Honolulu Weekly

When Chris Owens paddled 76 miles across the Ka’ie’ieloko Channel last August, he had one goal: to get to the other side. No one else had ever done it besides Gene Smith in 1940, and the success of that crossing was purely anecdotal. Owens’ arrival on Kaua’i after 23-plus excruciating hours of paddling from O’ahu put him in the history books, a fait accompli that prompted industry heavyweight Quiksilver to name him the 2005 Waterman of the Year.

Ever since then, friends and strangers have approached him to say ‘Congratulations,’ and inevitably, ‘What’s next?’ His answer became not only a new endeavor, but, beyond getting to the other side, a new purpose. That purpose was to raise public awareness for Malama Na Pua, a traditional Hawaiian healing center based in Wailuku, Maui, and on a personal level, to introduce his 13-year-old son C.J. to the power of an indomitable will. So was born the idea to connect the islands by paddleboard, crossing two channels as father and son. Over a three-week period in July, Chris would add 117 miles to his Kaua’i paddle: from the Big Island to Maui (50 miles), Maui to Lana’i (18.5 miles), Maui to Moloka’i (8.5 miles), Moloka’i to O’ahu (32 miles) and Maui to Kaho’olawe (9 miles).

More than anything, it was the philosophy of Malama Na Pua founders Roland ‘Bula’ Logan and his wife Miho Fukuda that opened the door for faith, fate and luck to conspire along the way. Malama Na Pua empowers people to become their own health advocates through ho’oponopono (making right), ‘elua ho’o lomilomi (massage), la’au lapa’au (medicinal herbs) and pule (prayer)–which form the acronym H.E.L.P. Malama Na Pua means to care for the flowers or, poetically, the children of the nation, the people of Hawai’i. Healing, by the organization’s wisdom, is a process that can be achieved by searching within.

Bula and Miho conducted an early morning blessing for the trip at the grounds of the King Kamehameha Hotel in Kona in front of the Ahu’ena heiau from where King Kamehameha first ruled after uniting the islands in the early 1800s. Their words followed us throughout the journey.

Bula: Chris connecting all the islands together is symbolic of how our kupuna used to look at Hawai’i nei. It included all the islands of the Pacific, all the islands of the worldÖ Hawai’i is the piko, the belly button of the world. That’s why the mother is still giving birth hereÖPeople sometimes don’t connect to Mother Earth. They look at Mother Earth as being something we can overpower, something we can control or we can dominate. They don’t look at it with respect.

Chris knows all about the healing process. When he was 18 months old, he was scalded by hot water on his right leg, forcing 17 major surgeries before the age of 5.

‘It’s been kind of a rough road for me,’ Chris told the crowd at the blessing. ‘Sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven.’

After the ceremony, I stopped in the Kulana room in the hotel lobby where two 200-year-old koa canoes are on exhibit. Posted on an adjacent stand were the words expressed by the great king: E ‘oni wale ‘oukou I ku’u pono ‘a ‘ole e pau./Go on in the righteousness I have followed; it is not finished.

From such great heights

Chris’s journey didn’t have a capitalized rallying cry; it wasn’t a War on Terror or an Expedition for Peace. It was what it was: a paddle across the channels. Simply by virtue of the territory he covered, his handshake was extended throughout the Islands.

If his diplomacy was learned, chances are it came from his father. A bumper sticker on the back of his dad’s black Ford pickup reads: Support our troops. Bring them home now! Bob Owens served in the Army Special Forces. From his lanai, 600 feet above Kona town, he told stories about his tours in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Images of Hezbollah’s attacks flickered on the television inside. Outside, bright-colored birds chirped and distant lines of waves zipped up the bay at Lyman’s. Behind the massive cruise ship resting in Kailua Bay, a brilliant wide-angle sunset gently put the town to bed. Bob turned to softer snapshots of history, reminiscing about a French restaurant in Nha Trang where they served good wine and lobster caught just offshore.

Chris started to tell his dad about the first crossing. ‘Alenuihaha means ‘great billows smashing,’ he said. Flying over from O’ahu, all he saw were ‘white caps eating white caps’ and swells as tall as the telephone poles.

‘That doesn’t sound very good,’ Bob said with a nervous chuckle.

In the other room, escort boat captain Rick Stevens consulted Google Earth to map out the takeoff spot at ‘Upolu Point. After checking Pat Caldwell’s forecast for swell conditions and the National Weather Service for a wind report, he smiled and declared, ‘Smooth sailing.’

The hardened ocean

We were grinding a plate of fresh poke poolside when Kalani Nakoa, a kahu of the heiau, came over and pulled Chris aside. Had we done something wrong? Chris came back to the table with a tiny gray satchel tied with a ti leaf stem, a makana to consecrate his journey.

