This oral history interview is a project of the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The legal rights of this material remain with the Outrigger Canoe Club. Anyone wishing to reproduce it or quote at length from it should contact the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The reader should be aware that an oral history document portrays information as recalled by the interviewee. Because of the spontaneous nature of this kind of document, it may contain statements and impressions that are not factual. A full transcript of the video may be found below.
Michael Holmes Oral History Part 2
An Interview by Marilyn Kali
June 23, 2017
MK: Today is Friday, June 23rd, 2017. We’re in the Board Room pf the Outrigger Canoe Club. I’m Marilyn Kali, a member of the Club’s historical committee. One of the Historical Committee’s projects is to do oral histories of longtime members. Today, it is my pleasure to be talking to one of the Club’s great watermen,
MH: Good morning, Mike.
MH: Morning.
MK: Thanks for coming over from Molokai to do this.
MH: My pleasure.
MK: How long have you been on Molokai?
MH: Twenty-six years now.
MK: Oh my goodness. What do you do over there?
MH: I run an ocean recreation company. I’m a charter captain, and I do deep sea fishing, whale watching in the winter months, and snorkeling, and canoe race escorting.
MK: It sounds like all kinds of fun things.
MH: Yup. Yup, that’s the whole purpose.
MK: Well, it’s not as much like work every day.
MH: No. No.
MK: You have a boat over there?
MH: Yes.
MK: What size?
MH: Twenty-seven-foot twin diesel fly bridge sportfisherman.
MK: How many passengers does it hold?
MH: You’re licensing allows you to carry six.
MK: When you do a canoe escort, you carry the extra paddlers and the coach?
MH: Yeah.
MK: You’ve been at it for a while. You have plans to retire anytime soon?
MH: Probably this next year?
MK: What will you do then?
MH: Have fun.
MK: Continue having fun.
MH: Right, sailing, surfing, all these sports.
MK: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your parents and your family, when and when you were born.
MH: Alameda, 1941.
MK: That’s in California.
MH: Right, Northern California.
MK: Who were your parents?
MH: My father’s name was Buster, and my mom’s name was Ernestine.
MK: Were they in the military?
MH: No. Actually, my father was in the navy for a while. I’m not sure how that all played out when I was born, but we lived there. My dad worked for Pan Am. He went to Stanford, got out of Stanford, went to work for Pan American. His best friend was assigned to Canton Island as a station manager for Pan Am. Then he got transferred to Honolulu. When that happened, he called my dad and said, “The war had just ended,” he said, “You better get out there and check this place out.” He goes, “It’s a great place to raise kids.” He said, “Take a three-day pass and come on out.” My dad did. He picked him up, took him around. My dad came home three days later, walked through the front door, looked at my mom and said, “Pack it up honey.” That was it. We were on the next ship to Honolulu, the Matsonia.
MK: What year was that?
MH: 1946, and that was my first memory of the ocean, and a huge ship with nooks and crannies here and there and the whole works. It was this …
MK: A great playground for a kid.
MH: Exactly, and it still is to this day.
MK: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MH: I had a sister. She passed away. No brothers, so I’m the remaining Holmes.
MK: When you moved to Hawaii, you grew up on Oahu?
MH: Yes, we started at Lanikai, and then we moved to the Diamond Head area. I grew up right on Hibiscus Drive.
MK: Very close to where we are now.
MH: Yeah.
MK: Did you come from an ocean-oriented family?
MH: No, I think that all started with the boat ride, the big boat. It was just mind-boggling. When we pulled into Hawaii and approached it, you see mountains coming out of the ocean that you’ve been on for five days, and you’re going, “When is this going to end?” Then all of a sudden, here comes a volcano. You just can’t comprehend it at four years old. Then you get there, and there are streamers. Do you remember Boat Day?
MK: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
MH: Streamers everywhere and divers down there alongside the ship, and you’re going, “Be careful. You’re going to get run over.” You see all of that, and people throwing coins and divers diving. It was magnificent.
MK: Very impressionable.
MH: Oh boy, was it. That got me started.
MK: Well, and you lived in Lanikai, so you were …
MH: At the beach every day.
MK: Had a beautiful front yard to play in. That’s wonderful. How did you become so interested in all the water sports?
