Hey Byron,

All true, my first time on an OC1, pretty full on Maliko, fell over in the harbour a few times then out into the wind. All cool, plenty of great rides, so fast and so much fun.

So off Spartans, way out in the purple water we decide to swap over. Just shuffling the F16 and the OC1, all of a sudden Larry's super light F16 is doing cartwheels in the wind.

He jumps into the OC1 and chases down the F16, and I'm swimming with my paddle, and swimming and swimming....after maybe 15 minutes Larry is getting further away with the wind and the swell and I'm starting to think about how far I have to swim in to the beach - long way.

Then Larry gets out of the OC1 and his body acts like a sea anchor and ten minutes later I've caught him. Sure was a nice feeling touching that old F16.

Funny thing was that morning Bill F and I had taken some ladies for a paddle and at one point we didn't have enough boards so I said no problem I'll just swim along so I was already pretty swimming pooped.

Sure was nice to touch the sand inside the harbour when we finally got there, but I actually had a blast both on the OC1 and the F16 - quality Maliko

Found out later that on the same run Livio's girlfriend Rebecca had a shark come up super fast and bang into her board - glad I heard that story after I got in...

Yes, that was a fun adventure for sure. Wind was 20+ mph gusting 30+.
I was curious about the actual time we were separated, so I had a look at the gps data. The scary part lasted about 5 minutes. This was when I was on top of the canoe - holding the board next to me. The wind was strong enough to push me along as fast as JC was swimming - maybe a bit faster. It seemed like forever. I considered lashing the board to the canoe and paddling to him, but it was so windy I was afraid of damaging the board. So, I jumped in and put my right arm around the tail of the canoe, left around the tail of the board and kicked toward JC. This slowed my forward drift about 1mph, which was enough for JC to catch me. That section was 10 minutes, for a total of 15.

Looking back, it would have been best for one of us to immediately start swimming for the board - without a paddle. The other guy in the oc could easily grab the long paddle and run down the swimmer, maybe helping him along to the board.

It really gets crazy when the wind is 30+ gusting 40+. Last month's MCKC race from Keanae to the harbor (long course) also had a short course of maliko to the harbor. As I passed maliko I passed a few standups. It was very big that day. About 2 miles before the harbor entrance I heard screaming far out to my right. A standup paddler's leash had broken, and they were swimming. Their board was long gone, miles away. Thankfully, the safety guy was nearby on his PWC. He was stopped, but he was looking upwind, away from me. It took about 3 minutes to flag him down. That seemed like an eternity. The swimmer was about 150 feet outside and upwind of me. It would have taken me 15 minutes to paddle upwind to the swimmer. I didn't know how long they had been out there and if they were in real danger of going under. He was screaming like a shark was eating him to get my attention, but then settled down as I began to wave to the PWC. The PWC zoomed over and grabbed him and all was well. Crazy day. Biggest swells I've ever seen before we hit maliko.