Pono House

In the last segment we revealed our high-tech weighing and measuring processes aided by a $39 scale, some home-made calipers, and a tape measure sacrificed to rapid corrosion after being submerged in the saltwater pool at Ponohouse. So now it’s on to the beach.

We had a few people who had conflicts arise and had to cancel–that was particularly unfortunate because we lost some boards to evaluate in the process. specifically, a C4 Vortice, a Starboard point, and an SIC F18. We also had one shop on Oahu pull out for economic reasons, leaving us short the Bark and Infinity boards.

I’ll explain why that is all perfectly OK due to Mark (Kiwi) Jackson’s brilliant idea in part 3, but for now, we’ll tell you a bit about the boards we tested and the people who tested them. People first:

Our morning session was intended as a BOP-style four leg around the buoys test, but with the prevailing wind we modified that to an up-and-back run between the canoe club flag buoys at Kihei Pier. Our testers were:

Jennifer Konohia, 142 pounds, 5′6″, age 37. Jennifer is a skilled paddler with both canoe and SUP experience. She races a SIC Ku Nalu and generally beats me. I was surprised at her weight, she looks much lighter, must be a lot of muscle on that slender frame.

Jack Dyson, 177 pounds, 5′10″, 50+. Jack is a very experienced paddler with many Maliko races and channel crossings under his belt on all kinds of paddle craft, including SUP.

Dave Schultz, 230 pounds, 6′5″, age 30. Dave is a relative newbie, but he paddles well (and hard) and has excellent balance.

Alan Sidlo, 180 pounds, 5′6″, age 48. Alan is a very experienced flatwater paddler from Chicago. He has extraordinary balance and flexibility, probably a result of his mis-spent youth as a pro skateboarder.

Bob Babcock, 279 pounds, 6′ 4″, ag [...]

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I know a lot of you aren’t really car folks, but this video isn’t really about cars. It’s about what someone can accomplish by themselves, and the extraordinary focus and determination that some people can muster. I found it uplifting.

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…is sufficient to complete the offense. Any other current or ex-servicemen out there will recognize these words from the Uniform code of Military Justice regarding sexual offenses. Always made me snicker. So it’s just simple karma that now I own a board called the Penetrator. Today I got the Penetrator out in what i suspect will ultimately be perfect conditions for it–a rocking tailwind and some smooth six-foot swells. Not the cross chop and twenty footers of Malko (though I know think the board may eventually do well there in the right hands) but a relatively clean south side downwinder in a powerful, wrapping, somewhat onshore wind.

For intermediate level paddlers the Penetrator 572 may be the fastest board they’ll ever be on, but it may not get them to the end of a race the quickest. I should have known this might be the case. It exactly parallels my experience in racing cars.

Here’s the deal with racing cars. A great driver can’t overcome the disadvantage of having a slow car. But a mediocre driver will not win races just because he buys the fastest car. You need all the elements to come together to really be fast. You need a car that has the potential to win, and a driver that can drive to that potential. A mediocre driver can actually be slowed by a car that’s too fast, because he gets in over his head and has to back off.

That’s how the Penetrator is. When you get into a swell, the acceleration is sudden and hard to manage. It feels like there’s a motor in the thing, and someone just downshifted and stepped on the gas. But it wasn’t you–you’re just a passenger. Exhilarating, but hard to get used to. Sometimes it catches a swell and just smoothly rides it, typically for a hundred yards or so. Sometimes it mashes the throttle and careens down the swell to slam into the wave in front, burying the nose in the back of the wave. It doesn’t pearl–it just punches through. The nose will eventually come back up all by itself and you may find yourself r [...]

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We chose an odd day for our showcase–a Tuesday–but we were running out of time and Maui Canoe and Kayak Club had a race scheduled for the weekend that included Stand Up Paddle boards. We assumed most paddlers and some of the boards we wanted to test would be committed for the weekend. Alan (shapeshifter) Sidlo was here from Chicago to participate, and my brother Bob (stoneaxe) Babcock was here from Boston. So we went with Tuesday.