‘It’s salt from the heiau,’ Chris explained. ‘He said he’s only ever given it away to one other person.’ It was to consecrate his trip.

Bula: We call salt pa’a kai. Pa’a means hard. Kai means ocean. So hardened ocean is salt. Symbolically the salt is used for cleansing, for purifying, for regenerating. Our bodies are made out of salt and fresh water. So when we taste our tears, it’s a little salty. We need that balance of the wai, which is fresh water, and the kai, which is salt water. When you blend that wai kai, that’s a crucial area for propogation and for regeneration. This is where the mullet and the aholehole come in and lay their eggs. This is where the prawns

and the ‘opae and the limu start to grow. Our bodies are part of the ocean, part of the ‘aina. And with this mixture, we have this creative force that allows us to produce and be abundant.

Later that afternoon, Kalani took us for a joyride in his boat. At first, my land-based mentality wouldn’t let go: Would my sunglasses fall of my head? Would the sea spray kill my laptop? If I flung my cell phone overboard, would I regret it? But heading further into open ocean, awareness became honed and worry subsided, replaced by a vitality borne of the indigo sea. Millions of waves collapsed on top of one another and the textured surface sparkled where the sunlight touched it. On the way back to shore, we peeked into some caves along the reef exposed by the low tide. Against the pastel hues of the sunset, hundreds of ‘opihi basked on the rocks, reveling in the out-of-the-way, diver-free zone. A veteran commercial fisherman who has spent his share of time at sea, Captain Rick remarked, ‘These are the moments I’ll always remember.’ It cued Makana’s ‘Flood II’ in my head: ‘We have moments of bliss, and everything else was just traveling timeÖ’

When I got off the boat, everything was salty, but everything felt pure.

What lurks below

The tax collector, Jack the Lawmaker, whatever you want to call him, we’re all well aware who’s the boss in the ocean. And nobody hesitated to tell us that ‘Upolu Point–Chris’s point of departure and the fabled birthplace of King Kamehameha–is regularly frequented by the men in gray suits. Happy hour there is when a 2,000-pound cow tumbles off the cliff.

Sitting under the beach boy stand, hotel security director Kalei Villacorte, who grew up by ‘Upolu Point, told us about a 16-foot tiger shark he saw surf onto a rock to chomp off a 50-pound slab of beef. ‘Guys who pick ‘opihi and go missing–where do you think they go?’ he asked. All of a sudden, taking off from ‘Upolu Point at the crack of dawn seemed a lot less romantic.

The stories served as a reminder that, contrary to our arrogance, man is not the top of the food chain. Miho and Bula had spoken about that earlier:

Miho: In the Hawaiian kumulipo, there is all creation and an order of all the ocean creatures, mountains, plants, animals and finally the youngest one is humansÖ The trees, more than 1,000 years old, they had wisdom. But we don’t listen.

Bula: We can learn from nature. We can see some of us are like the geese that honk a lot, some of us like mynah birds chatting a lot, and some of us are quiet and they’re like the sparrows that just come in and eat and fly. We gotta look at nature and say are we in harmony? Well, man is getting away from being connected to the earth. They’re thinking, we’re just here to selfishly take care of our needs and never mind the future generations. Is progress made if you’re disconnecting yourself from the source and from God and from the land and from the ocean? There’s no progress in that.

Maui bound

George Helm, the Hawaiian activist credited with coining the phrase ‘aloha ‘aina’ who disappeared with Kimo Mitchell in high surf off Kaho’olawe in 1977, wrote in his journal, ‘Faith is the bud that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.’

That was the sensation that pervaded the waters off ‘Upolu Point at 5am, an hour before Chris would jump in the water. It had been a long, cold, sleepless night chugging up the coastline from Kona. On the mauka side of the boat the rain was blowing sideways. Chris suited up and ate an apple and an avocado. When dawn arrived, we could see the windmills on the bluff that in the darkness had been marked only by steadily flashing red lights. The sun shed a safer light on the ocean, rocked by 3- to 4-foot seas and 15- to 20-knot trades.

After a quiet prayer, Chris left the sanctuary of the escort boat, the faithful 43-foot Erika Marie, and paddled 50 yards to the rocky shore’s edge. The time was 6:25am when he set off. That day, the ‘Alenuihaha was not where the storms converged. He kept a steady pace of 4 knots all the way across the channel, frequently visited by curious birds and flying fish.

At one point he halted. A jellyfish had attacked his hands. Undeterred, he asked for soap.

‘Was that a Portuguese Man O’ War?’ a crewmember asked.

‘I couldn’t tell what nationality it was,’ Chris quipped.

