Last year at the finish line at Koko Head Marina, after I completed my first Molokai, I received the warmest congratulations from Joe Glickman. He told me “Way to go! You did it buddy! Too bad you got flat conditions. You’re going to have to come back to experience the REAL channel!” I was so exhausted at this point from the long paddle in this terrible heat, that I had a “been there, done that” feeling. I could check off the Molo from my bucket list and die a happy man. It was time to look for a new challenge.

To be really honest, I was a little scared. Before that day, every training session, every paddle stroke, every trip to my freeskate cross-country ski trails for the last 3 years had a meaning and a purpose: getting ready for the Molokai. Now that I had done this prestigious holy-grail race, however slowly, I wondered if I would still enjoy racing and training. My type-1 diabetes often gives me the feeling that I have to train twice as hard to get half the result. So when I came back home, I told myself I’d take a month off paddling. Just to give myself the chance to do something else and see if I’d miss it. It lasted a week! I was so happy to see that I was still passionate about paddling.

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The summer of 2009 was awful in Québec; cold and rainy all the way. I haven’t done a single race with nice weather. Even when I crossed the border to go to the Blackburn Challenge, I navigated in fog most of the way. So going back to some tropical location to paddle did not seem like a bad idea.

Fall came and with it, an e-mail from Geoff Graff informing the 2009 Molokai paddlers about the 2010 date and inviting them to register in the near future. I told myself: “hey, why not!” Subconsciously, I must have already decided that I wanted to go back. I lived the life of a monk for the previous year without any frivolous spending. Therefore my wife and I could afford a low budget version of our 2009 trip.

The hard part was again to convince my employer to let me go for a couple of weeks. After some negotiation and administrative juggling, I was given my leave.

Although I never quit training after the 2009 Molokai, now it was serious; I had a goal again. This year again, I extended my regular paddling season to a non-stop winter. I was grateful that the ice came late this winter on the Fleuve St-Laurent and the Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes; this allowed me to keep my regular paddling territory longer. After, it was back to my 800m long section of the Outaouais River with enough current to keep it from freezing. This mild weather had a perverse effect; the lack of snow. Last year, a very large part of my training from December to April was done through freeskate cross country skiing. This year, snow was scarce and my local ski base did a very bad job at maintaining what was available. So down to the basement I go to spend some quantity time (I’m not so sure about quality!!) with my paddling machine.

It’s amazing how thing get easy with experience. My 2009 escort Captain was not available this year, but my Oahu base friend Lauren Lasher used his network of friends to help me and I had a new escort captain within a couple of days. I found on Oahu the same surfski I use at home, for less than last year.

Fast forward to Oahu…. There was no official Makapu’u race this year. However, racers got a last minute invitation to do a non-official Makapu’u via e-mail. I was glad I had my mini note-book with me; many racers already on Oahu did not get the message and missed the race because they learned about it after it was over. Going out in the waves was quite impressive, almost intimidating, for someone like me who does most of his paddling in rather flat conditions. The physics geek in me is always fascinated by the mechanical strength of light surfskis. But in these conditions, where I ended up airborne launching up the face of the waves and landing 2 meters lower on the back face with my craft still in one piece is just awesome!

The first half of the Makapu’u was just no fun; like taking a ride in a washing machine. Too many braces, not enough strokes…The second half gave us some better rides with a less aggressive coast. But then again, this was the perfect event to get used to the water of the Ka’iwi channel.

On the next Saturday, on Molokai, the wind was blowing steadily. The conditions were looking perfect. You could not cross a fellow paddler without hearing something about this perfect wind.

Geoff Graff organized the perfect system for surfski transport from Oahu to Molokai. He booked what looked like a former Navy boat with a large array of boat racks on the rear deck. The boat came in on Saturday morning with about 50 surfskis on it. It moored about 60m from the beach and paddler already on Molokai went for a swim and relayed the surfskis to the beach. Once we got our system going, it was a very effective and graceful process according to my wife.

Human behavior is always intriguing. While a very large majority of paddler were helping out with the unloading of skis, either in the ocean or on the beach, some people spent as much as an hour applying sponsor stickers on their boat and totally avoiding the unloading process. Things that make you go “hmmm?” My hypothesis is that these guys were scared of coming too close to the Australian guys wearing Speedos! 😉

Sunday morning!!! The sun shows up after some rain, and the wind is still there. I got down early to the beach and I got an easy access to a jet ski to get my stuff to my escort. Tony, my Captain, was easy to find, having the only boat flying my huge Québec flag. The chaos did not seem to be as disorganized as last year. There were fewer racers because of the Durban race and the beehive seamed calmer in front of Kaluakoi.

Time for a warm up paddle. As 9h00 came closer, we started lining up to the start line. The wind was already strong enough, even by the coast, so that we had to back paddle to stay behind the line.9h00…. WHOOOOT…. Here we go! The top guys really went fast! The wind and small waves already gave me a good pace, according to my own personal standards of course! Since the conditions were a little more bumpy than usual, escort boats were allowed to get close to their racer sooner than the traditional 20 minutes. I had to put on the brakes as I was surfing a wave not to ram an escort boat that came a little to close while crossing in front of me. When escorts come close, racers in the back of the pack are always caught in a messy wave soup. I thought again: “Are these guys really here to help us or to make things even more challenging?” The near future would soon give me a clear answer.