The plan was to do some Battle Of The Paddle-style loops around the flags at the canoe beach in Kihei. Have lunch on the beach and then do a downwinder with a ot of board swapping. On the beach we had some of the most interesting race and downwinder boards available. the weather wasn’t cooperating, and some of our testers had conflicts arise. Ah, well, we wanted to make this small, it looked like we were getting our wish. But we’re getting ahead of the story…

Monday: Weight and Measures and Freezing in the Pool

But first, the weighing and measuring. We decided we wanted to see how these boards measured in the water. The Penetrator was the impetus for this craziness, since as soon as you look at it you can see that it’s critical measurements vary with the amount of weight it has on it. We decided to put a standard weight on each board and measure it in the swimming pool at Ponohouse. I have to say that it was a bit of torture–the pool is only heated by the sun, and it’s been cloudy and cold lately. Bob assiduously avoided getting wet, Alan and I did all the in-the-water work.

This first little vi [...]

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Written by Tom English
www.AlohaWealth.com

When people ask me why I surf with a paddle, my response is usually, “because it’s fun”. But when I think about it, it is really about the speed and power that a high performance board and paddle make possible. The paddle allows you to lean into turns harder and gives you more control. I think of the Rolling Stones classic, Let it Bleed, “We all need someone to lean on, and baby you can lean on me”, when I’m leaning into a turn that wouldn’t be possible with out the paddle.

You will find some advanced Stand Up Paddle surfers doing certain turns without the paddle, but in Stand Up Paddle Surfing, the spectacular, ripping, slashing stuff is all about the paddle, and rightly so. Not only is the paddle the key to extreme lean angles, it’s also a tool for tuning your turns, recovery, and either slowing or speeding your board–abilities that traditional surfers largely do without. The richness and radical capabilities that a paddle adds to standard longboard repertoire is already making the best SUP surfers stand out. And it’s really just early days–there’s so much more to come.

Here are a few techniques that I have learned by talking to and watching some of the best surfers in the world. Some were discovered the hard way, by trial and error. I will attempt to tell you the dynamics of these techniques, but you should understand that the key to these maneuvers is time in the waves, working to perfect them. I can give you some idea of where to put your feet, where the paddle goes, and when to turn, but muscle memory, coordination and experience is the only way that you will really own advanced maneuvers.

Don’t neglect the “working to perfect” part of that statement. Getting into waves and surfing for fun will improve your abilities but it takes a very long period of time. You have to have some idea of what you are trying to accomplish, and at least SOM [...]

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The showcase test day is complete, we tested two SIC F16’s (the MkI and Mk II boards), the new SIC molded F14, A Bill Foote 14 Maliko, the Bill Foote 12 Maliko, the Penetrator 572, and Naish Glide 12, with a Starboard 12′6″ tossed in as a baseline standard board. That’s a lot fewer boards than we intended to test, but we had some companies withdraw at the last minute due to financial constraints, and we had some participants that simply couldn’t make it. The weather didn’t help either–the downwinder leg had to be canceled. But we got some solid baseline data, had some big surprises, and our friend Mark (Kiwi) Jackson has come up with a brilliant idea for how to add to the knowledgebase without shipping boards all over the place. We’ll explain it later. In the meantime, the test will be up in a few days.

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So you are ready to buy a high-zoot carbon fiber paddle and tweak it to make it all yours. Please don’t tell me you already bought one and it’s precut. If you did, skip way down to the taping section. This part will just make you uneasy. If you’re considering a wood paddle you’ll have to order it precut. In that case you need to borrow a paddle to make the measurements and the decisions we’re going to go through.

What’s the likelihood that you’re going to get a paddle that just right for you? A lot better than it used to be, when you had mostly brand choices and everyone said to cut the paddle shaft so the tip of the handle was one shaka over your head. Now you can get a lot more variation on paddle blade width, angle, length, shape and material as well as choices in shaft flex, shape, diameter, material and handle style. But with all those choices you need more than just a guess as to what’s going to work for you.

Let’s get you into the ballpark. Feel free to ask questions in the forum discussion on the this article as well, if I don’t have the answers I’ll go to the same industry sources that I drew the information for this article from. What? You thought I know all this stuff?

