My wife races OC6s with the Waikiki Beach Boys team and she just got back from a weekend of racing with her team in Kona. OC6s are 6-man canoes for those that aren't familiar with the term. Here's a picture of her with her boat.
She shared a story with me involving a couple of PWC operators off of Kona that pissed off a bunch of people, myself included. I wanted to share this with everybody here so that this group is more aware of OC boats.
She and her team were in her 2nd race, and near the finish line after a 20+ mile race, working hard for a 2nd place finish. The other boat and hers had been swapping leads for the 2nd place spot for a long while now and they were all pushing themselves 110 percent.
A couple of PWC operators crossed right in front of them and decided to ride just upwind and forward of them resulting in 1) Their wake hitting their boat constantly at a bad angle, causing the boat to require more effort on the team to maintain their speed. This also threw off their paddling as they had to constantly adjust their paddle depths on the wake that was hitting them. 2) The wake actually caused water to spill overboard and into the boaat, adding more weight and slowing the team down. Jennifer had to stop paddling just to bail some water out of the boat as they neared the finish line. 3) The PWCs were ridden upwind so their fumes blew right into the team and they had to suck in exhaust fumes for several minutes while breathing hard.
Even though Jennifer's team barely managed to squeak into 2nd place, the whole team was pissed. I'm sure this story has been spread around the OC racing community by now and there's most likely a big group of people pissed about this as well. This does not bode well for us as PWC operators.
Keep your eye out for OC1 and OC6 paddlers, be considerate and think about what our wakes might be doing to them, and where our exhaust fumes may be going. If you see other PWC operators doing this, please do something about it.
Mahalo.
-Paul
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