MH: Actually, living on Hibiscus Drive, Bill Lacy, I don’t know if you remember Bill. He was a stock car race driver and he ran the steel plant out by the airport. Those days, it was called Lacy Steel. It became Jorgensen’s after that. He was a neighbor, and he came to me one day. He saw me playing, and he goes, “Mike, tomorrow, we’re going surfing.” I went, “Okay.” He took me out tandem surfing. I was not prepared for that at all. I mean, when we started to catch a wave, the spray, the sound of the wave, wind chops slapping at the board and spraying the face. My father said I came home and I didn’t stop talking about it for a week. He knew I was going to be in the ocean a lot.
MK: How old were you when you went for the first surf?
MH: I want to say probably seven. A little while later, my dad took me down to Waikiki, and there was a concession there called Bobby’s Surfboard, Bobby Krewson and Barry Napoleon, and that was the only place on the beach except for the Outrigger Canoe Club Beach Services. My dad asked Bobby, “You think it’ll (surfing) help Mike fill out?” Bobby said, “Probably.” He goes, “Okay, for the summer months, when he’s going to be out of school, I want to rent him a surfboard for all summer.” Bobby made him a deal, and that was it. My dad would drop me off at Waikiki at 7:00 in the morning, and come back and pick me up at 4:30. I spent every single day in the summer at Waikiki Beach.
MK: You had not yet joined the Outrigger.
MH: No, not yet. That’s coming up in a couple years.
MK: Well, just before we go any further, are you related to another Outrigger great waterman Tommy Holmes?
MH: No, I wasn’t a relative. We were good friends. Everybody thought we were brothers. We have the same wiry build. We did all the same sports. We were on each other’s crew often in the Outrigger history, and everybody seemed to think we were brothers automatically, but he’s a great guy. I liked him.
MK: Gone far too soon.
MH: Yup.
MK: Where did you go to school?
MH: Punahou … Actually, St. Augustine in Waikiki in grade school, and then Punahou in high school, and then Arizona State.
MK: What year did you graduate from Punahou?
MH: 1959.
MK: Then you went to Arizona State? Did you graduate from there?
MH: Yes. I studied real estate and had a Bachelor of Science degree. Then after that, I went to the Pacific Maritime Academy and learned how to get a Captain’s License.
MK: You’ve had your Captain’s License for a long time.
MH: A long time.
MK: What are you rated for?
MH: When the Coast Guard inspects vessels, they look at my license and they go, “Whoa, you’ve been around a long time.”
MK: What kind of vessels are you licensed for?
MH: I’m qualified for 100-ton vessel. I started at 20-ton, and then there was rumors and other captains saying there’s going to be another ferry between Molokai and Maui and we want you to be a captain. I spent about six months on a 100-ton vessel on the Interisland Ferry and managed to upgrade my license to 100-ton.
MK: That’s a big …
MH: A lot of boat and not much fun
MK: When you were at Punahou did you participate in any sports?
MH: Rowing.
MK: That was an interscholastic sports then.
MH: Yes. Iolani, Mid-Pacific, and Farrington.
MK: You had the barges that they had used from-
MH: Yes. Iolani had a shell, they had Pocock rowing shell and we had barges.
MK: Where did you compete?
MH: On the Ala Wai, and then the state championships were at Honolulu Harbor.
MK: Did some of the neighbor islands have crews too?
MH: No.
MK: How was it a state championship?
MH: That’s just what they called it in those days. Maybe it was just high school. I’m not sure.
MK: Was it a winning crew?
MH: We were pretty good. We were all Outrigger kids, and all pretty much water babies.
MK: Remember who was in the crew?
MH: No. Paul McLaughlin and myself and … I’m trying to think of … I can’t go much further than that. I don’t remember them all.
MK: Did you do any sports in college?
MH: I did swimming. Being in the middle of the desert, I had to get in the water. It was wild. I swam and traveled with swimming to all the various schools in the conference.
MK: Let’s see. They were in the Pac-10 then?
MH: No, that was Western Athletic Conference at that time. It was good, traveling to Utah, New Mexico, and those places.
MK: What events did you swim?
MH: I swam sprints, 50-meter, 400-meter, and 800-meter.
MK: Whoa, that’s quite a range.
MH: Yeah, and it was way too far. Our coach was the Olympic coach.
MK: Who was that?
