WAILUA — The spirit of the season just coincided with the spirit of the Kai Nani canoe club Sunday. “Paddling is to get fun,” said Kai Nani president Francis Lopez, who is also the steersperson. “To have good paddling, you
WAILUA — The spirit of the season just coincided with the spirit of the Kai Nani canoe club Sunday.
“Paddling is to get fun,” said Kai Nani president Francis Lopez, who is also the steersperson. “To have good paddling, you need to get fun. This is what it’s all about.”
Kai Nani meets once or sometimes twice a week to paddle. Sunday, the small club’s normal practice day, just happened to coincide with Christmas Eve.
“It’s not about volume. It’s in the quality of paddling,” Lopez said. “This is what the club is about.”
Befitting the dual club mantra of fun and quality, Cindy Anazalone suggested they show up with Santa hats to compliment the red club shirts.
“We always do things like this,” Lopez said. “The spirit of paddling is in staying with the spirit of things.”
Lopez said they welcome groups like the Boy Scouts or other young adult groups interested in learning more about the Hawaiian culture.
Adults are welcome, too.
“All they gotta do is show up at 11 a.m.,” he said.
The red-hatted paddlers stroking their white, six-man canoe was too much for kayaker Beth Fisher to resist, and she snapped a photograph as the group swept past her kayak on the Wailua River.
“I wanted to make sure I had my house in the picture,” she said, as the crew came ashore for a brief rest.
When they did, Fisher took them up on an offer to hop in the canoe for a paddle upriver, a first-time experience for the kayaker.
“This is our Christmas present to you,” Lopez said. “We do this all the time. Tourists, kids, anyone who wants to paddle.”
Lopez said normally they paddle out of Hanama‘ulu Bay, but the past two weeks they’ve come to the Wailua River for some flat-water experience.
“Last week, the waves were hitting you before you even got in the canoe,” paddler Jay Armstrong said. “That was pretty bad.”
Lopez, who paddled for Stanford Achi since he was 10, said his goal is to teach paddlers about that feeling that comes at the end of the race when the body is relaxed and the mind is clear.
“It’s not like the start of the race when everything is tight,” Lopez said. “Paddling should be fun and every paddle should be like that feeling at the end of the race.”
Lopez said Achi was like a sergeant in the Marines.
“He puts you in shape,” Lopez said. “But that leads to better discipline and focus so you can learn to relax and be humble.”
Lopez said the paddlers who were out Sunday represented the core of the club.
“It’s the guy behind you that makes you, and you make the guy behind you,” he said. “It takes six to make one, and one to make six.”