By 11am the slopes of Haleakala towered in the distance. ‘Chris,’ Captain Rick called out. ‘You see that rainbow? Guess where it ends?’ He pointed to Maui. ‘That’s where you’re going.’

Chris arrived at Manawainui on the southeast shore of Maui at 1:19pm. He had made it, and he was so full of stoke, he wanted to keep paddling. So he did–another 15 miles before landing on the beach at La Perouse three hours later.

By the time he returned to Erika Marie, he was silhouetted in a bold orange sunset. We motored up to Ma’alaea Harbor to rest for the night. The crew wanted to celebrate, but everything was closed.

We walked through the deserted parking lot of the shopping center past the Maui Aquarium until we reached the gas station that shared space with Carl’s Jr. There, at 10:30pm we scarfed down victory value meals. The food was hot and greasy, more satisfying than you could ever imagine.

Enter C.J.

On July 19, Chris paddled 18.5 miles from Honolua Bay, Maui, intersecting the ‘Au’au and Kalohi Channels, to Lana’i. He considered this the most favorable leg of the trip–dropping into 6-foot troughs and catching 200-yard-long bumps before coming to shore at Shipwrecks, where the colossal WWII concrete oiler Liberty still holds a ghostly vigil.

A few days later, Chris’s son C.J. arrived on Maui. Together they crossed the Pailolo Channel between Maui and Moloka’i.

‘Pailolo means ’slapped silly.’ We kind of found that out when the bumps kept hitting us from the side,’ recalled C.J., who at 13 became the youngest person to ever solo paddle that channel.

When they got to Moloka’i, Penny Martin, one of the two women who sailed on the first Hokule’a voyage from Tahiti to Hawai’i in 1976, was there to greet them, and the Moloka’i canoe paddlers welcomed the crew with lei and a feast. When he heard about the Owens mission, Gregg Fraser at the Hotel Molokai supplied rooms for the crew. The next few days were occupied with fishing, deer hunting and surfing.

‘Everyone was super nice,’ said C.J. ‘Even when I was riding with my dad in the car, random people would wave and go, ‘Hey, you’re those paddleboardersÖ”

Coming home

Dawn broke with anticipation on Sunday morning as a flotilla of escort boats edged toward the shoreline. The 130 paddleboarders in their baby blue and yellow jerseys waited for the green flag, and the 10th-annual Quiksilver Moloka’i to O’ahu race–the world championship of professional paddleboarding–was on. With 10- to 15-knot winds out of the east-northeast and 2- to 4-foot seas, the Kaiwi Channel, save for the mean current, was merciful.

Taking turns paddling a 13-foot stockboard, Chris and C.J. finished the race in 6 hours and 47 minutes, taking fourth place in their division. As they rounded the corner at Portlock Point, Koko Crater rose up behind them. They paddled effortlessly toward the finish line, actualizing what Bula had described.

Bula: It’s so natural to be jumping and playing in the rivers and to be in the mountains and to be in the ocean. It’s so natural to put your fingers into the earth. It’s so natural to plant your own foodÖ We’re actually symbolically the ‘aina. The mountain begins from the crown of our head, and it slopes down our shoulders and it ends up at the bottom of our feet, which are the connection back to the earth. Being the bridge of heaven and earth, we have a responsibility to create heaven on earth. And that’s by the right usage of mind, the right usage of action, the right usage of words.

I asked Bula whether Chris could represent all these Hawaiian values even though he’s not Hawaiian. ‘It has nothing to do with actually being Hawaiian that represents Hawaiiana or Hawaiian things,’ he replied. ‘We can transcend all these man-made boundaries, man-made identities, man-made definitions of who we are. In the old days, there were no separations. Everyone was a people.’

Until that moment, I had thought of the channels between the Islands as separate bodies of water. But indeed, they are all the same ocean. Then it dawned on me: Chris’s trip was a reconnection of the Islands that we have considered distinct for so long. Each grain of sand that followed him from one landmass to the next simply reunited a younger piece of Hawai’i with an older one. C.J.’s indoctrination was a model for the new generation. And Malama Na Pua introduces modern islanders to traditional wisdom. These rites of passage effectively perpetuate what always was. Wherever our journeys take us, we go there to come back again.

For more information about Malama Na Pua, call (808) 244-9008.

On August 6, Owens and Maui paddleboarder Kiva Rivers paddled from near Makena Beach past Molokini across ‘Alalakeiki Channel to Kaho’olawe. When they reached two miles off the island, they attached fishing lures and trolled in to the 30-fathom ledge about 40 yards away from the cliffs, the closest they could go by law. Out of respect for the island’s authorities, they turned around at that point and headed back to Maui.