MH: Dick Smith. He was actually the dive coach, and his assistant coach was a gentleman by the name of Walt Schlueter who was preparing for the Pan Am games for the U.S. team. Both were very qualified guys. Dick Smith was kind of remarkable in that he had been in three plane crashes and survived all three, and the last one was a DC-10 in Samoa.
MK: What kind of work did you do when you got out of college?
MH: Because of my degree, I sold real estate with Shirley Olds Realty. I don’t know if you remember Shirley.
MK: That was in Honolulu.
MH: Our office was above the bowling alley at Kapiolani. Let’s see. Then after that, I went into property manager for First Hawaiian Bank. Then I got selected to go to Peru. I’ve only been at First Hawaiian for fifty-one weeks, and I approached my boss and he said, “No, you can’t go.” I said, “What?” He said, “No, you can’t go.” I said, “Well, boss, I guess we have to part ways.” I go, “It’s a paid trip to South America.” I go, “That’s an education in itself.” He went, “No, you have to decide whether you want to work or play.” I said, “It can’t be.” I go, “You golf once a week and I have to mind the store here, and you’re not willing to do the same for me. We’re two guys in the department.” I go, “I’m going to see personnel.” I went to personnel, talked to the lady, and she said, “Well, see if he’ll let you go.” He wouldn’t, so I said, “Okay, I have to resign.” I went. It was the greatest trip.
MK: Now, this was for surfing.
MH: It was the Peruvian South American Surfing Championships. It was what it was called. It was right after the Duke meet in Honolulu.
MK: Now, Outrigger sponsored you to go on the trip.
MH: Yes.
MK: It was based on how well you did in the Duke meet.
MH: Yeah. Actually, they were inviting twenty-four, at the time, what they considered the best guys. I think through Johnny McMahon and Neal Ifversen, they thought that I should go and join the group.
MK: What year was that?
MH: ’68, pretty sure.
MK: It was in Lima.
MH: Lima, and they had two different contests. They had a small wave contest, and then a big wave contest. They took you by a big boat to both of them, pretty interesting.
MK: How did you do?
MH: Probably around the middle. I was not prepared for the nationalistic judging. We didn’t have that here. Everybody was the same, but they definitely wanted to take care of their own competitors, and they did. It was okay.
MK: Who won that year?
MH: I think Felipe Pomar, probably.
MK: He had the hometown advantage.
MH: Totally.
MK: Let’s see. You joined the Outrigger in December 1956. Do you remember who your sponsor was?
MH: Sure. Nick McDaniels and Cline Mann.
MK: How did you know them?
MH: At the time, I didn’t, but Honolulu was so small then. My dad worked for Bank of Hawaii, and he pretty much knew everybody, and everybody was tops in their field. They knew where to go and find out. My dad just asked around and finally found the right people.
MK: Wow, because he knew you were very interested. You were what, about fifteen then?
MH: Fifteen, yeah. My fifteenth birthday.
MK: Well the Club was still down in Waikiki back in those days.
MH: Right.
MK: Do you have any memories of the old Club?
MH: Yeah, I remember very well paddling that canoe in the bar.
MK: The Ka Mo`i.
MH: Yeah, and also the Hanakeoki. I remember George Downing. That was my first association with him. The thing that always sticks in my mind is we had big rubber inflatable rollers because the canoes were so heavy. They had to get them to the water’s edge, and we rolled them on those. I’d like to see those things again today. They’re pretty remarkable. No lifting, just rolling.
MK: Well, the canoes today are about 200 pounds lighter than they were back then.
MH: That’s right. That’s right.
MK: Those canoes, the Hanakeoki and the Ka Mo`i were like five or six hundred pounds, and now, our koas are down to 400. A big difference.
MH: Even four hundred is heavy.
MK: Have you seen the super light ones that they have?
MH: Oh, sure, yeah.
MK: Two are three people can carry them. Well, you mentioned you met George Downing there for the first time. He was your coach?
MH: Yes. He was a teacher, and probably one of the best teachers I had ever been around. He could explain things. On our first tryout, he would ask every paddler in the room, “Why do you want to try out?” He’d listen to everybody, and the girls would say, “Oh, I want to lose weight. I want to be a part of the team. Blah-blah-blah.” He would say, “There’s a lot of reasons that you will want to paddle canoe paddling and be racing, but you have to accept the team goal. I’m going to tell you in a minute what the team goal is. If you go along with that and you would adhere to that, fine. If you don’t and you want to do something different, you’re in the wrong place.” He respected people, but he didn’t tolerate nonsense, and you weren’t going to waste his time. He was a great guy to learn from.
