Keaukaha Canoe Club - Hilo Hawaii Paddling Club on the Big Island

Congratulations to the 12 crews that represented Keaukaha at the State’s Regatta on Oahu this year. We took all our #1 ranked crews from the Big Island Moku series and they did well. Our club placed #11 out of 58 clubs and #1 in our Division AA.

It was Keaukaha Smiles all day long.

How it stacked up

The big clubs like Lanikai and Hawaiian Canoe club had lots of crews and did well getting them to the podium with Lanikai getting 64% of their crews to a 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Likewise in the AAA division Puna and Kai ‘Opua got a 3rd and 4th.

And in the AA division we had a large gap to 2nd place Kawahae and Healani Clubs. We had all 12 of our crews make points with about 1/3 getting to the podium.

Our State Champion Crews:

• 3. 1/2 mile Men (65 years). Lane 3 (Jeff Clemenson, Warren Dela Cruz, Eric Hagiwara, Greg Kane, Clem Kawai’ae’a, Mike Shintaku)
• 14. 1/2 mile Girls 15 & under. Lane 3 (ZOE AOKI, Serenity Cordero, Tati Dunhour, Waiolu Publico, Malia Lani Simram, Kaliko Uyeshiro)
• 15. 1/2 mile Boys 15 & under. Lane 4 (Eha Kiyuna, Kai’olino Kualii, Malakai Laititi, Tanoa Laititi, Chanstin Uahinui-Vagai, Ulu Yung)
• 17. 1/2 mile Boys 16 & under. Lane 5 (Eha Kiyuna, Malakai Laititi, Kahalia Masaoka, Niau Paulos, Ali’i Youderian, Umi Yung)
• 18. 1/2 mile Girls 18 & under. Lane 3 (JAYDEE AH SING, Pakela Ka’au’a, Nahiena Kekuawela, Cother Laa, Dalilah Martin, ADELAIDE STEBBINS)
• 19. 1/2 mile Boys 18 & under. Lane 6 (Nauhikapakea Liwis, Tyler OBrien, Niau Paulos, Walea PE’A-WHITNEY, Noah Pila, Ali’i Youderian)
• 20. 1/2 mile Mixed 18 & under. Lane 5 (Jezney Chang, Makaya Kipapa, Cother Laa, Walea PE’A-WHITNEY, Noah Pila, Kamu Rapoza)
• 24. 1 mile Men Freshmen. Lane 3 (Kama Leeloy, Jose Lizardi, Tyler Makaiwi, MARIO MAUSIO, Christopher Olayen, Spencer Kamauoha Smith)
• 25. 1 mile Women Sophomore. Lane 5 (Kahoane Aiona, Mona Durkan, Amy McBride, Brianna Ninomoto, Alexia-Marie Osburn, Liana Prudholm)
• 38. 1/2 mile Men Open Four. Lane 5 (Brawn Albino, Pati Koehnen-Sua, Lance Oliveira, Jeremy Padayao)
• 41. 1/2 mile Mixed Men/Women Open. Lane 3 (Kawena Brooks, Anna Kaaua, Keao Kiyuna, Loren Pabila, Brandi Rapozo, ROBERT WHITNEY JR.)
• 43. 1/2 mile Men Masters (40 yrs.). Lane 4 (Niklas Dahm, T.R. Ireland, Grant Ka’au’a, Kyle Keamo, Kawika Kekuawela, Tyron Nicolas)

London Bound! Races Aug. 10 – 16

The keiki competing at Dorney Lake in Windsor UK (~25 miles west of London) at the IVF World Sprints departed the same day to get ready for their events. Have fun and good luck to everyone!

IVF Youtube Channel for Information and Updates

Also information on the 2022 Facebook Page.

It’s been a long time coming but we scrapped for every point in every race and came home with the Moku’s championship! Congratulations to everyone for their hard work. We had some tight 2nd places and battles all season long and to pull of a victory at Moku’s is amazing.

We had a great turnout from all our crews from the kids to the 70’s. One of our fellow paddlers made a nice video that sort of captures the feel from Mokus this year.