In the first 2 hours, I had a great time. Catching long and fast rides, faster than anything I ever surfed before except a cargo wave. I was really having a super time. I was so concentrated on catching those cool waves that I kind of lost track that I had to aim for Oahu. Tony, my escort Captain shouted to me:” You’re about 400 meters south of the direct line to Chinaman Wall”. The channel is so wide that if you don’t pay attention, it’s easy to zigzag all over the place without these precious pieces of info now and then. Tony kept me up to date about every 20 minutes, making sure I kept the best line. When I was about a third of the way through, according to my GPS, my total crossing time was to be around 4h30min. I was so glad to see this. The only thing was to maintain my speed.

But then something did not go according to my plan. The waves got bigger and bigger with a huge side order disorganized bumps! The size and speed of the waves combined with my growing fatigue made the runs harder to catch. Most of them just rolled underneath me and then I would end up paddling uphill, a steep and long uphill, on their back face with my speed falling all the way down to 3 km/h! I sometime thought that I would have been better off swimming!

Once in a while I could catch a ride on one of these monsters, screaming down at 25 km/h with a big stupid smile on my face and still surprised that my paddle and boat could withstand such mechanical stress and not implode.

At 6 or 7 km from Chinaman wall, I was surprised by a beam wave that took me for a swim. No problem! I’ll just remount! Wrong!!! As soon as I got on my surfski, a new wave pushed me over before I could get a stable posture and being able to brace. After the third time in the water, I could see that Tony was getting worried by his facial expression. I gave him the thumbs up and screamed to him that everything was OK and that I was going to stay in the water to take a break until I saw a pause in the waves for my next try. It took me 6 tries!!! I was honestly exhausted and a bit shaken by this. Remounts had never been a problem before. But then again I never did remounts in a washing machine! I was really glad I was able to go on; I really did not want to quit although I must had thought about it 10 times. Anyway, quitting meant getting closer to my escort boat and getting tackled and probably have our hulls collide while exiting.

I felt like a beginner having hulied. But at the finish, I heard I was not alone. David Stiles, a very fine gentleman from Australia, as most of the racers were, when over 12 times. On one occasion, he got entangled in his leash, had to let go of his paddle while he released the leash and had to wait for his escort to fetch it before continuing.

At the end, I also learned that I was not the only one that was intimidated by the effect of these waves on the motion of the escorts. Jeff from Australia was relying on his escort to give him his drinks and fuel along the way. But the boat motion was so intense that he did not want to approach his escort, so he paddled all the way without any refueling. He was totally dehydrated when he got to Oahu. I congratulated myself for having made the choice of carrying all my liquid and food with me. However, my glucose monitoring system that I used last year was completely useless in these conditions. I guestimated my glucose level from experience, and got to the finish with a perfect level. But I really wished I had a reliable real-time waterproof glucose monitor on me!

My multi-remount experience had drained some life out of me. For the long minutes that followed, it looked more like I was stirring coffee more than paddling. More stabilization than propulsion! As I came close to Chinaman, I paddled perhaps a little further away than the fastest line. I told myself that with my low energy level, if I was to capsize again, I’d be safer away from the wall by having more time to remount. Got by the wall just fine. My internal DJ started playing the Bob Marley song:” Don’t worry about a thing. Every little thing is gonna be alright” How appropriate! Then I saw 3 escorts gaining on me. I was too exhausted to go faster.

As we got to the flat water near Koko Head Marina, I got some speed back. Another km and I would have regained my position. Just too bad…

I got to the finish with some well appreciated cheers from my wife Chantale and racer friends.
As I got close enough to the dock, Chantale asked me how it went. My answer, was the French version with swears of; “If I ever talk to you about doing something stupid like this, just bitch-slap me!” A few hours later, I was already reconsidering this and thinking about what I’ll do differently the next time.

I was dead %&*!# last! But I was still proud to have finished. I had never done anything this hard in my life. In retrospect, there’s absolutely nothing I could have done during my training to get used to these conditions. I was happy to get in about 16 minutes faster than last year. Being last was not so bad after I heard that 6 people had quit during the race. But I was sad to hear that among the 6 racers who did not finish, was my buddy Tom who probably trained harder than me in the last year and is a better paddler than me.

Besides the elite guys, everyone was saying, “What was that out there??!!” Even Ian Parmenter who always has his energy level set at 11 looked destroyed and in pain at the finish.

I think Kenny Howell of California said what best describes the Molokai: “ It’s the hardest thing I can do while still having fun…”

Now that I paddled the flattest Molokai and one of the biggest Molokai, I’m ready to go back and paddle everything in between. I really hope I’ll be able to go back! It has become an irrational obsession; but such a sweet one!

I would really like to thank:
-The Australian crew, Ian, Jeff, Glen, David, Angus, Ken and Stewart, for being so nice to my wife and me, and making us smile all the time. When I grow up, I want to be Australian! …but I’ll never wear those short Speedos!
-Tony, my escort Captain for taking good care of me and being a great guide.
-Geoff Graff, for organizing a great race.
-Marc-André Renaud for taking great care of my students during my absence.
-Loren Lasher, for his precious help and local knowledge.
-Wesley Echols, for correcting my English in this text.
-Chantale, my loving wife, for supporting this obsession.

Aloha!

Richard Germain
Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Québec
richardlephysicien@hotmail.com