MK: What were his goals?
MH: His goals were to win the championships and to promote the Club activities and get the Club’s name out there. He did a good job at it in my estimation.
MK: Well, he was there for, what, about two or three years as a coach?
MH: He ran the maintenance shop for all the canoes and surfboards and did all the patching and all that kind of stuff. It was quite an education.
MK: Well, at one point they named him the athletic director of the Club. I think that was all-encompassing. He coached. He took care of the canoes. I even remember a story of him building out the four-man surfing canoes or three-man surfing canoes that Toots Minvielle had ordered. He was just involved in the whole canoe racing scene, but he was quite a surfer too.
MH: Oh, he was fantastic. When I was fifteen, I saw a photo, a movie of the race, and I think it was over in Kona. It was the senior men’s race, and they were about two hundred yards behind at the very last turn. There was only a quarter of a mile to go. He knew how to stroke, how to pick up the stroke and how to win the race, given two hundred yards to go. I watched that and I went, “Wow, this guy really knows his stuff.” After that, we had conversations where he was pretty much open to asking anybody that knew how to do things, how to do it better. He got together with John Bustard, who was a Olympic kayak coach at that time. He asked him, “Let’s analyze strokes. What moves the canoe? What are the forces that work in all that?” He got it down to a science. He knew how to do it, and his paddlers all knew how to do it, and it showed.
MK: He was, you thought, a very good coach, especially for the kids.
MH: He was excellent, excellent.
MK: He paddled himself in the distance races, anyway.
MH: When I was fourteen, my father knew that the Molokai race was occurring that day, and he goes, “Come on, Mike, let’s go walk down and see the finish of the Molokai to Oahu canoe race.” I said, “Okay.” We walked down from the park, came on down, and I hit the beach. I ran. I looked around. I didn’t see a thing going on, and I went, “Dad, where is Molokai?” He goes, “It’s around the corner back there.” He goes, “It’s the next island over.” I go, “Okay.” Then I go, “I don’t see anybody, dad. Are you sure it’s being held today?” He goes, “Uh-huh,” he goes, “They’ll be along.”
Sure enough, canoes started showing right past the Natatorium there on the outside. I’m watching this. I’m watching them come. He goes, “Here they come.” We’re right in front of the Moana Hotel where they finished. They came in, and all of a sudden, I’m looking at the first canoe, and I go, “Whoa, I know that guy steering. That’s George Downing.” I looked at that, and I looked at the guys in the front. They’re Club members. I’m going, “That guy’s name is Bobby Daniels.”
Two out of the six guys were totally collapsed, dehydrated and unconscious, Bobby Daniels and one other guy. It was Aloha Week, saw these guys rush down to their canoe, drag him up. Drag him up on a lauhala mat on the beach and poured milk down their throats. Foremost (Dairy) was the sponsor in those days, and the music was going. The whole thing was a scene. I went, “Wow, this is incredible. I’m going to do this someday.” It turns out, ten years later, I was doing it, and George was our coach.
MK: Well, I was talking to Al Lemes for his oral history recently, and he talked about the 1955 race, which was the first time Outrigger did it with all Outrigger members.
MH: Right.
MK: He said they had planned to do it ironman, and they gave no thought about hydration. They didn’t think about water. In fact, the only thing they had onboard was juice for the Bloody Mary’s for the substitute paddlers who weren’t supposed to go in because this was an Ironman crew. Anyway, it was a very interesting story. It sounds like the year you saw it, they were not well-hydrated during the race.
MH: Right.
MK: They learned a lot from those early races. How different was it when you first paddled in ’65?
MH: I have never felt more foolish in my life, taking a one-way ticket to an island I had never been to, with no concept of how far away it was and paddling home. The whole way across, I was looking down at the ocean going, “This looks like a long way.” It just dawned on me when I landed. I go, “You are really foolish.”
MK: Were you worried about sharks?
MH: No, I wasn’t worried about that at all. George would never name the crew until the morning of the race. We went to Ka Lae, and we had dinner, and we camped. We had three different steersmen possible on the crew. I was a novice paddler. He had a junior men’s paddler that I thought was probably going to be the steersman. That morning, he named me, and I was kind of shocked, but I went, “Okay, I’m ready to race.” Off I went.
