Press
The New York Times, August 2010
Staying Ashore, or Wading In … Canoeing | Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, Brooklyn
Paddlers of six-oared outrigger canoes, met by loud cheers of supporters, crashed onto the rocky shores of Dumbo on Saturday afternoon after completing the 2010 Liberty World Outrigger Competition, a 15-mile race around New York Harbor.
“The reason why people travel all over the world to come here for this race,” said Ed Acker, a race organizer, “is for the chance to paddle in an outrigger canoe in front of the Statue of Liberty.” Racers came from as far off as England and Hawaii.
Outrigger canoes originated in Polynesia as fishing and transportation vessels, but racing them became most popular in Hawaii and Tahiti.
“This is a really cool sport”, said Mr. Acker, 49, a Brooklyn native. “It’s all about fun and aloha, and it’s a pure thing.
“There is nothing commercial involved, “ he added. “It’s all about people hanging out and racing hard and then we go party hard.”
Honolulu Star Bulletin – June 2002
Hawaii Wins Again in NY Outrigger Race
NEW YORK >> Team Hawaii has no peer at the Liberty World Challenge outrigger canoe race.
Hawaii won the men’s division of the paddling event yesterday in New York City for the fifth consecutive year.
Hawaii won the race, which has been run six straight years, in 1 hour, 57 minutes, 25 seconds — more than eight minutes ahead of the closest competitor.
The 14-mile course passes Governors’ Island, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island before finishing at Pier 84.
Nine countries, and 100 teams, were represented in the race, including the United States, Australia, Japan, Tahiti, Brazil and Germany.
Members of Team Hawaii were James Foti, John Foti, Mike Judd, Thiebert Lusia’a, Keali’i Pa’aina and Walter Guild, the team captain and manager.
Newport Aquatic Center (Calif.) finished second in the race in 2:05.38 and Manuiwa (Conn.) placed third in 2:07.56.
Team Hawaii did not send a women’s team to the Liberty World Challenge this year.
Offshore Canoe Club (Calif.) won the women’s event in 2:16.05.
Team Hawaii returns to the islands tomorrow.
The New York Times, June 1999
PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD…LOWER MANHATTAN
Outrigger Canoe Racing At Seaport’s Hawaii Day
In honor of Team Hawaii’s participation in the Liberty World Challenge Outrigger Championship in New York Harbor on Saturday, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau will present Hawaiian-themed events at South Street Seaport Thursday through Saturday.
Team Hawaii — the men’s and women’s all-star teams of outrigger canoe paddlers from Hawaii’s four main islands — will discuss outrigger paddling and the history of their sport. (The teams are pictured above, at Lanikai Beach, Oahu.)
See this article on NYTimes.com
The New York Times, July 1998
Hawaii at Home: Outrigger Races
To the bikers, bladers and joggers cruising along the path next to the West Side Highway, it had to look like a scene from the Elvis film ”Blue Hawaii,” as directed by Fellini. More than 200 paddlers in bikinis or baggy print shorts, sandals and shades milled about a flotilla of 45-foot outrigger canoes on Pier 25, which juts into the Hudson River in the shadow of the World Trade Center. A fiberglass iguana, as big as an outrigger and mounted to a trailer where a Brazilian artist sculptures the wood pilings he finds floating in the Hudson, stares ominously over the West Side Highway.
This aquatic anomaly — urban outrigging — was nonexistent in New York City until three years ago. But the Liberty World Challenge, a 15-mile paddling marathon, now in its second year, has already become the sport’s premier event on the East Coast, drawing dozens of teams from outrigger hot beds like Hawaii and California, as well as Vermont, Maine and Canada, where outrigger sightings were once as common as U.F.O.’s. Read the completed article on NYTimes.com
The New York Times, June 1998
The event, the second annual Liberty World Challenge, was a 15-mile paddling sprint that organizers said had become the premier outrigger competition on the East Coast.
The canoes were molded fiberglass, not hewn koa wood, and racers wore baseball caps and Spandex, but the spirit of the ancient sport prevailed. Organizers and team members, some of whom prayed together in Hawaiian before their races, said they hoped to bring mana, the Polynesian life force, to New York City. After all, they pointed out, Manhattan is an island, just like Oahu.
Well, sort of.
”In Hawaii, it’s a little different,” said Todd Bradley, one of seven members of Team Hawaii, all-star paddlers from Hawaiian canoe clubs who are serving this weekend as outrigger racing’s ambassadors to New York. ”We have beaches.” Read the complete article on NYTimes.com
CNN – July 1997
Outrigger racing creates quite a splash …
… from the South Seas to the Big Apple
NEW YORK (CNN) — They came, they rowed, and — perhaps — they conquered.
Teams of six in outrigger canoes, paddling a daunting course. Not along the shorelines of Bali or Oahu or Pago Pago, but around lower Manhattan.
Under Lady Liberty’s astonished gaze, and with historic Ellis Island as a backdrop, New York held its first-ever international outrigger canoe race this weekend.
Teams from Maine to Florida took part in the contest. Of course, New York was represented, too. No matter that the local team initially had a hard time finding enough paddlers. Organizers scoured local gyms and found athletes willing to give the sport a whirl.
Outrigging is nothing new, of course. It dates back some 2,000 years, originating in the islands that dot the southern, western and central Pacific Ocean.
The sport involves six-person teams paddling in perfect unison. The first person in the canoe sets the pace, and the other team members match his or her strokes.
The canoe itself measures 45 feet (13.6 meters), and is made of wood or — in this high-tech age — Fiberglas. Its narrow 18-inch (46-centimeter) hull is stabilized by an outrigger, also called an ama.
Outrigging enthusiasts say that while the sport is technically not very difficult, it builds up a great sense of participation. As in kayaking and other canoeing activities, each team member literally pulls his or her own weight.
What sets outrigging apart, say enthusiasts, is that it takes place in the sea — and the unpredictability of the waves gives the sport that extra thrill.
In recent years, outrigging has been increasingly popular in Australia, Hawaii and even the west coast of the United States.
Now outrigging advocates hope the International Olympic Committee takes notice. They want their sport to become the next Olympic water event, perhaps in time for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.
CNN’s Cynthia Tornquist contributed to this report.
