Damn. Calmed down, caught a few little rides, could finally see the end of the breakwater and aimed for that. Got a few nice rides, getting closer, when I noticed that the entire pier was moving towards me at a pretty good clip. Actually it was a barge being pulled by and ocean tug, but it was huge and headed out through the harbor mouth. I wondered if he realized I have right of way. I slowed enough to let him get well clear, then I slid into the harbor right behind Bill Foote.

Nice run, I was slow–very slow–but steady. I felt like I was doing okay except for all the falls and the far, far outside line.

The forecast for Tuesday didn’t sound promising. The wind was supposed to veer a little southwards and drop, and the new WNW swell we are expecting would be hitting in the afternoon. I was over in Kehei, having a little breakfast with Diane after a nice bicycle ride we took when Randy called me. “We’re going to go at 12:30″. We discussed the forecast. Yeah, but it looks good now and I think we’ve got a window on the swell”. I had no handy excuse–plenty of time to finish breakfast, ride back to the cars with Diane, and do the run.

When we got to the gulch it was howling. Much bigger swells than yesterday. Once again I got into the water first and took off since I expected to be slow again. But I felt more confident after my previous day’s slow but steady run. I paddled out as far as I could without dropping down on the board, then turned and was off with a bang. As soon as I turned I caught a big ride that lasted and lasted. I felt great. I caught several more, felt like I was going good, and then the ladies passed me. Ah, well, I’ll just tuck right in behind them, and then I fell. No biggie, got up, caught a bunch of good swells. Seemed to be doing okay except the glare off the water was making it hard to see the backs of the swells, and I was puching in a lot. I tried looking in different directions, looking farther ahead, off to the side, but I kept crashing into the backs of the swells. And then I started falling for no reason. I was getting dizzy. By the time I reached Camp One my head was swimming and I was falling every few minutes. I finally dropped to my knees to rest and drink some water. The sun went behind a cloud, I got to my feet and was fine. Then the sun came back out and I started falling again. Frustrating. I wound up paddling on my knees all the way to lower Kanaha. By then the swells had opened up a bit, and my dizziness abated some, so I was able to stand and catch rides.

With about a mile to go, I was settling down and starting to relax again, when a whale breached a few hundred feet to my right. Came out of nowhere. I literally felt cold in the pit of my stomach. Scared the heck out of me. It was so sudden I didn’t really know what it was, though I’ve been around whales enough to know, but it was so..fricking..huge.

I calmed down again and headed for the harbor. Caught a lot of nice runners, missed even more. Bounced around in the reflected waves off the breakwall and fell. Paddled through the entrance on my knees. Ahhh, smooth water.

I have to say the second run wasn’t much fun. I spent most of it on my knees with my head swimming. I’m just glad I didn’t get seasick. The swells were chopped up enough to be pretty difficult. It should have been a fine run, the conditions were good, I love my board, but it wound up being pretty unpleasant.

Next time will be better. Maybe I’ll try sunglasses again.

Totally Amazing

The first thing Diane said was “this guy must not be married”. That from one of the most tolerant wives on the planet. I have no idea, but I deeply admire not only the craftsmanship, technical artistry, photographic excellence, and imagination involved, but also the degree of focus required to master all these elements at a level so astonishingly high. This has nothing to do with Stand Up Paddle surfing, it’s just so very cool. Watch this, be patient–all will be revealed, and enjoy.

You can view the photos in full screen by mousing over the bottom of the slide show and clicking on the icon with arrows in each corner.

Revitalizing Board and Paddle Reviews

One of the most popular elements of Ke Nalu is the Stand Up Paddle Board reviews, followed closely by the Paddle reviews. They are woefully out of date and not very accessible. That’s mostly because they were initially done as part of a big Stand Up Paddle Board showcase event we held on Maui two years ago.

Since Stand Up Paddle surfing has exploded in popularity and the number of boards has increased hugely, we don’t think we’re likely to have another all-encompassing event. For that matter it’s not really feasible for us to directly review boards–they are made in so many different locales now that it’s simply not cost effective. So instead we are going to rely on you readers and on the manufacturers.

