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

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.