Kona (and an 18 mile race) awaits…

It’s taken a lot of organizing, plenty of fundraising and hours of practice but the day is finally here. Today, we head to Big Island for the Queen Lili’uokalani canoe race.

Last season our one aim for this year was to enter this event. It’s the world’s largest canoe race and we’ve heard so much about it, we knew we wanted to compete and hoped it would become a reality in our second year of paddling.

Getting our boat ready for shipping at Kahului Harbor.

The hard work of our crew and determination to do what we said we were going to do has led us to this point. It would have been easy to  say we couldn’t afford to do it, or simply to lose focus but we have made it! Now we have just got to get out there and paddle.

I think ‘chicken skin’ is going to be making many appearances this weekend. We’ve heard that the starting line measures around 1/4 mile and anywhere between 100 and 150 crews will be lining up to race. I can’t begin to get my head around that and can’t wait to see it, let alone be a part of it. Then we have a torchlight parade around the streets of Kona afterwards, it promises to be very special indeed.

Our boat gets hoisted up to get shipped to Kona. It was actually a bit nerve-wracking seeing it so high, hoping they didn't drop it.

The women race first – we start from Kailua Bay and race 18 miles in flat water and hot conditions to Honaunau – a sacred spot here in Hawaii. Crews have the option of racing ‘iron’ which means they race the entire course with no changes or as a nine-person crew, with water changes. We’re doing it iron.

The men’s crews will then race back to the starting line by which time, we will have either collapsed or started on the congratulatory ice cold beers…

There’s been some truly epic surf on Maui this week which, while fantastic for surfing, hasn’t been the best for paddling. We had a training schedule that we couldn’t do because the surf was too big for us to get the canoe in and out of the water, so I’m feeling a little unprepared. Here’s hoping our season-long paddles will stand us in good stead.

Lahaina Canoe Club is taking four crews – the Novice A and Master Women and the Novice A and Master Men. It’s great to have so many of us going and I’m intrigued to see all the different teams from all over the world. If there’s a team from England I must meet them!

There’s going to be plenty of  stories, photographs and more when we return, so make sure you check back to see how it went. Bye for now, it’s time to pack!

Mahalo for reading. Laura.

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