Now the Hard Work Starts – Keep Training

We have 12 crews going to States on Ohau, all first seated teams from our season of racing. And following that race, the kids are off to London for the IVF World Sprints!

For a lot of paddlers the end of the Regatta season signals the start of the most anticipated part of paddling: LONG DISTANCE!

Even if you’re not planning on doing long distance, it’s great to stay in shape by coming out to paddle and definitely jump in your one-man canoes! Training never stops. Let’s come back for the 2023 season ready to break some records! Crews typically start gearing up and going long after States which is next weekend.

Long Distance Paddling Events

Check our Event’s Schedule for a complete list, but the biggies are Queen Liliu’okalani in Kona and Henry Ayau on Oahu this year. Also note there are some one-man races starting.

2022 Gorge Downwind Championships

Congratulations to Keola, Tyran, Grant and Eric for competing in the Gorge Downwind race in Hood River on the mainland July 16. Over 500 canoes were on the water and it was an exciting event. Here’s a small taste from the race organizer.

Saturday’s regatta started out blustery and windy but the keiki managed to hammer though it pulling off some good race times even though there were a lot of pukas and crew shuffling to fill their events.

By mid-day the weather cleared up and the water flattened out with a slight swell rolling in. As the weather heated up so did the competition as Puna came out with a lot of crews.

In spite of 2 clubs running more races than us, we took home more gold and tied Kai Opua thanks in part to the crews in the last 4 races pulling off 1’s and 2’s in races with a lot of canoes. Those first places were the deciding factor in ranking Keaukaha 2nd over Kai Opua as we racked up 12 gold, more than any other club.

Great paddling out there! Crabbie paddle has uploaded several videos so far and the rest should be up soon. In the meantime, here’s the overall summary by club.

Puna and Kai Opua both completed more events than us with Puna getting into the top 3 about 67% to our 62% of the time. The fact we squeezed out Kai Opua (see how many 2nd’s they got?) was due to every crew pushing hard and getting ahead of them when it counted.

Great paddling! Only 2 more regattas before the Big Island Championship and State competition on Ohau in August.

Congratulations to all the hard working volunteers, paddlers and supporters (family and friends) who made our regatta a great success! We saw a lot of great paddling out there and team work. Even this morning we have paddlers down at bay front working to help clean up anything over looked from last night.

We had a really great set of races taking home the most gold. Just check out the overall race summary of each clubs’ totals.

That’s 11 golds to Puna’s 8 and Kai Opua’s 7. In fact we had the same number of 1st, 2nd and 3rds as Kai Opua making us tied at 65% of our crews getting a podium place. We came within 4 points of Kai Opua in 1st. which means the overall results were decided by small technicalities of how many crews were in the races and even as little as the difference between a couple 4th or a 5th in a race. Everyone’s efforts added up and we scrapped for every point. It was a great day for Waimāpuna and all the paddlers she carried.

After Race Action

For those who stuck around to help cleanup were given a great treat from the Kekuawela Ohana and their dancers from Merahi Productions. They banged out some great Tahitian style rhythms while the dancers in full costume put on an amazing show. This included pulling up unsuspecting audience members to try the high speed Tahitian moves with them. Keahi fled their efforts to recruit him to the stage faster than anyone has ever seen him paddle.

There was also a group of 4 men who answered the call with several of their own well practiced Polynesian dances.

And for those who hung around long enough to learn about Jose’s newest potential sponsor and try some samples…well you might have been among the luckiest!

Return of Crabbie Paddle

More exciting news is we managed to get Crabbie Paddle the world famous youtuber, Mike, out of retirement. He busted out the gear and painstakingly recorded all of our crews. Big Mahalo!

You can see your event on his channel and here is the Keaukaha 2022 Playlist.

Watch your crews and your competition. With youtube you can also slow down playback for better slow motion analysis. Click on the “gear” symbol and select a playback speed.

Return of Lost Steering Blade in Kona?

