on a little journey...

...that's where I'm gonna take you guys today.

A downwind run on my one man canoe (OC-1) from Maliko bay to Kanaha.
The video is 10 minutes, so grab a coffee or a cold beer, depending on your time zone...
There's a surprise ending that I will explain later on this post.
I strongly recommend not to blow the surprise and watch the video first... THEN scroll down.
If you can't see it here, try here.

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What happened to the canoe?!?! Not yet... I'm gonna create some suspense and tease you with a few... windsurfing photos, for a change!

It's blowing like stink these days and Tuesday 4 17 there was a decent NW swell. A lot of photoshoots. Here's Boujmaa hitting a critical section.


And here he's in a one hand aerial.


I don't know who this guy is, but this photo gives you an idea of how windy it was...


Hookipa was so busy that the JP sailors went to Lanes (the photographer was on an helicopter). Here's Alex Mussolini. I love the light.


Mussolini again in a one hand backloop.


Polakow in a huge backloop.


Plenty more photos here.

Ok, time to explain the end of the vid.
What happened is that the canoe got capsized by a wave entering the inside of the reef at Camp One. I always enter the reef there, because it's very close to the beach...
Well, this time I definitely appreciated that, since the boat capsized and after I turned it back over, a wave took it out of my hands. Swimming with the paddle is not the best and before I finally realized that with the paddle I could not reach the canoe, it was too late...

I saw my canoe happily sailing away from me. I wasn't too worried because, again, the swim to the beach is short and there's a million windsurfers downwind.
In fact, once on the beach, I met a group of them and one offered to tow me to the canoe. It had a 5.8 and slalom board in 25 knots and it turned out to be Jimmy Diaz (the F2 guy).
The towing action (I was holding the back footstraps) was a lot of fun (almost planing), but the canoe was a bit too downwind and we couldn't make it, so he towed me back to the beach.
In the meantime, another guy called Steve had got a rope and sailed to the canoe. Jimmy went back out and after a few minutes he was able to tow the canoe back to shore.
UNFORTUNATELY, by then the camera had already shot for 54 minutes and the memory card was full, so it didn't shoot the rescue...

Here's what I learned:
- next time I'm gonna have a leash attached to the canoe
- if it's windy and there's no leash, immediately drop the paddle and swim as hard possible. The paddle floats and it drifts downwind, so it's easy to be rescued afterward... and it costs less than a canoe!
And I learned that much without losing anything? I'm stoked...

This little camera rocks! And I just had an idea... stay tuned.

PS. Rambo's comment inspired me to write more about my canoe. (BTW, check this crazy Makaha action on his blog).
It's a Honu (shape by John Martin), and it's quite old and heavy. Heavy means robust, so I like that. Compared to the lighter new canoes, it's slower (don't really care... the workout is actually better...), but it has more rocker, so it surfs the waves better. I'll do a proper canoe wave riding video later on in summer time.
I kept it at the canoe club in Kahului on an outside rack (too cheap to pay for the lockers) and somebody stole the ama. Then somebody stole my car in Kahului and on top of the three surfboards that were inside and the stereo components, they also took the two iakus and the paddle. So, all of a sudden, I was left with the boat only.

I built the iakus out of a windsurfing boom (prolly better than the original), bought a used abandoned ama at the canoe club (I offered 40 bucks, they said:"that's fair!") and had Malama shape me a new paddle. And now my baby is back in the water.

Oh, her name is Mergellina, which is the Naples' neighborhood where I grew up. Here are some photos and here, believe it or not, is the related wikipedia entry.