Molokai 2011
DeAnne2011-05-18T00:55:58+00:00Thanks to Eva for getting the water off the escort and on our skis...ok no wind..gonna change out there. No white caps, gonna change out there. Sunscreen on, life jacket in the footwell, leash on, footbrace adjustment, Hawaiian prayer, a little chatty chatty and off we go. A sea of green and orange shirts..green had escort boats, and the orange were exempt.
Itailian double takes off likes its a 1000m sprint..we're on wake, Robin and Carter on wake and ok, not too hard. We seperate a bit..settle in, then escort boat crap wakes come from all over....hey I was prepared for this..ok not so much, life jacket floats up and out of the footwell onto my lap, footwells and my seat is flooded as we back up over the wakes. Carter and Robin the same... we are right next to them as it settles down. Italians number 1 have finished their 1000 meter sprints and have mellowed for their long day out there...bye bye. Italy number 2 goes by later with their ski on the escort boat..later they said in best broken English.."this a different sport out there, we flat water paddlers, we will learn and come back."
We take a North line for a bit..right behind Dean Gardiner...he's surfing small stuff, we are grinding for big stufff.....Carter/Robin double is south and seperating a bit. We are not worried because the runs are gonna pick up and we will out surf them...thought that for the next 3 1/2 hours. It got bumpy and lumpy and flat and calm and small and hot and hot and hot. My gps froze at 1 hour 20. 12.4 km speed and how far to go? Shoot, Pat had to yell out stats so I didn't go crazy with no info..how far, 30 km oh great...how fast 14km,11 km, on rhumb line yes, what? YES stop asking me.
Felt terrific from 2 hours to 3. Then sorta as expected the mind starts playing tricks on the over spent body. We never really had good runs, they were so hard to catch and not long when you did. The little chop was not good working for on the double. My hands suffered like I remember. Patrick did really well considering he had an old gal type behind him. I tried not to complain, I never cried, well until later, and we made it solid in the chip chop along the wall. Pat even caught a big wave, actually 3 of them on the way in. He asked me if I was ok to catch the wave and I just said whatever, I'm not looking ,do what you want. On the biggest one, we were angling left so hard that I actually considered jumping out....would have ripped my leg right off or the foot strap or broken the leash,so glad I had enough sense just to hang on.
So we finished just under 4 hours...not happy with that as the first time we did double we were well under in like 3:48 or something...but looking back it was huge and working that year and so I have to be happy with how we faired with the tame ocean this time. A huge mention to Robin and Carter...they did fantastic, maybe they suffered like we did..Robin probably more than fit, fit fit Carter. It was awesome to have a crew to race...made it more challenging for sure.
Oh and...never ever take the red eye home....biggest mistake of the weekend.
And finally a massive thank you to Courtney Seto, who raced as well and then spent the entire afternoon helping me and Patrick (well I layed on the grass) loading the trailer. Friends like you are what make this worth doing....