There are easy-to-use review forms for both SUP boards and SUP Paddles in the REPORT tab in the green bar at the top of the page. Of just click this link for the SUP Board Review or this link for the SUP Paddle Review

Thanks for your help with this project. Feel free to review any board you have access to. We welcome board reviews submitted by manufacturers as well.

The next step will be reorganizing the reviews to put them into a more easily accessible form. We will also have forum discussion links to enable further discussion of each board and paddle.

Dolphin Rings

One of the best things about being on a Stand Up Paddle board is the marine life you can see. It’s always a privilege, even just looking at a little school of fish, or a nice reef. But when you get sot see something big in the water–a shark, a whale, a turtle–it seems really special. And certainly one of the most exciting and wonderful animals to see are Dolphins (or more precisely, porpoises). All you have to do is look at their clear curiousity to understand how smart they are. Given how limited our understanding of intelligence is, I can’t help but think we might be looking at our intellectual equals or superiors.

This video is simply astonishing. In some ways it’s even more interesting to listen to the people talk about the “animals” and the “behavior” as if they were simply parroting a learned response. I have no idea how to make a ring like these dolphins do, and no idea how it could be manipulated like this. I don’t understand the physics.

Simply astonishing. Here’s some Beluga whales doing the same thing.

The YouTube comments are pathetic as usual. For some reason YouTube always seems to show people at their worst. Or maybe I’m just an optimist.

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iPhone for SUP

Apple’s iPhone is a great tool for anyone, but it has some features and available applications that make it particularly great for Stand Up Paddle Surfing. The phone I’m going to cover is the 3G version, which is handiest since it has built-in GPS capabilities. In fact the iPhone GPS is especially useful since it has special features that increase the accuracy, even when GPS satellites are obscured by weather conditions or terrain.

Unfortunately the iPhone is not waterproof, so you need a dry carrier of some sort. There are some fairly expensive and clumsy hard case versions, but the touch screen of the iPhone makes hard cases problematic. Thin clear drybags enable you to operate the phone right through the bag, and both talk and listen through the bag or via headphones.  My current favorite is the OverBoard case, which has a compact closure system and a built-in headset jack. The only drawback is that the back of the case is opaque so you can’t use the phone’s camera without taking it out of the case. Overboard makes a bag with a camera window on the back, but it doesn’t have a jack. Damn–they’re so close. Maybe they’ll do a mashup of the two cases. I sent them an email about it, but they responded (more or less correctly) that the iPhone camera is so lame that they think most people are more interested in an armband and flotation, which are hard to provide along with a camera window. What they are not considering is geocoding photos, which I find extremely useful. Even a fairly crappy picture becomes interesting when you automatically know EXACTLY where it was taken. Anyway, here’s overboard’s MP3 case, and it really is a very fine product:

As it is the iPhone is great for downwinders and distance paddling. It has a clock, a stopwatch to time your run, it’s a superb iPod player for your music, and if you or someone else gets into trouble or needs a lift your phone is right there. I consider it an important safety device. But it really comes into its own when you add applications that are available either for free or very inexpensively. There are currently about 30,000 applications available for iPhones. But before we explore iPhone Apps, let me give you a tip about music for paddling.

Automatic Playlists
You might be used to putting together playlists of music for your MP3 player. I find it really tedious, so I’m really pleased that Apple came up with a wonderful automated playlist building tool that’s very appropriately called “Genius”. If you have the latest version of iTunes (free on either PCs or Macs) you have Genius. To turn Genius on you click “Store” in the top iTunes menu, then select “Turn On Genius”. iTunes will be busy for quite a while, indexing your songs, checking with the iTunes store about some mysterious characteristics of every song you own, and building the database that Genius uses. When you want to build a Genius playlist you just select a song that is representative of the music you want. Click on the Genius button (a little atom symbol in the lower right corner of the iTunes screen) and Genius builds you a playlist of compatible songs assembled from your library–the songs you own.

I have no idea of how it builds the lists, but they are great. Really great. The songs don’t sound all the same, and they are not all from the same kind of band or even the same genre. They just work really well together. They remind me of an old disk jockey that used to work at a musty meat market bar in Eugene Oregon called Foo’s Spinnaker about thirty years ago. The guy would somehow assemble playlists on the fly from a huge vinyl collection he carted around. He made music link together emotionally so well that he controlled the mood. People who experienced his talents remember him all these years later. The Genius isn’t quite that good, but it’s close.