It was a rainy day, and before I left, he goes, “Mike, you start, and when you get down to the corner of Molokai, we’re going to take you out of the boat on the first change, and we’re going to bring you into the escort boat. Get you up on top so you can see where Oahu is, and then you’ll know where to steer.” It turns out it’s a cloudy day in the channel. I can’t see Oahu.
We get to the corner, and George is going, “Okay, Mike, see Oahu?” I shake my head, “No.” He goes, “Wait another twenty minutes. See Oahu?” No. He goes, “Okay,” calls out the change one, three, and five.” Five minutes later, calls out the next change, two and four. I went, “Uh-oh, what happened to the plan here?” He goes, “You see Oahu yet?” I go, “Nope.” He goes, “Okay, you see that big cloud in front of you?” I go, “Yes.” He goes, “That’s right over the top of Oahu. Aim for that cloud.
As the race progressed, it tightened up, and we were battling for the lead with Waikiki Surf Club. The previous year’s champion was back in third behind as, and George made a decision to take Surf Club into the current off Koko Head, because they were further to our north, then we can turn down and supposedly leave them in the current. Sure enough, we tried that, and yes, it buried them in the current, and they got swept towards Sandy Beach, and we continued, but it took us an hour to get out of the current.
Our stroke got cramps in his forearms. They had to bring in a novice paddler. By that time, the third place boat was going straight to Diamond Head and they passed us. We’re on the inside by Portlock, and they continued straight there about four hundred yards ahead of us. George being knowledgeable enough said, “Cline, let me know every time their club goes to make a change. As soon as you see their escort boat inching forward, you let me know.” He’d tell the crew, “We have to pick up the stroke every time they make a change and take advantage of relative speed differences.”
We did. We sprinted from Portlock to Diamond Head when both canoes came together at the Diamond Head buoy. They were on the outside, and we were on the inside of it. Waikiki Bay drains right at the buoy. They got stuck there, and we snuck by them, a minute and fifty-six seconds ahead at the finish. It was quite a thrill.
MK: You had a wonderful race in that first one.
MH: Yes, but I never got out of the canoe.
MK: That’s what I was going to ask you. You did it ironman.
MH: Yeah, unfortunately.
MK: You weren’t planning on that.
MH: I wasn’t expecting it. I would ask number five, “Did he say anything about my change?” They’d go, “No. He says you’re getting the hang of it.” I go, “Uh-oh, that isn’t good.” When we get to Waikiki, Cline Mann goes, “George, George, here is the microphone. Ask Mike if he’s ready for his change now.” We were off of The Royal Hawaiian. I was so furious when that suggestion hit me. I went, “Mmmmm.” All I could do is something very vulgar, gave him the finger.
When we got to the Wreck Buoy, I turned on the Wreck Buoy, but I was so exhausted, I got into a daze and I paddled straight into Kaisers’ break in the whitewater, and I heard all this screaming coming from the escort boat, and I looked around me and I’m still paddling, and I went, “Oh my God, I’m in whitewater, I’m in the wrong place. The finish is back over there.” I went, “Oh boy.” Luckily, I woke up and got out of that and finished the race. The minute I crossed that line and had to stand up, I went, “Wow, now I know what those guys felt like ten years ago.” It was incredible.
MK: It didn’t discourage you.
MH: Oh, no. I got me pretty excited about doing it.
MK: You did it again in ’66.
MH: Yes, that was a tragedy. That was a real tragedy, but we’re lucky we got out of there with nobody getting hurt.
MK: Tell me about that race.
MH: The wind had blown for three days, a big storm to the east. Probably, the race should not have been held, but the whole canoe racing macho scene in those days was, “Whoa, we’re water people. Let’s go do it.” They let it happen, and by the time we got to the middle, it was easily twelve feet, probably fifteen feet, getting bigger. During the race, we had a nervous paddler who was supposed to make a change. They called his number, and he got into a paddling trance, and all of a sudden forgot about the change. The paddler is in the water, so he jumped out over his paddle and broke the zipper. We had one open seat.
They got Mark Buck in to sew it. He was getting seasick sewing it up. Then the next time, the guy gets back in and has to come out. Freddie Hemmings was yelling at him, “You idiot! Make sure you unzip your zipper this time.” We’re still battling up there for the lead. The guy goes, “Okay.” He gets it ready, and he cranks the zipper down so fast it goes right off the zipper track. Now we have two holes in the boat.
