Race to Feature Top Paddlers : 18 Teams Will Compete in Newport Outrigger Canoe Event

Racing outriggers is a popular sport in Hawaii. There, you can see paddlers by the dozens skimming along the ocean surface in perfectly balanced outrigger canoes.

But you don’t have to travel across the Pacific to see some of the world’s best paddlers.

More than 400 of them--including the current world champs--will take to the ocean in the 12th Annual Newport Cannery Canoe Race here next Saturday.

The race, one of the largest in the state, is sponsored by the Newport Outrigger Club and will include competition among 18 teams from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Among the contestants will be the current men’s and women’s world champions from the Offshore Canoe Club in Newport Beach.

“Both our men’s and women’s team set world records when they won the title this year,” says Jerry Guy, Offshore Canoe Club president. The world title is determined by a grueling 41-mile race from Molokai to Oahu. The women’s team has won the Hawaiian race each of the past four years.

The outrigger canoe racing season runs from April through September and includes local races up and down the coast and also a crossing to Santa Catalina Island. Six-person teams compete in Hawaiian-style outrigger canoes about 40 feet long and weighing 400 pounds.

Outrigger canoe racing is popular in Hawaii and in Tahiti, but it is not as well-known in the United States. However, the number of canoe clubs in California has grown over the past few years. There are now 18 clubs in Southern California, including two in Dana Point, three in Newport Beach and one in Seal Beach.

Paddlers such as Guy are devoted to the sport.

“It helps if you are crazy,” he says with a laugh. “But seriously, you have to be extremely competitive, extremely disciplined. It requires weight training, endurance training, diet. This is a sport for people seriously interested in it.”

Guy is a former Los Angeles police officer who lost his left leg in a traffic accident. He has been involved in the sport since 1982. “I was always involved in athletics and was looking around for something to do. This seemed ideal. I loved it from the first moment.”

Guy, who spends about 30 hours a week on the sport, says he has no problem competing with the two-legged paddlers. “We race nearly every Saturday” during the season, he says, “and practice two or three times a week.”

Orange County paddlers range in age from 10 to late 50s, says Guy, who is 47.

Many are athletes such as Bob Stafford, 38, who came to it from another sport. Stafford has been paddling for 10 years, but he used to play volleyball and he was a member of the 1976 Olympic team.

“I played professionally until 1980,” he says. “I went from volleyball to paddling because it was a nice sport that did not require the pounding that volleyball did. It was a great exercise. It is just something that keeps me in shape, and it doesn’t hurt my body. After playing volleyball for 10 to 15 years, you have a lot of aches and pains.”

Paddling is a family affair for Stafford. His wife, Karen, also is a member of the Offshore Canoe Club, as is his sister, Angela Stafford, and his sister-in-law, Sharon Attlesey.

“Anyone can join the organization,” Guy says, “but you should have an athletic background.”

Dues are $40 a month for five months or $200 a year. The price includes the use of the club’s five boats. The club now has 120 members at all skill levels, from novice to world champ.

Only the best paddlers compete in events such as the Molokai race, however.

“Right how we have 64 girls, but only the 12 best make the Molokai team,” says Mindy Clark, the women’s team coach.

What makes the Molokai women’s team so good, Clark says, is its commitment to excellence. “We have one of the older teams,” she says, with the average age being somewhere between 26 and 32.

“We practice four days a week. It requires a lot of time. And this is a team sport: You’ve got to get six girls in one boat to go. You can’t just rely on yourself.”

Leslie Davis, part of the winning team, has competed in the event since 1979. “I’ve been on every team that has paddled the women’s race since its inception--ever since they first allowed women to make the crossing,” says Davis, who works as a personal trainer at a sports club in Irvine.

Davis believes that team work is part of the reason for the group’s success. “It is hard to get a group of people to work together well on anything,” she says. “We have gotten to a level of understanding about what is important and let go of anything that might cause people to clash. Our focus is on the boat and helping each other. That is a wonderful feeling.”

For Davis, paddling is more than winning. “I am in love with the ocean,” she says. “I absolutely love it. It is a life-giving force to me. The movement of the boat across the water is challenging. I had to say to myself, ‘Why do you paddle, Leslie?’ And to realize that it is so much more than winning.”

The Newport Cannery Race will consist of three events, all starting from the 18th Street Beach on the bay side of the Newport Peninsula. The novice race for men and women begins at 8 a.m. and will follow a course around Lido Isle, finishing at the 18th Street Beach. Immediately after, at 8:45, the women’s race will begin. Paddlers will race out to the Balboa Pier, around a marker and back to the 18th Street Beach. The men’s event will begin at 11 a.m., with contestants paddling out to the Newport Pier and back to finish in front of the Cannery Restaurant.

Recommended viewing locations include the 18th Street Beach, the Lido Isle Bridge, Balboa Pier, Newport Pier, the Newport jetty and the Cannery Restaurant.