Sometimes it’s so good it’s just plain weird. Who knew that Dunk n’ Dine by The Georgia Satellites goes perfectly with Thick and Thin by the Black Crowes and Ride, Ride, Ride by Foghat–but it absolutely does.

You can give the lists a memorable name and save them by first clicking Edit>Select All, then clicking File>New Playlist From Selection. Then you can add the playlists to your iPhone by connecting your iPhone to your computer. When the iPhone sysnc screen appears click the Music tab. Check the Sync Music box, then click the Selected Playlists button, and check the box next to the playlist you just saved. You can build genius lists on your iPhone as well, but I find it convenient to have a selection of playlists that I know suit the kind of paddling I’m planning to do.

Finding Your Way
On to more specific SUP things. You have a lot of choices for planning where to go and/or tracking your travels. At the base level there’s a nice implementation of Google Maps that enables you to look at satellite pictures of your planned route. “Wow, that reef sure goes out a looong ways”, or “where did that waterfall come from” are both obstacles that are fine to discover when looking at a google map–much better than bumping into them.

So far we’ve just talked about fundamental features. Moving up a BIG step are the GPS apps.

So far my favorite Stand Up Paddling App is EveryTrail. Everytrail is both a free stand-alone application and a connector to the excellent GPS experiential site, also called Everytrail (http://www. everytrail.com). The GPS features we are adding to Ke Nalu are patterned after Everytrail.

You can download the Everytrail App by browsing the Appstore on your iPhone, and then search for EveryTrail, or go to the Travel Category and look for it.

The iPhone has to stay active while the EveryTrail application is tracking your run and iPhones consume a lot of power when all the features are running, so you’ll find it works best for SUP tracking if you go to the general iPhone Settings menu set the screen brightness of your iPhone to the lowest setting, turn off WiFi and 3G. Then under the General> Network setting, turn 3G off, under General>Autolock select Never so that the iPhone does not sleep while recording a trip (this stops all applications).

Don’t use the iPhone lock feature to keep buttons from randomly being pushed while in your drybag, instead lock your iPhone with the lock button in the recording view of EveryTrail.

Using the application couldn’t be easier. Click on the app, when it loads you’ll see this screen:

To start recording a trip click the Start button. To lock the phone once your trip is started click lock. To take a geocoded photo click Photo and then the camera works in the normal manner.

Once you have finished your trip you can turn stop the recorder and temporarily save your trip. If you want to upload it remember that you’ve turned 3G and WiFi off, so it will be slow until you turn those back on.

You can view a map of your trip on your iPhone by looking at it in your saved trips, or you can go to EveryTrail and see it on your computer.

While you are in EveryTrail you can download a .GPX file of your trip for uploading to Ke Nalu or embed the widget version into any web page.

This article is getting too long, so INext time: More Apps, including a realtime speedometer and distance recorder; wind, surf and swell forcasts; weather forecasts; training and conditioning applications; emergency services; and photo tools. See you then.

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Holy Buckets!…Maliko 6

So maybe you’re getting tired of hearing about Maliko runs, I think this is the last one I’ll write up for awhile. But this one was kind of special, and perhaps a little stupid. I called the usual suspects and no one seemed to want to go. Just about as i was about to give up, I got an email from Scott, saying he had managed to buy an F14 without waiting months for it, and he wanted to go for a run. This one would be his third.

So here we are, two newbies–Run 6 and Run 3. Off on our own, and the wind was howling. I don’t mean that figuratively, it was blowing so hard that the rack on my jeep was making a mournful howling sound as i pulled into the harbor parking lot, the traditional shuttle meeting spot. There was no one there. Usually there’s a selection of trucks with canoe racks on them–return shuttles for canoe downwinders, and perhaps a few obvious SUP shuttles. This time the parking lot was empty. Bad sign.

We decided to exit at Kite Beach instead of the Harbor, partly because we were getting kind of a late start (we met at 2:30), partly because the wind was swinging somewhat offshore in the harbor and it would be a slog for the last half mile, and partly because neither of us had tried a kite beach landing before. So we dropped off Scott’s truck at Kite beach and continued to Maliko.

