Pacific Paddler August 2013 - (Page 24)

Luke: When we WHEN WERE YOU INTRODUCED TO PADDLING? TELL US WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF THE SPORT BACK THEN. Luke: When I was ten years old, I started paddling for Pu'uwai Canoe Club. I'm not sure how I ended up there, but I think it had some- NOW WHERE DO YOU SEE THE SPORT HEADED? every sport I tried and my parents were getting passion for paddling, I always land at one thing: thing to do with the fact that I was terrible at desperate. Paddling was no different. I paddled for less than two weeks before deciding that I hated the concept. At that point, I was much more comfortable with a video game controller in my hand than a paddle. I quit paddling and didn't get back into it until I was twelve at Kaiola Canoe Club. By that time, my brothers and dad were also paddling at Kaiola so quitting wasn't really an option. I had to hang around at the canoe club waiting for my family to finish men's prac- tice and the coach was nice enough to let me fill in occasionally when there was an empty seat. Between the adult and youth practices, I ended up putting in a lot of time at a young age. Keizo: I moved to a small school in 8th grade where I met Luke. I was really into bas- ketball at the time, but no one in our class of 15 was into that. Luke convinced a few people to try paddling, and I followed soon after. A couple of years later, my Dad was able to get a dam- aged OC1 for next to nothing and we fixed it up. Paddling those first few downwind runs seemed like such an adventure at the time. Having access to canoes and a good group of friends to paddle with kept me coming back. Luke: When I look back at what inspired my it was really fun. Our coach was worried less about us winning and more about us enjoying ourselves. I loved every second that I was on the water, and I kept hungering for more. If it's not fun, then the sport isn't going to grow. The sport has some fundamental retention issues in that at least nine out of ten kids don't make the jump from youth to adult paddling programs. We need to keep the sport fun and work on retaining our youth. There are a lot of things happening right now that have the potential to make the sport incredibly fun, we just need to figure out a way to integrate them into our existing structure. Keizo: There are a lot of progressive races happening these days. A look at any of those events: Olamau, Pa’a ‘Eono, or any OC1 race, gives a good indication of the sport’s future. The people organizing those races and the paddlers attending them have done every race in the world. These new races and new canoes are what they are excited about. People are going to great lengths to be a part of it, whether it’s building their own six-man at home, or person- ally buying the first canoes available. In a lot of ways, it does just come down to fun. WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA TO BUILD CANOES? Luke: When we were in high school, Kelly, Keizo, and I used to literally hang around dreaming of building canoes. We had no idea what it would entail; we just knew that we wanted to do it. We all left for college with a specific goal in mind: we were going to reunite after graduating and start a canoe company. Paddling was our life, and we wanted to make sure that we could create a career to keep it the focal point of our lives. When we left for college, nearly every canoe in Hawai’i was built in Hawai’i, but by the time we were ready to begin, it was nearly impossible to purchase a locally built canoe. Here we were, at the center of outrigger canoe racing, yet you couldn't buy an OC-1 that was made within 2,000 miles. The stark realization that local production was dying is what really committed us to start the company. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? [WENT TO THE HARDWARE STORE AND BOUGHT FIBERGLASS? LEARNED FROM ANOTHER CANOE BUILDER?] Luke: In 2007, the three of us were all living in Kailua after graduating college. At the time we had no design, no money, and little experience. Kelly had worked with a local canoe builder and gone to school for composites fabrication; Keizo spent much of his life in a composites shop and graduated with a degree in aerospace and mechanical engineering; and I had basically nothing but an insane passion for paddling. Since we were living in Kailua, we wandered up to the nearest industrial center and inquired whether they had any space avail- able. Within thirty minutes we’d signed a lease. I think we were a little more impulsive back then. After sitting around in an empty warehouse wondering what to do next, we partnered up with John Puakea to build the Kainalu and Kaimana. The first collaborative canoe that we built as a company was the Pueo. 24 Pacific Paddler August 2013 http://moomanakai.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pacific Paddler August 2013

HCRA champs at Hanalei in the past 2007, 2001
Walter Macfarlane Regatta
Waikiki Beach Boys Invitational
Tahiti Nui Va’a
Liberty Challenge
Kamanu Composites
Olamau and counting
Outrigger & Hui Nalu beginnings
Paddle 'No-mans Land'?
Mālama Hawai‘i is the first leg
Na Wahine O Ke Kai 2013

Pacific Paddler August 2013