Paddle length is critical to a number of factors, and getting it right isn’t easy. Most people I know who have been doing SUP more than a year or two have been through several paddles, mostly experimenting with length, though blade size and shape, and shaft flexibility are actually just as important. We’ll focus on those four factors and toss in the other parameters when necessary. Then we’ll tell you how to get, cut, and modify a paddle to fit your intended use and your personal characteristics.

You’ll need a helper to make the shaft measurements. the easiest and most accurate way is to prop your board (the board you plan to use the paddle with the most frequently) up on some milk crates or some other stand that will hold it higher off the ground than your paddle blad [...]

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Maliko Gulch in the early morning is a strange place. Rainwater rushes through the creek from rainstorms up the mountain. The gulch smells of horseshit and squashed green things (there’s a ranch up the gulch). As I parked next to the muddy road in some tall grass I could see a swarm of mosquitoes lifting from the damp ground.  I either disturbed them or they smelled blood. Neither alternative was good.

At the ocean end of the gulch I could see big swells pounding on the rocks at the entrance, but there was no wind and no whitecaps. I was in the gulch to do the Maui Canoe and Kayak Club’s Maliko Gultch race, sponsored by Koho’s restaurant. Looked like it was going to be a long morning.

Kiwi (Mark Jackson) was already there, taking pictures and helping other SUP paddlers with their boards. There were lots canoes, though not in the kind of numbers that turn up for south shore races, and i didn’t see any surfskis. I went up to register and the lady asked me if I’d done Malko runs before. “I went twice last week” was my reply, leaving out fact that those two were my ONLY Maliko runs. Trusting soul, she accepted my entry and they wrote my number on my arm. Not really so the scorers could see it, but so I could remember it.

The plan was to ride Gumby, my new old downwinder board I’d bought from Bill Foote. The night before I tarted it up with some pad extensions made from scrap, and a freshly painted mascot on the nose–Gumby, in big trouble, sketched using Posca pens.

Gumby, in deep doo-doo. A little reminder to help me stay outside of Spartan’s Reef

A little closer shot. I missed a line on the inside of the right leg. Oh, well.

So I felt comp [...]

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I did a south side downwinder this morning, from near the canoe beach (Suda’s store) to the Four Season’s beach on Bill Foote’s “Gumby” board. What a wild and weird ride that is. The board is moderately fast paddling it–probably similar to a Starboard 12′6″ for glide. But get some swells and it’s suddenly transformed. I was just doing this run to condition myself for the Malko race tomorrow, but it turned into a sprint with heavy winds blowing somewhat offshore. In fact i screwed up and got a little far out and was kind of headed off to Japan. But I realized it soon enough and didn’t have to battle headwinds, just drew a bead on the Kehei boat launch and with typical cross-wind griping I hit the bay in front of the four seasons–two miles further down the coast.

Give the off angle I had to take to the wind, the times were fairly good. You can see very clearly in the GPS graph–fell three times, caught a zillion short runners. This board won’t catch a runner and stay planted in it easily, as the Penetrator does. Instead it catches four short runs in the same period. the result is not quite as fast, but pretty close. I think this shows off the difference in a planing vs displacement hull in a primitive and inconclusive way. I hope we’ll be able to be a little more conclusive in the showcase, which is coming up fast.

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This pretty much sums it up

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Sorry for not being very active with Ke Nalu this last week. I’m in San Diego helping the family of my closest friend, Barney Li, who died last Saturday in a motorcycle accident.

It’s just kind of taken the air out of me, but I really do feel a lot more like celebrating this remarkable man’s life than mourning his death. I could tell I was on the mend yesterday when I saw a SUP board on a van and immediately brightened up. I doubt I’ll have a chance to get in the water this week, but even the thought of it is cheering.

To all of you SUP friends, the most enjoyable quote I found when trying to find something wise to say about this tragedy is: “Never knock on death’s door, ring the bell and run away. Death hates that”.