No one was at Maliko either. the surf crashing on the rocks at the gulch exit looked hideous–it was filling the exit with foam and spray. We paddled out a good distance, turned left and committed to the run. ZOOM–I immediately caught a runner that took me what felt like a mile. As I angled in the swell to run outwards from the beach i saw why my ride was so powerful–the swell I was in was substantially over my head. I felt like I was down in a valley. Kinda cool, kinda NOT.

When that swell finally passed i realized I was huffing and puffing–i must not have been breathing. I looked ahead and inwards and saw Scott in pretty close to Ho’okipa. “Hmmm, pretty aggressive” I thought and continued to work my way out. I don’t really need to see the outer reefs of Baldwin Beach and Spartan’s reef again anytime soon. One bowel slacking incident per month is good enough for me. About that time Scott disappeared from view up ahead. After some time he reappeared, still ahead of me but closer to me and further out. I thought “either he saw Jesus or Spartan Reef, because something made him get the hell out of there”. Turns out he did more than just see it, he got inside of a couple of breaking waves. Got knocked around a little bit, and had to knee paddle out around them, but no harm, no foul except for a semi-permanent wide-eyed stare that should go away sometime next weekend. If he stays out of the water. Or drinks a lot.

The run was going really well, the wind was certainly hitting 35 mph, and the swells were easy to catch and hook up. Then we got close to Spreklesville and the ocean turned into some kind of crazed undulating waffle pattern with a bongo board under it. Big groundswell from the left, wind swell from behind, and the occasional huge thumping swell coming from the Northeast. I started having a little vertigo, probably from the light bouncing off the heavy waves, or maybe just from looking at he undulating surface under the nose of my board. I tried watching the horizon–no good, it was moving too much too. I tried taking off my sunglasses, but it just made it worse. I started falling a lot in the big swells.

Just before we got to Kanaha I decided to go closer to shore. the wind was shifting offshore a bit, and I didn’t want to have a long struggle once I turned the corner at Upper Kanaha. Bad idea. I moved a little too far inside, and suddenly I had overhead-and-a-half breaking waves outside of me. I was astonished at how fast I got into trouble. I tried to turn and paddle out past them but a monster rose up and started to break fifty feet outside. Just as the whitewater reached me I dove into the face, and then was snatched backwards violently by my leash. “Please hold, please hold” I thought. And then when the dragging continued far, far beyond the fifteen seconds I expected I thought “okay, got to do something or I’m NEVER going to get air.” So I doubled over against the rushing water and got my hand onto the leash and tried to pull the board towards me. It didn’t budge, but my less streamlined, doubled over body must have pulled my big, floaty board out of the whitewater, because i popped up and got a few breaths.

These are local windswells, so the period is really short. A few seconds behind the first wave was the next, even bigger. I flipped my board over and grabbed the edge saver on the leash and held on. I got worked awhile, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Got a couple more breaths and SLAM again. This time my feet brushed reef. I was well and truly screwed, Caught inside BIGTIME with no where to go, and being pushed onto the reef, with huge waves crashing on top of me every few seconds. And now that i was on the reef even the mid-sized waves were starting to break on me.

I pulled the board under my stomach, shoved my paddle between me and the board, and started paddling like hell to catch the wave bearing down on me. If my weight had been centered i would have pearled instantly in the steep, critical face, but in my boogie board position the nose was up high enough to clear the backside of the wave I was being hurled into, and the board surfed along. I pulled the board under me and got up to my knees, wobbling around and trying to get the paddle engaged–the board was trying to curve up and out of the wave. I got the board more or less under control, and rocketed over the reef on my knees. When the wave started to peter out I staggered to my feet and started paddling like mad for the lagoon.

As I approached the edge of the reef one last big wave nailed me and knocked me off my board. I went through the whole get-dragged-twice-as-long-as-usual routine again, and came up spluttering and completely out of breath. Fortunately i was inside the lagoon in relative calm. I really didn’t have much left.

