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.

Maliko Quattro

Maliko run number four is in my official record book. Last guy to the beach again, but I improved my time over the last run (the Maui Canoe and Kayak club race) by 15 minutes. If I keep improving at this rate by the time I have Maliko 10 under my belt I’ll be whipping Dave Kalama’s butt and be first in line for the beer. Nothing like an active fantasy life to keep up the old motivation.

It was a pretty good run for me. I fell thirty times–literally, you can count them on the GPS trace. But that’s down substantially from the 200+ of the last run. I got some great swell runs, and even linked up a couple, a phenomenon that I previously considered some kind of inept description by my fellow downwindpeople. It just didn’t make sense to me that you could shoot down one swell with such vigor that you could catch and ride over the swell in front of you and catch it. Seemed like some kind of perpetual motion nonsense. But it turns out that you can indeed do that, and it feels GREAT! I actually managed a triple, which i celebrated by falling in gripped in some kind of wild surfing frenzy while trying to get over the top of number four. You can see the event clearly at mile four on the trace.

Trust me, it was a lot more exciting on the waves than on the trace. The run was pretty wild. The wind was gusting well over thirty knots, blowing the tops off the swells, and some of the doubled-up swells were over ten feet. You DON’T want to look behind you in these kind of conditions, it’s pretty damned intimidating to see an well-overhead swell running up behind you.

About halfway to the harbor, right off Spreklesville, the swells got a lot steeper, and I started having some problems with Gumby pearling. It didn’t pitch me off, but the nose of the board was well underwater, and that made the tail feel very loose and weird. I tried stepping back, but that made it to hard to catch swells, so I tried taking off at more of an angle, and that seemed to help. It worked best on lefts rather than rights, so my track headed gently towards the beach, as you can see on the map. Right until I started seeing the breakers at upper Kanaha, at which point I went RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT. I need to get over my nervousness about getting caught inside on these reefs. This run is supposed to be 9.5 miles and even though I though I took what i thought was a more aggressive line this time, I actually did 10.1 miles. With a five MPH pace that extra .6 miles cost me at least six minutes. Hey, I could have been under two hours!

It’s really fun going on these runs with the Maui crew. This Sunday that was Randy and Chan Strome, Larry Risley, and Jack Dyson. a great bunch of people and fun paddle with, even if they do all leave me in the dust.

Go! Gumby Go!

I turned the corner onto South Kihei Rd and saw whitecaps. Big, fluffy spraying-off-the-top whitecaps, and chunky swells even with the short fetch from Maalaea Bay. Perfect for a fast downwinder to the Four Seasons beach. Diane was dubious as usual, she considers anything beyond a gentle zephyr to be life-threatening, but I couldn’t wait to get the board off the car and into the water. Diane doesn’t mind being my shuttle driver, gives her and Sam some time for some nice south side walks.

I hopped on the board and paddled out a few hundred yards, and instantly regretted not starting at Haycraft Park on the other side of the bay. It makes for such a ripping run when the wind is slightly onshore, and this was, decidedly. I was going to have to work a bit to clear the reefs and that would slow me down. If I had started at Haycraft I’d be riding swells the whole way. It was Nukin’. You can pretty much see from the GPS speed trace that I wasn’t getting any good swell rides for about the first mile–I had to cut too tight an angle against them to get long rides, but once I turned the corner on the Shangri-La reef it was pure rock ‘n roll.

I was paddling Gumby, my Foote Maliko 12, since the Penetrator is back at the Ding King’s, drying out. I punched a small ding in it paddling on the North side the other day–no idea how, I didn’t feel a thing–and it was enough to cause a leak. So it’s getting pumped out to be ready for the next race. Gotta say, the Penetrator FLIES in flatwater. Now that I’ve learned how to get some muscle into my paddling, and i’m not doing balance checks all the time, it just rips.

Back to Gumby and the swells. What a friken rocket this thing is in a hefty swell. Glide after glide after glide. I was looking at my GPS and seeing seven to eight MPH most times. Never less than 5.5. what a hoot. Plus I’m learning to carve the swells to get more speed and better direction control. I’m also learning to get my paddle out further and pull hard in the beginning of the stroke. This pulls the nose up and gets the board into the swells quickly.

