There are a few things that are really important in Hawaiian life, and acquisition of such items needs to be considered by looking at all angles. In an earlier blog, I was talking about slippahs (or slippers), as by far the most crucial of all items. A pretty close second is the Beach Chair.
As you can imagine, before I set foot on these islands, I was completely oblivious to the fine nuances of slippah selection, as well as the purchase of beach chairs, and frankly, I thought one-size-fits-all (in both cases). As I discovered, this is far from the truth and some of that I had to learn the hard way. Today, I consider myself a Beach Chair Aficionado as much as a Slippah Aficionado.
Today, I will let you in on the secrets of beach chair selection, and especially the Regatta-Saturday Chair, and will introduce to you my personal and faithful selection.
Beach chairs are similar to cars – they are highly personal, appeal to individual taste in shape and color, and you often like certain features, while others just add unnecessary weight or have features that you will never take advantage of. The main factors to consider are: on what surface you will use this chair (beach, football game, garage), how long you will sit in the chair (just brief moments interspersed with having to get up, or long periods of time), how far you have to carry the chair from your truck to the place where it will be enjoyed, and generally what add-ons are important to you.
So let’s analyze this various points for a while (by now, you have probably figured out that writing about yet another paddling week is not all that stimulating and frankly borders on the downright boring).
Generally speaking, one can park the car or truck fairly close to where the regatta takes place, and as a matter of fact, in Hilo, paddlers back their trucks very close to their beach and therefore have access to it within a few steps. In Kona, parking is a bit more difficult to find and you can easily find yourself faced with a ten minute walk down the hill. Therefore, the first essentials of a beach chair are that it is foldable and that it has straps to carry it wherever you need to go. My chair can easily be carried like a backpack and actually feels quite comfortable, even for longer walks.
The chair is made of waterproof canvas, so can easily hosed off outside the house and dries in minutes, so can be kept clean and neat after each use.
When you are at the regatta all day, you have quite a few things with you – spare clothes, hats, sunglasses, food, and much more. As the chair sits in the sand, you don’t really want all of this sitting on the ground, and having it in bags is not really practical as they might blow away or be misplaced in other ways. My chair has a very practical back pocket, where all the paddling essentials for a whole day comfortably fit in.
Being at the regatta from 7am to 5pm is exhausting, so you might want to take a little nap around mid-day. To accommodate that urge, my chair folds nicely down (guaranteed much further than any airplane seat in the United States), and even has a built in neck rest for a relaxing pre-race snooze.
The paddle is an essential piece of equipment, and not much racing would happen without it. In addition to that, a racing paddle costs upwards of $250, which means that we treat it with utmost care and diligence. Since there are literally thousands of paddles at a regatta, and as many people walking around, you want to make sure that your paddle is accounted for at all times and is also protected from the traffic around it. As you can see in the next picture, my 52 inch long paddle sticks nicely on one side of the chair without hindering the full movement of all elements of it, and for some added assurance that will still be there when I need it, I have a short piece of flexible rope that is tied around the frame of the chair and the paddle, just in case someone mistakes my paddle for theirs (that can happen, right?).
And finally, the “Pièce de résistance”, the most American of all inventions, the cup- or bottle-holder. My chair has one attached to one of the armrests and whatever the most appropriate beverage for the occasion (or time of the day) may be, it will fit into the holder for easy access (yes, I know that there are no alcoholic beverages allowed on state beaches or parks, something that was pointed out to me painfully clear a few years back at the finish of an epic Moloka`i Hoe canoe race, but I will save that story for another day).
Anyway, now you know what the ingredients are for the perfect canoe regatta beach chair, for me anyway.
Back to paddling: at this point in the season, weeks start to run into each other – the pressure is on to perform on Saturdays, and the whole week centers on finding another, new angle to get the job done during the race. Last Saturday’s race was filmed by our club, and by Sunday, we had detailed analytics on stroke rates, number of changes (from side to side), where we gained on the competition and where we lost time. It also came with details about each individual paddler’s performance, which then prompted some changes in the boat during practice. The crew stayed the same (which meant that we now have been paddling together for two weeks, and makes a big difference in how we blend with each other), but the line-up changed. Seat 1 stayed the same, I moved from seat 2 to seat 5, last week’s seat 4 moved to seat 2, seat 3 stayed the same and seat 5 moved to 4. It all sounds like a game of musical chairs, but we keep trying to find the best combination based on body weight (I am the lightest at 175 pounds, with the top man probably weighing in at 225 or more), arm length, which dictates stroke length, and power-to-weight ratio. As the boat has to turn around the flag, you want the heaviest bodies in seat 3 and 4 as those seats simply pivot in place rather than swing like 1 and 2 or 5 and 6.
We felt pretty good on Thursday after practice and had a good game plan on how we would accelerate, settle in down the stretch, make the turn and then race back.
Hilo offered us a typical “Hilo-day”, minimal sun, lots of rainstorms and high winds coming through all day long, and while some races took place in decent conditions, others were conducted in heavy rains and howling winds.
When our race came up around 3:30pm or so, the water was choppy (which made the boat feel unstable on the way down the lane), but it also helped us a bit on the way back. As we have come to expect by now, it was a race between us and the men from Puna, and we did race the entire way seat-to-seat with them, but in the end, were able to etch them out by 64/100th of a second for another win, the first back-to-back between us so far this year (due to the conditions, our times were not all that fast - 3 minutes 51.03 seconds for us vs. 3 minutes 51.67 seconds for Puna), but we did have to fastest half-mile time of the day.
Three more races to go here on Hawai`i Island, and we are now 4 points ahead of Puna for first seed at the States on August 4th on O`ahu. Now we really need to get into our heads and play a mental game so that we can win one more next week and have a comfortable lead (without getting disqualified at any of the races and giving up valuable points).
A hui hou.
Chris
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