I got up on the board and started catching swells and wind, running down on the inside of Lower Kanaha, past the lifeguard tower. Comfortable, familiar territory. Way ahead i could see Scott heading in. He took the turn in the right spot and stayed outside long enough to eliminate all the drama.

We both arrived at the beach within a few minutes of each other. We both had hair-raising stories to tell. We both shared long moments of silence as we drove back to my jeep in the gulch. When we arrived, the wind had dropped, the ocean looked inviting. I had this momentary, irrational, totally scary thought that we should do another run. This stuff is like Heroin. life threatening, dangerous and very addictive.

This GPS track tells the clearest story of any track I’ve recorded. Oh my God he got caught inside and went over the reef. Plain as day.

The speed track (the green squiggles) also tells a story. That’s a 19.5 MPH peak you see there where the Heads Up display box is. My, my, my. And then right where I went over the reef and managed to catch a wave to get my chubby ass out of there, you see a high speed blip that goes on for a long time. That’s me catching that long ride off the reef. Or maybe it’s me being dragged underwater.

Off Topic, But Fun

I hope readers don’t mind these totally off topic videos. I don’t go scouting youtube for this stuff, but I get a lot of email correspondence from fellow nutcases, and it seems lately that whacked videos, especially as related to race cars or doing extreme extreme (uberextreme?) stuff makes up a large portion. So, this isn’t about standup paddle surfing, or distance racing on SUP boards. Instead it’s about a couple of geeky guys playing around with a smartphone controlled toy car, and a result that exceeds the wildest expectations that the most fevered mind could imagine.

I’ve played around with youtube’s javascript and come up with a way of displaying videos that really suits the Ke Nalu layout.

If you don’t like these off topic forays, please leave a comment, either in the forum or as a post comment. For that matter if you do enjoy them, let me know also.

OMG

I NEVER say that. Never. But OMG. Watch this video and tremble. It’s not SUP, but so what. It’s certainly surfing of a kind. Perhaps terrain surfing?

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Maui Alarm Clock

The heavy lump resting against my leg leaped from the bed and ran straight into the screen door, barking viciously. “What the hell is that stupid dog barking at” thinks I. I had foolishly trusted Sam to stay in his own bed, but some time in the night he snuck into ours. I looked around to ensure there were no axe murderers lurking. Nada. It doesn’t take much to fire up Sam, he’s been known to go into a startled barking frenzy over his own flatulence. Barking at 1:37 was not the way to remain in his favorite place. “off to bed you lunatic”–I directed him to his bed, erected the baby gate that ensures uninterrupted sleep, and wobbled back to bed.

I laid back, closed my eyes, and heard it “Slap, slap…slap followed by a long deep breath. YIKES. My scalp tingled. Perhaps there IS an axe murderer. I felt Diane go stiff besides me. “what the hell is that” she said. Diane’s general set of spousal expectations include my taking care of dead things, bugs, and things that go slap, slap…slap whooosh in the night. So I got up and went to the screen door that still had Sam’s nose mark on it. I listened intently, and finally recognized the sound–whale. Out in Uao Bay a whale was slapping it’s tail and blowing through it’s blowhole.

Marvelous.

I told Diane that our axe murderer was safely at sea, apologized to Sam (but didn’t let him back on the bed) and laid back, enjoying the sounds until I drifted off.

I had a conference call in the morning, so no reason to get up at 5:30 to go surf–as if there was any surf. I planned to sleep in, but at 6:30 the whale must have decided I’d slept enough. Wham, wham…wham, whooosh. Our axe murderer was still there and from the sound, either closer in or banging harder. I got up to see and there he was, directly below the house, very close in, banging away. When he or she paused in the banging I could see the whole body under the water. I decided I could probably sleep through this, headed back to bed.

And then the neighborhood rooster kicked in, with a francolin yammering back at him. I swear there’s some Coq au Vin in my future, perhaps accompanied by some delicious game birds. the whale i can’t do much about

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Amazing Dedication

I know a lot of you aren’t really car folks, but this video isn’t really about cars. It’s about what someone can accomplish by themselves, and the extraordinary focus and determination that some people can muster. I found it uplifting.