Back in the last Kona regatta a Kialoa paddle was left behind. It has a unique sticker that the owner can identify. Please contact the Kaaua’s or use the website’s contact page if you know anything about the steering paddle. Mahalo.

Now that we’ve had our first regatta, it might be a good time to discuss the mechanics. Winning a regatta by points is a fine balance between participation and placing. The points system is broken up into divisions which are based on how many races your club enters. This helps smaller clubs compete with similar sized clubs.

For example if a club enters 23 or less events, they go into Division B. Larger clubs entering more than 23 events go into Division A. Our club is a little in between and we try to run as many races in Division A as possible. This also allows the best chance for all our members to get an opportunity to paddle. Another complexity is how points are awarded which is also based on participation.

Points

One point is awarded per canoe in an event and an extra 1 point for first place. So before the race starts each canoe gets 1 point. If they get disqualified (DQ), they lose this point. If they come in last, they keep their 1 point. If they beat 1 boat (2nd to last) they get an additional point. So you get a point for every boat you manage to beat to the finish. Let’s say there’s 10 boats. First place would get 1 + 9 + 1 (11), second place 1 + 8 (9), all the way to last palace which is 1 + 0 (1).

If you don’t have enough paddlers for the event, then you have to Scratch. You get 0 points for a scratch, and your point does not get added to any of the other canoes. It’s like you never entered that race.

Classes

Naturally there’s some limitations that make crew selections difficult. There’s experience classes (Novice B, Novice A) and age classes (open, 40, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70). Then each paddler is limited to 2 races per day (1 race per day at the State Championships).

This limits how many times each paddler can race. This is why sometimes we move paddlers down a class to help fill canoes. For example, say we don’t have enough 55 paddlers so if we have extra 60’s paddlers who are only doing 1 other event, we can move them down into 55 to help fill the canoe for that race.

Putting it Together

The challenge of course is placing crews in to the highest possible position (most points) AND racing races with the most canoes (higher points scored). Ideally all the clubs would run all the races, but it’s just not possible.

This points system can have some unexpected results if you look a the raw numbers. This last regatta shows how. Our club tied for total number 1st places and we had many 2nd and 3rds, however we got last in Division A. It seems counter intuitive, but in the races where we dominated, there were less entries, so we got less points. Part of this is due to this being the first regatta so clubs are still getting up to speed (like the problems we had getting everyone’s paperwork approved causing crews to be ineligible to race). In terms of margins, though we were not far behind the other clubs.

This table nicely summarizes our performance against other clubs disregarding the number of canoes in each race (total points).

The yellow highlights are the top number in each column. We entered 40 events, scratched 10, DQ’d in 3 making the number raced 30 (40 – 10 scratched). You’ll see our club was on the podium 60% of the time, which was only beaten by Puna and Laka. Despite having such good performances from us and others, the factor of collecting points meant Kawaihae at 57.1% won Division A, and Keauhou at 33% won division B.

Next Weekend

This is an amazing start to our season with great results, even if the points didn’t work out for us. This coming weekend should see more of our crews paddling and as we settle into the blend together we should see some quicker speeds.

Let’s get ’em! Kahi! Lua! Kolu! Keaukaha!

Also check out our new events calendar which you can sync up with your electronic calendars too. Also you can RSVP for regattas if you can make it or let us know if you can’t go.

Round 2 of jersey orders is closing soon! Get them now. The sizes run just a little on the large size.

E kokua i nā keiki – Help the kids get to World Sprints in London

12 kids have qualified to compete in the Olympics of paddling: IVF World Sprints. After a lot of training and qualifications on Oahu, this group is going to London to represent. You can help support them by giving to their Go Fund Me campaign and follow their updates there:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/keaukaha-smiles-in-london-world-sprints

Please share this fundraiser with others too.

Jerseys

The first set of jerseys are being made right now and should be here before the May 14th race.

Pre-Order Round 2 of jerseys are now open for ordering if you missed out on round 1. These orders probably won’t be filled until June, but it’s the best we can do. Get your orders in NOW if you want one. If there are too few orders we might not meet the minimum.