MK: Oh, he was in a different seat the second time?
MH: Yeah.
MK: Ouch.
MH: Now we’re bailing like mad in fifteen-foot seas. It’s such a mess that I don’t even want people looking back to see what the next swell is looking like. We’re going down some of these huge swells. One guy is bailing the entire time. The water is sloshing back and forth, and finally, we go down a big swell, and the canoe just keeps going into the back of the swell and in front. That was it. The boat filled with water, and we came to a sluggish halt and tried to bail for an hour.
MK: Now, we’re talking about the Leilani.
MH: Yeah, and we’re bailing for an hour, can’t do it. This ocean is everywhere. People are getting seasick. It’s just a complete mess and dangerous. Our escort boat was sixty-something feet. Fortunately, we had Sherry Dowsett driving it, and he was very experienced. The boat was big enough. He could maneuver it and have some clout. We tried towing it (Leilani), and we attached three quarter inch or bigger towlines, but in those kinds of seas, you can’t tow a canoe filled with water. The canoe would act like a lure, and it would be behind the swell. Sherry would start towing it. It would come through the swell and start to run away down the slope. He’d have to speed up, so you had this slingshot effect going on.
MK: Were you in the boat still?
MH: No, we were all out of the boat. We had the paddlers in the escort boat and all that. I finally convinced the coach. You got to call this off. Somebody will get hurt. I told him, “I’m the last guy that would ever quit, but you’ve got to do this. We’ve been at this an hour.” Albert (Lemes) agreed. Then they started towing, and I got on the big escort boat, watching it. I was standing next to Sherry’s deckhand, and I go, “Hey, Darrell, how much do those rope stretch that you’re using?” He said, “Well, they’re nylon, about thirty percent.”
I’m watching this thing do that. All of a sudden, it’s getting skinnier in the middle, and I go, “Darrell, it looks like it’s got to be stretching about thirty percent right now.” The next thing I know, I look away and I hear this boom. I’m trying to see where everybody else is. I look back and I go, “Darrell, what was that noise?” Darrell was not there. He’s down on the floor of the boat on his back, screaming in pain, and the tow rope snapped back and hit him in the worst place of all. He was completely doing the cockroach on the floor of the boat.
I went, “Oh my God, I’m in the wrong place.” I go, “Give me another rope. I’ll attach it to the front of the boat again.” I jumped back in the water. Swam the rope over, retied it to the canoe, and they tried again. Tommy Arnott was driving the little auxiliary. He had gotten the boat from Nick Czar next door (Elks Club) and it was a ski boat designed for lake use. It was pretty flimsy. It was twenty-something feet long. It had two Chrysler engines that Nick Czar sold him. I went, “Hey, you guys.” I got in the boat with them. They were right there. Got in the boat with those guys, and we hung around for a little bit, and found out they couldn’t tow it.
They couldn’t bail it. They couldn’t tow it. Now it’s time to figure out a way to get it out of there. We were getting beat up by the ocean in that little boat so badly, Tommy goes, “We’ve got to get out of there. This is no place for this little boat.” He said, “Let’s go over and let them know we’re going.” We left. I wasn’t there for that whole routine. I’ve seen photos of it, but I wasn’t there for that part. I was fortunate that Tommy Arnott was such a good boat driver, because we were going down fifteen-foot swells. They would break and fan out. We were doing this huge broadside bottom turns to get to the next swell. It was pretty scary. That was a great education in boat handling.
MK: At what point did they decide to try to get the canoe on to Sherry’s boat.
MH: As soon as we left, everybody remaining pulled the canoe over and got it sideways, cut the ama off, and then turned it back around and slowly loaded it in and cut the ‘iakos off. Then-
MK: How did they cut them off?
MH: With a knife, cut all the ropes.
MK: Oh, just cut the ropes.
MH: Then they slid it forward into the bow, but towing it, there was so much water pressure in the bow, and the bow broke about a foot, at least a foot and a half section. The glue couldn’t hold it. It came apart. Then we got back about an hour and a half before they did. It was a long day for everybody, but luckily, nobody got hurt.
MK: Fortunate. The Coast Guard wouldn’t have allowed them to have the race in these days.