Any Penetration, However Slight…

…is sufficient to complete the offense. Any other current or ex-servicemen out there will recognize these words from the Uniform code of Military Justice regarding sexual offenses. Always made me snicker. So it’s just simple karma that now I own a board called the Penetrator. Today I got the Penetrator out in what i suspect will ultimately be perfect conditions for it–a rocking tailwind and some smooth six-foot swells. Not the cross chop and twenty footers of Malko (though I know think the board may eventually do well there in the right hands) but a relatively clean south side downwinder in a powerful, wrapping, somewhat onshore wind.

For intermediate level paddlers the Penetrator 572 may be the fastest board they’ll ever be on, but it may not get them to the end of a race the quickest. I should have known this might be the case. It exactly parallels my experience in racing cars.

Here’s the deal with racing cars. A great driver can’t overcome the disadvantage of having a slow car. But a mediocre driver will not win races just because he buys the fastest car. You need all the elements to come together to really be fast. You need a car that has the potential to win, and a driver that can drive to that potential. A mediocre driver can actually be slowed by a car that’s too fast, because he gets in over his head and has to back off.

That’s how the Penetrator is. When you get into a swell, the acceleration is sudden and hard to manage. It feels like there’s a motor in the thing, and someone just downshifted and stepped on the gas. But it wasn’t you–you’re just a passenger. Exhilarating, but hard to get used to. Sometimes it catches a swell and just smoothly rides it, typically for a hundred yards or so. Sometimes it mashes the throttle and careens down the swell to slam into the wave in front, burying the nose in the back of the wave. It doesn’t pearl–it just punches through. The nose will eventually come back up all by itself and you may find yourself riding the swell that used to be ahead.

All of this can be overcome with native skill or a lot of practice. There’s no question this board is fast. The only question is do you have the skill to ride it, and/or are you willing to pay your dues to learn. For myself, I remain committed to this board. I’ve really never felt anything quite like that wild rush when it slots into a good sized swell. But if you’re going to try one of these things you’d better either be good, or be committed. Because this thing is like a Formula 1 car, and that’s what it demands.

Top speed shown is around 9 MPH. I suspect I was going faster but the GPS didn’t get a chance to measure it because I fell so quickly. Most of the falls (many) were during the wild acceleration. I recommend a very sturdy leash for this board. when you fall the board is going 10 MPH and it’s in a wave. Not only can it get a long way away from you quickly if it’s unleashed, but if you have a wimpy leash it might snap it. It gives a heck of a tug. Towards the end of this run I was doing everything I could to grab the board in a fall. I figured the leash had already been close to the breaking point several times.

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Cool Runnin’

I did a south side downwinder this morning, from near the canoe beach (Suda’s store) to the Four Season’s beach on Bill Foote’s “Gumby” board. What a wild and weird ride that is. The board is moderately fast paddling it–probably similar to a Starboard 12′6″ for glide. But get some swells and it’s suddenly transformed. I was just doing this run to condition myself for the Malko race tomorrow, but it turned into a sprint with heavy winds blowing somewhat offshore. In fact i screwed up and got a little far out and was kind of headed off to Japan. But I realized it soon enough and didn’t have to battle headwinds, just drew a bead on the Kehei boat launch and with typical cross-wind griping I hit the bay in front of the four seasons–two miles further down the coast.

Give the off angle I had to take to the wind, the times were fairly good. You can see very clearly in the GPS graph–fell three times, caught a zillion short runners. This board won’t catch a runner and stay planted in it easily, as the Penetrator does. Instead it catches four short runs in the same period. the result is not quite as fast, but pretty close.It’s a blast, like surfing for six miles. As you can see in some of the runs I reached eight MPH, in many over six MPH. I averaged 4.7 MPH, which feels pretty good for this board. I think I can go a lot faster with a little more swell. I guess we’ll see tomorrow. Of course I have to stay on the board to be reasonably fast. that and stay out of the reefs.

I think this shows off the difference in a planing vs displacement hull in a primitive and inconclusive way. I hope we’ll be able to be a little more conclusive in the showcase, which is coming up fast.

Oooo Pretty.

I stopped by Mark Raaphorst’s (SIC aka Ding King) shop a few days ago as they were puting finishing touches on a new custom F16. My, my. Billy wants one.

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