My experiment with a paper-magazine style format is unsatisfying. I intended to update Ke Nalu (www.kenalu.com) on a monthly basis, but i found I was sitting on a lot of feature-quality stories that had a timeliness element. So from now on the only elements that will be monthly are the main two-column story and Stoneaxe’s videos. Everything else will update when the articles are ready. I’m also extending the number of articles shown in each category.

I think this format change will make Kenalu both more timely and more interesting.

A couple of weeks ago Diane got a new long lens for the Nikon–a 180 to 500MM. I just downloaded the pictures to my computer–some of them are pretty neat.

She put the long lens on our big tripod and this was the first shot she got:

Here’s the second:

Nice job, kid.

There’s a few more shots on ke Nalu in the Photos section: http://www.kenalu.com/category/sup-photos-from-around-the-world/

Paddling through the Blue Caverns at Catalina

I like this article a lot–plenty of great pictures. I have a few more to finish before I can call the second issue “complete” but it’s shaped up pretty well
Ernie Johnson (of Johnson Big Stick Paddles) and his wife Andie, along with friends Allan Cheateaux and Jamie Peterson, went to Catalina for four days of paddle-touring and camping. They carried all their gear strapped to their boards and spent four days camping and playing on Catalina. To see the rest of the article, click here:   http://www.kenalu.com/2008/03/25/sup-camping-catalina/#more-453

I’m feeling pretty good about this second issue. Yes, it’s staggering to it’s feet a little, I still have numerous articles and features to finish up and add to the mix, But it’s not April 1st yet–I’m about a week ahead of schedule in releasing this issue. I’ve decided that a staggered release over the course of a week is a good thing. Still to come is a visit to Malama’s paddle-making shop, a great photo essay by Ernie Johnson (of Johnson Big Stick Paddles) about the four-day camping trip he took with three friends to Catalina, articles on making an edge guard for your paddle, a photo essay about downwinders, and a article about preparing your board for long trips.

I owe a number of Ke Nalu rash guards to contributors of this issue. They are sitting in the garage–got to get them mailed off. This by way of reminder: Contribute to the next issue and we’ll send you a rash guard. Not only do you get all the fame you can eat, but you’ll also wear your rash guard with pride, knowing you’ve contributed to our sport.

You’ll notice we’re still not accepting advertising. Two reasons–we wanted to grow the readership to a size that would deliver value to advertisers before we started selling space. and second, we wanted to get the boards and paddle showcase behind us so there wouldn’t be any hint of bias (other than personal likes).

Diane and I went to Kihei this morning to paddle some. When we got to Kam 1 beach the horizon was lined with Paddlesurfers–janitors, in surfer parlance, because they all look like they’re sweeping up. And they are–when the surf is small like it was today it’s about the only game in town. The longboarders are starting to feel like they’re in the minority. One of them said to me this morning “EVERYONE is on standup boards these days–I feel like I’ve been left behind.”

My reply was that it’s more fun, why wouldn’t you do it?

The growth rate here in Maui is explosive. People used to stop me and ask what this strange thing I was doing is called. Now they’re stopping me to ask about technical details, or to get my opinion on where to place a mast track.  I counted twenty three SUP boards visible from Kam 1 at eight o’clock, and more people came and went all morning.

I had my doubts that people would really gravitate to flatwater stand up paddling, but that’s exactly what most people are doing. Sure, they wander over to the cove to catch a few little waves, but by and large a SUP board is a much more practical and fun alternative to a kayak. I saw literally a dozen people putting their board in the water at Kam 1, where there is no immediate opportunity to surf. There’s really only one reason why you would do that–you have no intention of surfing, you just want to paddle.

Remarkable. If growth in Maui is any indication, this summer should be wacky on the mainland. I hope the board manufacturers are ready for it.

I’m losing my marbles. The wind has been excellent for the last week, and the surf sucks, but I’m doggedly trying to Paddlesurf. Why I don’t just go windsurf is beyond me, normally I’d be happy as a clam about these conditions. I guess I’m an addict. Yesterday I took my addiction to new lows and went paddling on the south side while it was blowing like stink at Kanaha. Put in at Launiopoko (the translation of this westside beach park is “no waves, knucklehead–go windsurfing”), caught a few ankleslappers, and then paddled west. I stopped at every break along the way–like Puamana (translation: “no waves here either”) and wound up at the Pacific O grill for lunch.