MH: The Coast Guard doesn’t take an issue on that. Two years ago, the women’s race was in a similar condition. They (Na Wahine officials) were at Paddler’s Inn on Molokai. Everybody was waiting. Everybody signed up, and the safety committee was meeting, and all of a sudden, Carleen Ornellas is waiving at me, “Come over here.” I’m talking to a girl from Colorado I’m about to escort. I go, “Me?” She goes, “Yes.” She goes, “Come over here, I want the safety committee to have your input on what it’s going to be like out there.” Sure enough, I go. They don’t know me from anybody. I’ve been on Molokai for twenty-five years, introduced myself, and said, “People think you can bail a boat in these conditions, you cannot. They think you can tow a boat, you cannot. Six out of thirteen canoes finished in 1966. One flipped over three times and won the race.”
I go, “You can’t do this to these ladies. These are the daughters of the guys that I paddled with in my day.” I go, “It shouldn’t happen. That’s all I need to tell you.” As soon as I finished talking and the coach from Kailua, {Stew) Kalama, he got through talking. He said, “I have three girls crews in this race, I can tell you, none of them are equipped to do this.” They took his advice and took my advice and canceled that two minutes later. It was good. Good thing they did.
MK: There have been years when they canceled it and it hasn’t been as big as they thought it would be.
MH: Well, no, it actually was.
MK: Was it?
MH: Yup, because I was here. I was escorting that year. They were having their meeting (on Molokai). We were having a meeting here (Outrigger), and somebody called us at the Outrigger. I think Cline and I were down here in the boardroom. I think Cline and a lot of escort boats can’t even get out there now. Sure enough, that was occurring up there. They said, “What do you think?” I said, “I think you should postpone it.” I said, “Fifteen-foot seas are no fun to try to get up there and too many small boats.” That’s the other time that they canceled it.
MK: Well, it’s always disappointing to all the crews, but …
MH: Yes, and I know (Nainoa) Thompson said this the other day after the Hōkūleʻa, he said, “We flipped in mid-channel.” He goes, “We were lucky that the aircraft saw us on our first voyage to Tahiti, we were lucky, and one guy was lost.” He goes, “We didn’t know.” I remember driving by after work at Magic Island, and I turned on the radio to see if they had left. They were supposed to leave at four, and because of the Kava ceremony, they didn’t leave on time. It was after dark when they left. I went, “Boy,” and I didn’t know it at that time either, but that’s how they learn.
MK: That’s how you get experience, is to have it happen.
MH: Yeah. Unfortunately, that was tragic.
MK: Well, now, you did all the normal distance races. You did the Liliuokalani, and we had the Duke race. All those races had started then. How many times did you do Molokai?
MH: I think six.
MK: All through Outrigger?
MH: In those days, the values were totally different and people had loyalty and commitment, crew commitments, team commitments, all of that. It’s a whole different world today.
MK: Let’s see. You did the Molokai in ’65, ’66, ’68, ’76, ’85, and ’87. That’s over a 22-year period. Did you do it as a master too?
MH: I did it as a master and a senior master. The senior master are the guys that you know, Joey (Cabell), (Jim) Peterson, and Tommy Merrill. All those guys have been training in the mornings down here for about a year, and I was watching them. I lived in Diamond Head. I was watching them go in and out, and I thought, “That’s pretty cool. These guys are all good athletes and they’re all working out, training hard.” That was only for the summer season. I went, “These guys are going to be good.” They were all good paddlers in the age group. I remembered most of them.
The second year, they came to me and said, “Would you steer us?” I went, “What time are you going to train? I’m working downtown.” They said, “Five in the morning.” I go, “Okay, I can do that.” We did and it was quite a good crew. They were too young at the time, and some were married and some were not. They didn’t have the time to do it when they were young, so they all wanted to do it. Fifty is a little late to be doing it, but they were still very competitive. We ended up sixteenth, I think.
MK: Overall?
MH: Overall, and that was a surprise for everybody, nice surprise.
MK: How had the Molokai race changed from the first one you did in ’65?
MH: Same place, just different goals. As you get older, you don’t think about winning. You think about winning your division, and you hope you are in the top twenty somewhere, but you don’t know.
MK: You hope to just survive it.
MH: Yeah.
MK: Well, has the training changed though from the early days?