Once I’m in a swell I put my weight forward until the nose is just skimming the water, slide my back foot towards the rail I want to set, and give it steady pressure. As long as i keep the nose down the board just keeps accelerating and turns along the face of the swell. As you can see from the trace I got some pretty long rides this way, some of them in the 10MPH range, and one at the five mile point that hit about 11. Pretty fast for a goofy looking 12 foot board.

I don’t know how this software computes average speed, must be some kind of instantaneous value averaging. But I did 7.0 miles in 1:20:34 , that’s 5.83 mph average, not 5.2. What fun! And I’m sure I can go a lot faster in similar conditions next time. We’ll see.

New Starboard Catalog

I downloaded the new Starboard catalog. What a neat piece of work. It’s actually worth sitting down and giving it a good read. The design work is top-notch, the photography is superb, and the writing is simply excellent. It will make you feel happy and privileged that you are already part of this sport. That’s good marketing, that’s a fine piece of work.

I’ve done this kind of thing, I know how hard it is to do something this good. You have to make too many compromises to get complex catalogs done. Too many editors, too many people saying “maybe we shouldn’t say this…people might take offense.” Most work gets nibbled to death by a committee. Anyway, enough raving. It’s good. It’s going to be hard for them to beat this in 2010.

The lineup has some very nice additions. I like the looks of the K models–a kind of cross between Kayak and SUP. I also like the looks of their smaller boards. they make my checkbook feel all warm and fuzzy. I think that’s what a catalog like this is supposed to do. Get your own copy here: Starboard Catalog

New Race Board

Some time ago there was a somewhat heated challenge on the StandUp Zone (the most active forum in the SUP world: http://www.standupzone.com) regarding the notion that a long hulled racing board with an average paddler on it could beat an elite paddler on a 12 foot board. In the course of the debate (I favored the long hulled board) I wound up buying the board in question.

I know you might have some trouble making that jump. All I can say is that you kind of had to be there. But I’m thrilled with the outcome. There is now an amazingly zooty-looking 18’8″ 572 Penetrator making it’s way to Maui with my name on it.

My “ownership” of this board is kind of a debatable concept. There’s already quite a queue of people ready to use it for a day or three, and it’s being spoken of as sort of community property that I’ll be storing. That’s a fine thing. I’m looking forward to sharing this thing. I just want to pat it at night and perhaps wax it now and then to preserve the shine.

Should be here on my Birthday, or thereabouts. I plan to paddle it 62 miles the first few days (NO, I’m not going to try to do that in a single day) to celebrate.

Battle of the Paddle–Lots of Pictures

…The beach break behind me looked about head high. I thought “oh great, I’m going to finish the race by getting worked in front of 500 spectators” but I managed to catch it before it crumbled and got out in front of the whitewater. I beached the board at full speed and stumbled up the steep bank. I ran into the chute for the finish line, but my legs started wobbling as soon as I hit the soft sand. So I just walked through the serpentine and crossed the line, losing four places with my geezer plodding. But hey, I made it…

The Rainbow Sandals Gerry Lopez Battle of the Paddle was remarkably well organized for a first year event. Simply put, it was a historic occasion, and the organizers rose to the challenge, and then some. I’ve put on an event or two, and achieving this degree of organization is very hard and very expensive. Everyone involved deserves more than just congratulations. They deserve your support and encouragement. Next year should be amazing. One word to the organizers–get some food vendors for the spectators. A thousand hungry people on a beach is a great opportunity.

On to the pictures, I’ll flesh this article out more later:

Set Up Day: The day before the BOP

New quickblade paddles with beautiful wood blades

Modeled by the lovely Diane

“But I don’t want to be on the Internet”

There were paddles everywhere, here’s some new colored quickblades

New 12′ starboard for the pro race with a centerboard fin. Ekolu Kalama (right side) paddled it and looked fast during practice but retired early as the race conditions made the board impossible.

Everyone was so happy with the flat conditions. They lasted until about two minutes after the race started.

Jimmy Lewis came with three of his Distance boards and others to demo.

Comments Welcome

Ke Nalu is a big experiment, and one test was making people jump a small threshold to leave comments (register and respond to a Captcha spambot test). The result is not many comments. I consider comments to be the lifeblood of online publishing, so I’ve turned all that off for the time being. I’m still going to work to minimize the spam, but I need to hear from all of you readers about what you like and don’t, what experiences you have, and where you’d like this publication to go.

The venerable Ponohouse blog had several postings with more than 100 comments. i don’t expect to see that level–there are a lot of places for SUP folks to spend time online these days. But I do value your input. Please comment.