Hawaii Kai Run Shuttle

This short video shows what we do every weekend running our trailer to shuttle paddlers to do the 8.5 mile Hawaii Kai downwind run.  Stay tuned for videos of the run itself and tips on bump riding

Wet Feet Eco Tours

Wondering about fun ways to spend a morning on Oahu? Come join us for an Eco-Tour in Kaneohe Bay! Tours depart daily at 9am from Paradise Bay Resort! Call or e-mail us for more information and reservations.

808-373-7873
http://www.wetfeethawaii.com

Jeff Chang’s Molokai OC 1 Adventure…

Its always enjoyable doing the channel because its a chance to think about nothing else for hours except accomplishing the task at hand while enjoying the beauty of the ocean. There is a bit of suffering (I’m sure there is lot more suffering for those racing to place or win) but there are also moments of extreme clarity as your body responds to changes in how it burns fuel and creates energy. It requires almost constant focus except when you are awakened by things like a dolphin playing with you and crossing your bow, whales jumping, or flying fish buzzing in front of you. Then you are reminded of how amazing this place is that God created for us.

This year there was no wind! At the start and the days up to the race I was very disappointed because I was so looking forward to surfing the canoe all the way across. You can catch and surf every little bump and its way faster than a standup. At the start the boat wakes did provide some interesting little rides and from 1/3 to 1/2 channel there were actually some swells to ride but from halfway to Sandys it was pretty lake like. Once at Sandys there were tiny bumps to ride and my boat captain Cory said there was wind at our back but I did not feel it. Cory took me on a great line. As you can see he made a course correction where I was heading too south. A knowledgeable captain is key. I was aiming for Kokohead for most of the race but you can see how the current pushed me north then the slight wind pushed me south. I know it was a good line because I passed about 5 boats that were south of me as we went from Allen Davis to Hanauma. I got a great wave at China Walls that took me all the way to poles and it was high tide so you could surf all the way in without worrying about the reef. So it was a pretty successful day, I got a good workout, and it was another great experience.

Free SUP Clinic, Saturday December 11

Come join Morgan Hoesterey, Jenny Kalmbach, and Nicole Madosik in Hawaii Kai for a free SUP Clinic on Saturday, December 11 from 9am to 11am. Bring your board and your friends and come spend a few hours talking paddling with us!

California Standup Adventures

The last few weeks for me were spent in California. I started out in Santa Cruz for the Jay Moriarity paddleboard race, a race that is dedicated to a surfer/waterman that passed away several years ago. I have always wanted to do that race since Jay Moriarity was one of my favorite surfers and someone I looked up to growing up. Jennifer Holcomb and I have Duke Brouwer and John Griffith from Surftech to thank for inviting us up and giving us a place to stay. The race was really fun, there was so much life in the water up there, everything from pelicans and cormorants to sea lions and sea otters.

Jen Holcomb and my sleeping arrangement in Santa Cruz.

The amazing view from our lodging in Santa Cruz.

Back in Southern California, the weather has been uncharacteristically gloomy for July, which foiled our plans to go and paddle around Catalina Island for a few days. In an effort to ditch the gray skies, Jen, my Dad and I piled into his truck, stopped by the Bark Factory to pick up a couple of boards and then headed up to Tahoe. My aunt and uncle live on the South Shore of the lake right up against the Upper Truckee marsh. Trout Creek is a small stream that runs thorough the marsh and turned out to be the perfect place to use the standup boards.

We spent the morning floating down the stream, trying to maneuver tiny “rapids” as they presented themselves, eventually making it down to the lake. The only problem with our plan was, once we were completely downstream, we had to get back upstream again, which meant paddling against the current and back up the “rapids” (and I use the word rapids in the loosest sense). This provided us with quite a bit of entertainment and we proved that simple minds do indeed appreciate simple pleasures.

Going down the rapids is quite a bit easier than going back up again.

(For a short video of our Trout Creek escapades, click HERE)

For our second day in Tahoe we thought we would try something a little different. Several years ago, I had been on a hike through some amazing fields of wildflowers up to an alpine lake which was so amazingly beautiful, I have been looking forward to getting back up there ever since. Besides being a fun and fairly easy hike, it seemed like a perfect place to paddle if we could manage to get a standup board up there. Always up for a challenge, Jen and I each grabbed an end of a Surftech/Bark 14′ Expedition and started hiking and quickly discovered that where there should have been wildflowers, there was ice and snow instead.

There weren't many wildflowers, but there was a lot of snow.

It was hard to be disappointed that the hike wasn’t what we thought it was going to be since the snow was just as spectacular as the wildflowers had been years before. After 3 miles of hiking at 9,000 feet carrying a 14′ paddleboard, the lake was our reward. The late season winter had formed small icebergs in the lake that made it seem more like Antarctica than California. We spent the day paddling around the ice and snow, fly fishing from the standup boards and just having a great time.

It looks cold, but it was around 70 degrees outside

Jen trying her hand at standup paddle fly fishing

Overall California this time was so much fun. There may have been no sun in Southern California, but Tahoe definitely didn’t disappoint, and I can’t wait to get back up there for the Tahoe Nalu race in August. Rumor has it that Joe Bark and his crew are up for a bit of a road trip, and I’m looking forward to it for sure.

-Morgan

Reality Check

Wayne was my navigator during the last Molokai race.  He is a prolific sailor, he has sailed between the islands and really seems to be on it as far as the channels go. 