I had sixteen soggy bucks in my boardshorts, which is chump change for a fancy beachside cafe, so I told the bartender how much I had, asked the price of a beer (five bucks–FIVE BUCKS!!), did some fast menu math and decided I could also have some Gyoza but would have to leave a crappy tip. After a brief consultation with the bartender (Melissa from Atlanta–nice kid) we decided it was better that I eat something than suitably reward her. Took forever for my Gyoza to arrive, so I relaxed and chatted with Melissa, and watched about a million people take surfing lessons at Lahina Breakwall. Every time Melissa made a blended drink she’d put the leftover foo-foo drink in a glass and give it to me. Nice of her, but after one very tasty IPA and the third pineapple-banana-mango tropical sunburst I decided I’d better get back in the water while I could still feel my legs.

I decided to paddle out of the lagoon at the breakwall instead of threading the needle at the secret channel. So I worked my way past the throngs of flailing surf students and found some remarkable surf on the outside edge. The breakwall seems to manufacture it’s own waves. How it makes head high waves out of kneeslapper swells is a mystery, but it’s likely a refraction thing. These were chest to head high and very fast. I paddled out to the lineup, stepped back on my board to turn it, slipped on the wet deck and fell unceremoniously next to a very competent-looking local surfer girl. As I hauled myself back to my feet she said “the waves are pretty rough here–you might want to go over there”, pointing to the throngs of beginners. I smiled and said I’d give it a try here first, caught a really nice head high wave and got a great ride out of it. I even popped out the back with a really clean backside turn that felt just right.

I paddled back out and the surfer girl smiled and said, “I’m embarrassed, you’re a better surfer than me” which wasn’t true, but was nice to hear. Of course the next wave I caught closed out on the nose of my board as I attempted a duplicate backside exit, and shoved me into the rock garden near the breakwall. I lost my treasured hat, so i had to wander around a bit to find it, and cut my feet to shreds on the razor sharp rocks. Surf booties are a must at the breakwall.

On the paddle back to Launipoko (about three miles) I noticed little trails of blood washing off the back of my board. Chumming for sharks. Surfed at all the breaks and at Launipoko, then caught a wave to the beach and headed home.

Nice day in all, but last night my shoulders were killing me, and my feet are covered with band-aids. It’s eight o’clock and there are already whitecaps.

Darn.

I joined Sol Morey and a few of his friends in their weekly WOW (walk on water) paddle this Sunday morning. They’ve been doing it for a while and generally have eight to twelve paddlers, leaving from the Canoe hut near Kenolio Park in West Kehei and finishing up at Kalama Park–a leisurely 3.5 mile paddle. A nice, easy distance and a very pleasant time. We were in the water by 8:30 or so, and the water was like a lake. Lots of fish, turtles, and reefs to be seen. I noticed at least five or six other SUP paddlers out for a cruise. What a fine way to spend Sunday morning.

I’ll do a longer writeup in the next issue, but here’s a few teaser photos:

Seven paddlers on this Sunday WOW

Next time I’m bringing my rod! This is Kayak fisherman Mel Ross with a nice Kagamy Popio (small Ulua). We saw lots of Ulua on the reefs. that coulda been my dinner.

How many skinny girls can you fit on one board? Four if you stick other boards under the nose and tail.

If you’re in Maui and you’d like to come along, contact Sol at 808.875.4761

What an odd day. I spent most of it sewing new sleeves for all the rack pads on the funmobile. the surf looked big, and I bet it was going off in a reasonable size on the west side (ho’okipa was closed out and very windy), but I was home sewing. And I thought the last post made me out to be a sissy. Part of making new pad covers was cleaning out the funmobile, and in vacuuming out the tons of sand i found my iPhone. I had lost it a couple of weeks ago and bought a replacement. It was stuck in a crevice that I just didn’t find when i looked for it. I’ll have to see if I can return thet new one I bought–i still have the packaging.

