Molokai to Oahu Race Recap Audio only- M2O 2023 -Episode #29

Please also watch the video version of this show on the blueplanetsurf youtube channel for lots of cool footage- video by Lucas Purcell

 Aloha friends. It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the Blue Planet Show. Today's show is not an interview, but rather a recap where I talk about my experience at the Molokai to Oahu race and what I heard from other competitors at the race. So let's get into it.

Okay. So after a three year break for the pandemic and so on, the Molokai race, It finally happened again in 2023 and for the first time it had a wing foil division. So I was really excited about that and signed up for the Wingfo division, as well as a bunch of us from Oahu. And a couple weeks ago we went over to Maui and winged from Maui to Molokai, and then did the Molokai Holokai, and then Molokai to Oahu, a little training run.

A couple of weeks before, and then the day before the Molokai race, we flew over and stayed at Kalua Koi, at our friend Eli's place. Beautiful place, right on the water. Here's Derek taking a little cruise on his bike down the path. And at Kalua Koi, the wind is pretty offshore, so the water's smooth on the inside.

And the day before the race, the wind was pretty light on the inside, but once you got a little bit offshore, it was pretty strong winds. And Eli and Derek were decided to use our new prototype wings. We had a six meter and a seven meter version of our new wings and Eli was using the seven and Derek, the six meter.

And then I opted to choose the, my tried and tested seven meter alien wing that I've been using. Here's Nani. So we're just warming up a little bit the day before the race, getting out there, feeling the water, and so on. Of course on the inside it's pretty smooth, and then once you get further out in the channel, the the water gets a lot rougher.

So the evening before the race, there was a little race meeting, everybody meeting on the lawn. at Koala Koi and then they served up a nice dinner afterwards. So for us the energy at this event was amazing. People come in from all over the world, a lot of people from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan.

It's great to see everyone again after like years of not having this event, to see all the top paddlers and foilers from all over the world. It's really cool and to see familiar faces from previous events and so on. So for me personally, this was I think it was like the 11th or maybe the 12th time I did this event.

I did it, mostly on stand up paddle boards, or all on stand up paddle boards. I think I did it eight times solo, two times as a team, and then this is the first time I did it as a wing foiler. Derek Hama was collecting signatures for his poster, so that was a really cool idea, and he got a ton of signatures during the event.

And this is Terry from Virgin Islands, Alan Cadiz from Maui, just hanging out, chatting, and getting excited about the next morning. And then you can see water is... Pretty calm nice sunset, of course, lots of escort boats. Usually the evening before, escort boats will come close to the beach. There's no harbor there you have to swim out to the boat to get your equipment.

Usually the boats take over the equipment. come over from Oahu on the boat. But I usually opt to take a plane because that ride from Oahu to Molokai can be pretty rough when you're going into the wind and into the chop. So it's a pretty rough ride, but many people come over on the boat, but I always prefer to fly over.

And then, yeah, you pick up your gear like you I picked up my board and wing from the boat the night before. And here you see a lot of escort boats the morning of the event. Then they have the pre race pule prayer, Hawaiian prayer. And then everyone's getting pretty excited for a safe and fun crossing.

And yeah, the pule is always... A great great way to get ready in the morning. Everybody picks up a satellite tracking chip that tracks the race. So that's a good way for people to follow the race live. You can see where everyone's position is. Here are the two start buoys in the bay at Kalua Koi.

And then this was the first start at... I think it was 7 30 a. m. I want to say it was the prone paddle board start Drones in the air and here's the Start everyone charges off It's of course a long race, but still you don't want to be left behind at the finish So everyone always paddles hard right from the beginning you definitely want to conserve your energy because it's a long race.

And yeah, the beginning, the water was pretty calm. Pretty smooth water. Not a lot of chop in the water. So for, especially for the stand up foilers. You can see these conditions are not ideal for getting up on foil or pumping. So it's pretty much, there, there was some wind at our backs, but pretty much the stand up foilers had to pump up onto, up on foil and then pump pretty far to get to where it started to get a little