Since navigating the channels is not necessarily my strong suit, I have enlisted Wayne once again to help get me across the channels.

Out first meeting went well, and was definitly a reality check about the Alenuihaha Channel, between Hawaii and Maui…

Reality Check from Morgan Hoesterey on Vimeo.

If it is actually possible to be “cool by association,” then today, I am the coolest person in the world.

that’s right…as in Lopez.

It is not very often that I get nerdy over another person. I don’t really get all excited around celebrities, musicians are cool, but they don’t really turn me into a frother (with Jimmy Buffett I came close, but I managed to hold myself together), however, for some reason, every time I have the opportunity to hang out with Gerry Lopez, I turn into a huge geek. It is like I can’t control myself. Maybe it’s because he is Mr. Pipeline, or maybe it is because he is just such a nice guy, I turn into the world’s biggest nerd when he is around.

Duane De Soto, Gerry Lopez, Jeff Chang

This morning, I received a call about doing a Hawaii Kai run with Gerry Lopez and the Rainbow Sandals crew. After the initial shock of being invited on such a trip wore off, I threw my stuff in the car and headed out to Hawaii Kai to meet them. I ended up being a little late (which should come as no surprise to those of you who know me well), so I had to paddle to where everyone was from a different location. I pulled into where I was going to paddle from and met up with Duane De Soto. Now, at this point, the cool factor of my day was sitting pretty at about a 20 on a scale of 1 to 10, but having Duane De Soto go too pushed it up to about a 30. The two of us paddled into the Hawaii Kai Marina to meet with the rest of the guys.

That’s Gerry on the left and Duane on the right…I don’t even care that I’m distorted by the water spot.

In the marina we met up with Pat Huber from Rainbow Sandals (for those of you keeping score, we are now around 45), Jeff Chang (67…), Herbie Titcomb (100…), and Herbie’s cousin George. Once everyone was in one place, we headed out to do the Hawaii Kai run. Not just because of the company, this particular run was one of the best ones that I have ever done. The wind was strong, there were lots of fun bumps, and it was just one of those days which really remind me that I love to standup paddle. Downwind runs can be so much fun, and if you haven’t tried one, maybe you should. Perhaps a good opportunity will be the distance race during the June Rainbow Sandals Battle of the Paddle in Hawaii. Just a suggestion.

Pat Huber. In case you didn’t notice, that’s Gerry Lopez in the background. I have a problem.

Herbie Titcomb, the Legend.

The Latest from Destination 3 (degrees)

Because it’s fun…

Welcome to our world. Here, challenges do not go uncontested and dreams are never not mostly reality. At least in our heads.

Just a few days ago we sent our channel crossing idea out into the world. We thought it was a little different from the start, but we believed in it. We also couldn’t help but be a little scared that maybe we were the ones who were a little different.

Jenny winning the Molokai to Oahu paddleboard race

Crossing each of the Hawaiian channels on standup paddleboards is a big deal; we recognized that as each of us stared at Morgan with “Are you serious?” stretching from a question on the inside to smile on the outside. Laird and Dave have done it. Much faster and stronger than we will. But they’re Laird and Dave, and that’s the beauty of challenges: they’re personal.

Our challenge is Morgan’s fault: the product of a creative, wanderlusty brain infatuated with discovery, at home inside an athlete. We love her.

morgan wants to be a cave monster when she grows up

Morgan is the first woman to complete the Oahu to Molokai race, solo, on a standup paddleboard. She did it because someone told her she couldn’t. She did it because she already knew she was wanted to try all of the channels, and someone else had told her that if given the opportunity, “you should always jump.” He meant tethered to some sort of parachute contraption, but Morgan was just stoked he didn’t tell her not to go.

Morgan approached Jenny at the Molokai race the following year, this past summer. Jenny had just won the race out of a field of eight incredible female paddlers. As Morgan puts it, “She didn’t hate the idea.” The adventure basket had a shape.

Jenny is our fire. The passion, dedication and talent that keep her on top of the podiums are just who she is, and, now, who we are too. Her favorite thing is to cross items off of lists. So we give her the hard lists. Like finding captains and boats, and the course, and money. When she comes back a few hours later, questions answered, with pictures, the rest of realize that maybe we could be a little faster setting up the Twitter account. We really love her.

Jenny surfing somewhere in the Pacific

If you ask either of them why they would do such a thing as paddle nearly 300 miles along a course that crosses at least two of the ocean’s most dangerous channels – battling wind, swell, sun, themselves, and maybe even giant squid – they’d smile at you and say, “Because it’s fun.”

And they mean it.

So, welcome to our adventure. We are so excited that you are here! Stay a while, and bring your friends.

From now until May, and probably a little beyond we will tell our story on facebook and at http://www.destination3.com. From finding sponsors – sneak peek: it’s really hard and a full-time job, but we’ll tell you everything we know – to training videos, and interviews with shapers, boat captains, channel experts, and the other amazing people who are helping to make this reality, we’ll show you how we did it. And come April, we’ll take you along, electronically, of course, on our adventure. Because, after all, life is too short for competition, and “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So throw off those bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the wind in your sails. Explore, Dream. Discover.” Thank you, Mr. Twain.

For more information about Destination 3 degrees, please check out our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/destination3

Sea Sweeping

If you would like to do some sea sweeping of your own, come into Wet Feet and ask us about our Eco Bags! Bags that are designed to carry trash that you pick up while you are out stand up paddling.