Then this afternoon I got an email from Mark Raaphoorst. A fisherman found my camera and saw some pictures of the Ding King in the camera. They dropped it off at the shop and Mark sent me an email asking if I lost the camera. How wild is that. I need to buy some serious amounts of beer.

I know a fair number of people read Ponohouse that don’t read my new e-magazine: Ke Nalu. I’ve been writing a daily column in the magazine for about a week when I realized “this column is a ponohouse column!”–same style, same topic, which is basically the stuff I do to have fun in Maui.  So I’ve decided to write them here,  and then transfer them to Kenalu. I’m posting the four I’ve done to catch folks up.

Here’s the first, titled Big Sissy

I sure am glad the wind came up at Kanaha early this morning, it gave me an excuse to get off the water without admitting that I was scared. OK, I was. When I showed up Randy (from StandUpZone) and Frank (Lightning Bolt) were screwing around with Randy’s new gorgeous video camera. I asked how the surf was while I took my board off the funmobile, and they said in near unison “messy”.  It was indeed.  I paddled out with absolute confidence until I reached the channel and noticed that occasionally the waves were closing it out. Still, I punched through with no big problems, the rideable waves were overhead to one and a half, which didn’t concern me too much. There were three prone surfers out–that was it.

What bothered me was the angle–it was from the northeast, and it was making a bowl-shaped face that I remember all too well from the first few days I got back to Maui in January. They beat the crap out of me then. Closes out at both ends and smacks you in the middle unless you’re really fast down the line.

I’m not.

Still, I felt that my surfing had progressed enough so I could be comfortable with the waves so I watched a few to get my bearings and suddenly realized I couldn’t tell the big waves from the small. The swell was thick rather than tall, and the big waves leaped up very suddenly when they reached the reef. In fact, while I was messing around trying to figure things out I got caught inside and worked a little bit. I think it was then that I lost my camera. I had stuck my Xacti waterproof video cam in my back pocket. Normally having it pop out would be no big deal–I’d just paddle around and look for it. I have a red floating soft lanyard attached to it, and it’s easy to spot. But I didn’t notice it missing until later, and in the “victory-at-sea conditions it would be hard to spot. So if you find a blue Xacti with a red lanyard on it…  I suspect it will show up somewhere in Tahiti in a month or so.

Anyway, I got back out to the lineup and watched a few more waves. I was considering bailing on the whole idea when Chan paddled out.  I watched her catch a few waves and decided I could do it too. I moved way down to the left and tried to catch the edge of a face in the channel. Bad idea. The first wave I caught ran out of poop in twenty yards, and right behind it was a big guy that was crumbling as I caught it. I managed to stay up for a few yards and then got hit by the whitewater and pounded.

I went back out (why I did that escapes me) and watched Randy try to punch straight out through the middle of the reef. I didn’t see how that could work, and after a while, so did Randy. He caught a couple of good looking rides on the far inside and then I lost track of him.

The wind started picking up a little, then suddenly jumped right up to prime windsurfing force–probably 20-25 knots.  I was being blown down the lineup. I had to drop to my knees and paddle like mad to get back to the channel, then I caught a ride through to the lagoon and started paddling in. I got about halfway there and discovered the camera was gone, so I turned around and went looking for it. I resolved to go as far as the reef and then run along with the wind and see if I could spot it. Nada. Expensive day.

Paddled in, shot the breeze with Frank (still healing and looking pretty pained), Randy and Chan. What great folks, always interesting to talk to. Randy is always stoked about something, right now he’s very excited about his new camera, and it’s a pretty amazing piece of gear. Chan is simply a really smart lady with well-considered, informed opinions. Damned good surfer too. And Frank is an all around good guy, dying to get back in the water.

I finally beat feet for the west side, tried S-Turns for a while, caught a few nice waves, but the wind came up and was blowing me all over the place. Wound up at Puamana mucking around in knee-high mushy waves. Puaman can serve up some tasty faces sometimes, but when it’s the only game in town it always feels like my old dating days, when you’d hit all the hot spots on Friday night until everything started closing, and then you’d wind up at Denny’s, grumpily eating a grand slam breakfast.