Hawaiian Sailing Canoes, Always On Big Water

I've posted before on the Hawaiian outrigger canoes. Here is a video of the traditional Hawaiian sailing canoes, focusing on one in the catamaran configuration. It gets interesting at the back end of the video as the wind and wave conditions approach nuclear in the channel; two helmsman fight to maintain control on the long steering oar aided by another auxiliary helmsman in the leeward hull with a big ass paddle adding some oomph when needed. Got to keep those bows heading straight while surfing down big waves. Spray everywhere. Fascinating!

Ka Ohana Holokai Pailolo Crossing from Scott Wong on Vimeo.

Look Ma, No Rudder; the Hawaiian Sailing Canoe

So far we looked at two small singlehanders, steered by paddles on relatively flat water. But steering open ocean proas, crewed with seven paddlers, just using a "Steering Paddle"? What happens when the "Steering Paddle" just doesn't have enough oomph?

"I've been known to close my eyes and just hold on to my steering blade"

(I've sort of wished I could do that on some downwind rides.)

This video does give a good feel of open ocean racing in the Hawaiian Sailing Canoe's.

Header Photo: Yoles Rondes de la Martinique

The previous header photo is of the Yoles Rondes de la Martinique, a sailing canoe, a wild and wacky, far-removed cousin of our Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe. There are various classes; the large Yoles can have two sails (two sails for offwind courses?), the one in the photo just one, and they sport low slung. very square, boom-less sprit sails. Their hiking aids can't technically be called planks, since they aren't shaped, just round poles. They are steered with a long oar, leveraged off the stern.

I've mentioned the premier event of the Yoles Rondes season before in Earwigoagin, a round-the-island tour which takes place in late summer and is the sporting event of the year for the island of Martinique.

The Yoles de la Martinique belong to that genre of large crewed, over-rigged, unballasted sailing beasts, along with the Australian Classic skiff (here and here), the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy, the Bahamian workboats, the Log Canoes, the Coco Island Canoe, and the Hawaiian Sailing Canoe.

A photo, gleaned from the Internet, of a Yole Ronde struggling under full press:

A drone video set to a soothing score which belies the chaos below:



A series of on-board videos put together by "Yoles Martinique", with much shouting onboard (in French). Some things to note:

• It takes two strong men on the oar to steer when the wind comes up.
• Offwind, they will put some of the crew on their poles to leeward to reduce roll momentum (where they seem to spend most of the time underwater).
• Every once in a while, a crew is jettisoned into the briny deep, the assumption being to reduce weight for offwind legs.
• The crews are all smartly kitted out in matching team gear.

My2Fish has done a better job in researching the Yoles and wrote this informative post over on his blog.

What a glorious, photogenic sailing class!

The Water Playground called Hawaii; Paddling Racing and Canoe Surfing

Since Joe over at the blog Horses Mouth has taken a two week break, I'm going to take advantage of his absence and tread partially in his territory, that being surfing videos. This video does feature some surfing but, it is not a surfing video. No wizards on surfboards here. This video features the Hawaiian outrigger canoe; both the paddling and sailing type. There are two parts; the first part about the training and then the competition in an ocean race by the LiveStrong team, paddling a 6 man outrigger canoe (Hawaii's state team sport is outrigger canoe paddling), the second part of the video features sailing and paddling outrigger canoes playing in the surf zone.

Absolutely fascinating..........

molo sail and canoe surf from Anders Carlson on Vimeo.

Music is "All You Deliver" Jose Gonzalez; "Storm" Jose Gonzalez.