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 bit easier with some bumps pushing them along.

So this is the prone division. Of course, the... M2O is known as the Paddleboard World Championships, and that's how it all started. Surfers looking for something to do in the summertime in the North Shore, they started to pick up longer surfboards and paddle distances and found it was really good training for the winter.

So for a long time, the Molokai Race Paddleboard Division was dominated by Jamie Mitchell. who's won it many times, but he hasn't been competing the last few times. It's still dominated by Australian paddlers. The top three male Unlimited and top three male stock division were all Australians.

And the winner this year was Charlie Vercoe from, 22 year old from Australia winning the race on an Unlimited board in 453. And especially considering these difficult conditions, that's quite the accomplishment to paddle it in under five hours many. took much longer than that. It was definitely a challenging race at the end with the northerly currents pulling against you.

The stand up division was a little bit smaller this year, still a good contingent of paddlers

though, but a lot of the pro racers that used to compete in stand up paddling are now on stand up foil boards, including people like James Casey, who won the stand up unlimited in 2019 Kai Lenny, and many others that used to compete in stand up racing are now stand up foiling. So that seems to be the big competitive division now.

But Mo Freitas from Oahu competed in the unlimited division. And so it, it was a competitive race for stand up paddling but a smaller field than before. And then here in the... That NSP, blue and green NSP board, is the paddler from Japan who was this year's champion in the Unlimited for the first time, a Japanese paddler winning the Molokai to Oahu race.

Yusuke Hyogo, 36 year old from Japan, won the Unlimited stand up paddleboard division in 445. So that's an impressive time considering especially the... The difficult conditions as you see a couple of the blue planet bump rider boards really proud of All the competitors that used our blue planet boards.

They did really well, so I'll talk about that some more later You can see here that the water on the inside was pretty smooth and it's just there was some wind from the back, but it's it's not, there weren't a lot of bumps pushing you along because, the wind's offshore.

You can see all the escort boats lined up. They are supposed to wait for 30 minutes before joining the paddlers to keep the wakes and the churned up water to a minimum. But you can see how these conditions are definitely challenging for foiling because, yeah, the stand up foilers have to pump up on foil in these pretty calm waters with not much wind from their back.

Here you see Moe Freitas. And this is the start of the foil division. So like I said, yeah, the water was pretty smooth on the inside, so stand up foilers had to really work to get up on foil basically flat water start and then pump pretty far out. Versus wing foilers we were able to take off pretty quick.

There was a decent amount of wind, it was pretty light, but seemed like there was a little bit of a gust in the early on. And that helped us get going in the beginning, had a decent start, and pretty good wind in the beginning, and then later on during the race it got a little bit lighter.

And I, we don't, didn't get drone footage from the start, but you can see the prone foilers, the stand up foilers pumping along, working hard, and then the wing foilers. Flying off to a good start. I was on a Blue Planet Wing Racer board 5'10 5'10 by 21 inches, so a longer, narrower board, and a 7 meter wing, and then a Mike's Lab.

600 foil with a 103 centimeter mast and you know that combo worked out pretty well. Had a good amount of speed right from the start. Trying to chase the faster paddlers ahead of me. So there was yeah, a few ahead of me. Especially Alan Cadiz who I was trying to keep up with. He was on a Mike's Lab 540.

Which I think had a little bit higher speed, but then maybe with my 600, I was able to go a little bit steeper, a little bit steeper downwind angle, which was important because yeah, but that northerly current we ended up having to crisscross quite a bit. You just, you couldn't just take a straight line to the, to portlock.

And Yeah, here we're already getting close to Oahu. It's skipped a bunch, but the middle of the channel got a little bit light. There were a good amount of bumps, and pretty steep bumps, and a lot of good riding, but just the wind got a little light, so even with the 7 meter wing, I find myself pumping the wing and the foil quite a bit, trying to keep a good angle.

And then I'm a regular foot. Winger. And I just find that I'm not very good at switching my feet. I'm not as fast if I try to, put my feet the other way. I was basically riding most of the way with my body kind of twisted toe, my, my toe side direction. And then, at the very end, I started catching up to Alan Cadiz.

He got quite a bit ahead of me, but then I caught him at the end. And then, I made it into the bay and I was like pushing hard upwind and then I just caught an edge and crashed and I fell and then Alan passed me again. But, overall I was pretty happy. I finished the race in an hour 55.

I lost a little bit of probably another five minutes at the end, but I was definitely stoked to finish. And excited about my time that I finished fifth overall. And the winners in the wing flow division were Finn Spencer, 19 year old from Maui. In 131, amazingly fast time. And then second place was Aidan Nicholas from Auckland, New Zealand.

And 137, and then third place Bobo Gallagher, 14, from Lahaina. And then fourth place was Alan Cadiz from Maui. And fifth place was myself. And Alan and myself were the first and second in the 40 and over division. I think Alan is already 60 and I'm 55, cool that us older guys can still be up there and mix it up with the young pros.

Pretty stoked. And then in the female division Nani from Oahu, who's been winging with our group won the won the female race in 2. 10, so she also had a very fast time. So congrats, Nani, on a really good crossing. And then in first place in the wing foil team division were my friends Eli and Derek that we've been training together with so stoked that they finished right up there as well.

And they did the team division as a two person team, but they both did the whole race, so they basically shared the escort boat and started together and finished together it's a cool way to do the race, just basically staying together and basically you're only going to be as fast as the slower winger.

And then after the race, I got a chance to interview James Casey, so you should definitely check out that interview. He won the stand up foil division. I also interviewed Nani, and then Derek and Eli. Those interviews are posting soon. Here are the overall results again. Like the wing floaters definitely dominated the top, top ten fastest times.

But we also finished at the blinker buoy versus the, everybody else had to paddle into the bay. So with the prone boards that was definitely a challenge to paddle all the way into the bay. James Casey shared a pretty cool story about that, how that all went down, so you might want to check that out.

So I added a few more photos of the award ceremony after the event. Every time the Molokai Toaho race is held, they have an award ceremony at the Outrigger Canoe Club. It's always a nice event, it makes it a legitimate world championship event. Here are Eli and Derek who won the team Wingfoil Division on the Blue Planet Wings.

Good job guys. These are the top female finishers. This time Olivia Piana came in first over Annie Reichard who finished first at the Maui to Molokai race. These are the top finishes in the sub stock division and I'm really stoked because they were all on Blue Planet bump rider boards. This is Kiyomi she was, and they were all on 14 foot bump riders, so stoked about that.

And here's our Blue Planet team so had some really good results and not really. happy with the results of the You know the whole blue planet team and get to see our gear working well in these conditions and then here are the all the top stand up foilers James Casey won the stand up foil division, which was a close finish, and he was he was able to catch a little bump, he said, by by pillars.

And pump it all the way over the reef, which is definitely a risky move because if you come off foil over the shallow reef, you can get stuck there and, have to paddle with the foil upside down, but he was able to pull off the wind. So congratulations, James, and congratulations, Finn Spencer.

I'm going to interview the Spencer brothers soon. Finn Spencer, by the way, had a... Injury on his heel and big infection and he pulled through with it, but he came up on stage with crutches. So congratulations Finn and stay tuned for more blue planet shows. We bring out some more interviews from this race and many more interviews to come.

So thanks for watching. See you on the water. Aloha.