While most of the U.S. mainland celebrates Columbus Day, that Italian who sailed for Spain has no relevance out here in the Pacific. We celebrate Discoverers Day in Hawaii – and you get to pick your discoverer. Some celebrate Captain Cook’s “discovery” of the Sandwich Islands in 1778. Still others plump for a European discovery of Hawaii by Spanish seamen and merchants.

Most of us celebrate the arrival of Polynesians in earlier centuries, the “true” discoverers of Hawaii. The exact timing and their origins depend on which scholars you speak with, but it seems likely they came in successive waves of voyaging canoes from the Marquesas or Tahiti, a thousand years or more ago. This was the culmination of a millennia-long migration of peoples from southern China, south through the Philippines and South East Asia, then eastward through Indonesia and further into the Polynesian Triangle. It was the voyaging canoe that made the latter part of this migration possible, a technology that we are bringing back today.

I serve on the board of the Pacific Voyagers Foundation, dedicated to designing and building modern voyaging canoes to move passengers and cargoes to and from underserved islands. We have already built nine vakas, seven of which have completed a voyage from New Zealand to Hawaii to California, back to the Galapagos and eventually to the Solomon Islands. And a round-the-world voyage is in the works.

Watch for our feature-length film, Our Blue Canoe, coming out next year. Check out the trailers. Chicken skin, as we say out here.

Speaking of canoes, and business beyond the reef, the men’s version of the annual Molokai-to-Oahu race, the Molokai Hoe, was run yesterday. The race was in beastly conditions, dead flat or close to it, with a merciless sun beating down. A long tough slog. Kona winds filled in during the last part of the race, bringing little relief and thickening the volcanic smog (vog). There were 100 finishers, led by the incomparable Shell Va’a team from Tahiti. Shell Va’a has won Molokai for seven consecutive years. Two more Tahitian crews were second and third, the first Hawaii crew coming in fourth. Shell Va’a finished the 41-mile course in about 5 1/4 hours, 45 minutes off their record. The 100th finisher, a Hawaii crew composed of paddlers 55 or older, took 8 1/4 hours. Teams were entered from both coasts of the United States, Tahiti, Australia, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, France and Canada. Winners all.

I have a treat for you today: a break from business and a venture into the world of outrigger canoe paddling. As you will see, paddling can be very serious business beyond the reef.

The Molokai-to-Oahu races, one for men, another for women, are considered the Super Bowl of outrigger canoe racing. Take a 400 lb. canoe, put six determined paddlers in it and send them across more than forty miles of open ocean in one of the world’s roughest channels. They swap crews in and out, a ballet that sees the really good boats barely slow down. The races are at the mercy of the weather gods, sometimes with a gale blowing, sometimes flat water with the tropical sun beating down. Paddlers would rather have the wind and the waves.

It is hard to imagine any team event in any sport that demands longer and more arduous preparation and presents a crueler challenge as its climax. Certainly no Olympic category can match its relentless pressure or its pure amateurism.
~ Sports Illustrated, October 1972

The women’s race, the Na Wahine O Ke Kai, was run September 23 in extreme conditions. Oddly, the worst was before the race began, while the canoes were being paddled out from the harbor on Molokai to the start line. That is often a nervous time, but I have never seen it done into the teeth of breaking waves that measured as high as 24 feet crest to trough. Hanny Anderson, the race director, decided to go ahead, confident that the women’s crews could handle the waves. Hanny has taken a lot of stick for letting them go, but – perhaps miraculously – only one boat out of 71 was knocked out of the race getting to the start line. Still, there were some crew injuries and at least one hospitalization. Take a look at P.F. Bentley’s video and decide for yourself.

Na Wahine O Ke Kai Paddle Out 2012 from PF BENTLEY on Vimeo.

I admit to some bias. I know Hanny in passing and don’t believe she would have knowingly sent crews into harm’s way. I was with a crew whose canoe swamped close to the cliffs of Oahu’s Makupuu Point and it was Hanny’s boat that pulled us to safety.

Compared to the start line theatrics, the race itself was almost an anti-climax. Team Bradley won (again). Waikiki Beachboys finished a close second (again) steered by my friend and first paddling coach Kaui Pelekane. I had a bunch of friends in the 57th placed boat. No matter where they finished, they were all courageous.

There is a business angle to all this. Some of the boats and crews are sponsored by companies, though not as many as deserve it. The race takes up to $180,000 to organize and corporate sponsors only chip in a minor $5,000 of that. Each crew pays $850 to enter, brining in about $60,000. The remainder depends on merchandise sales. If your company is looking for an exciting extreme sport to put its name on …

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I haven’t done as many paddling posts this year. That’s because I have had a shoulder injury that has kept me out the boats for a full year. I think I have recovered, and will soon return to my team.