MH: Oh, it’s a year-round now. It wasn’t then. The Tahitians are doing two a day. They’re state-sponsored, so they’ve got the advantage, but people have to make the commitment to win. If you’re willing to do that, you can go out and do it. Today, people have too much going on, too many activities. When I was paddling it was the same thing, but with George, you didn’t get away with that. You either fished or cut bait. You were prepared when the race day came, and you knew it.
MK: Do you have any other favorite memories about the Molokai races?
MH: Just the excitement and the togetherness. There was a guy lost in 1966 for an hour, a paddler with Surf Club. In those days, they used to change one, two, and three, the escort boat would drop them about forty yards apart, and wait down at the bottom until the last guy came out, and then go back the line. In rough seas, the current gets stronger and stronger. By the time they got to the first guy out of the canoe, he was gone in the current. They couldn’t find this guy. He was by himself treading water, going up on a swell, looking at all the escort boats going to Honolulu. He couldn’t see one coming his way.
He’d go down in the trough and look around and be as high as the ceiling, and he’d go, “Wow,” and he’d go back on the next swell, and he’d look toward Molokai, and say, “Nobody’s back there. They’ll never find me.” He tread water for fifty-five minutes, just thinking about it the whole time. Luckily for him, his escort boat captain was Guy Rothwell, who was a Honolulu harbormaster, and he knew which way the guy should’ve been carried. He crisscrossed back across the track, and finally found him, one head in the middle of the ocean in fifteen-foot seas. That’s what people don’t know. I’m a safety boat driver during the Maui to Molokai (OC-1) race. We’ve had the race totally over, and people declaring victory, and escort boats going home, and they see a guy in the middle of the channel, bright shirt on, luckily, and his one-man canoe is gone. They go, “What? What’s going on here?” Swimming four miles to shore.
MK: Luckily, they’re good swimmers.
MH: Yeah, he would have never made it. There’s a lot of stories like that.
MK: Well, I understand that, that incident led Cline Mann to propose putting a raft behind our boat to make it easier.
MH: Yeah, so we could use the auxiliary, exactly. What he did was he started with mattresses and tied them right across the whole back of the boat, a Boston Whaler would just run right up on it and grab the back towing bitt or cleat, hold on, and the paddlers would scramble out, and the substitutes would scramble in. They’d release and go back and make the change. That was much safer.
MK: Outrigger was criticized for doing that.
MH: Oh, of course. In those days, we were criticized for everything, but it’s safety first. It’s got to be. If you lose one person out there, the race is over. That’s a lot of culture.
MK: You paddled distance. What about regattas? Were you a regatta paddler?
MH: Oh, yeah, I went through novice. In fact, one of the things that made me such a fierce competitor was in my first year of paddling novice and training and running down to the Ala Wai and running back, George (Downing) took me over to Kauai. It was a rough year. I thought I would make the crew. We were behind on points, so he cut me for a bigger boy, and I was devastated. I went, “I trained harder. It’s not fair.” I had to ride the boat.
He came to me afterwards and explained, “You know, Mike, I can’t tell you all about it, but coaches have to do things for a reason, and there was a good reason for that.” He wouldn’t elaborate further, so I went, “I don’t know. That doesn’t sit too well.” I go, “You know what, I’m a little guy, that’s not going to happen to me again. I’m going to become a steersman.” I had him teach me steering, and he did. I learned and I paid attention and got it down pretty good.
MK: That’s how you became a steersman.
MH: That’s how I became a steersman, and while training for the ’65 race, we were doing the last race, last training run from Kailua. The escort boat, the Boston Whaler couldn’t come around through Waimanalo. It was too rough. They had to turn around and go back. The canoe with the cover continued. I was going out with George and Terry Ledford. We passed Sandy Beach, and we saw the canoe trailer coming back, the van. They pulled over next to us. They saw us and stopped, and they said, “Hey, the Boston Whaler had to go back, and the canoe is swamped outside of Makapu’u, but they’re coming around. They’ll be here in about half an hour.”
George went, “Okay, thanks,” takes me and this other guy down by the Alan Davis property. We had never been out there in our lives. George goes, “Come on you guys, the escort boat is coming out of Waikiki, and they’re coming up to meet at Makapu’u.” George walks us through the Alan Davis area, out onto the rocks, eight-foot swells coming at us, whitewater everywhere. We’re both nervous Molokai paddlers. We’re going, “God, we have to swim up through this? This is nuts.” George found a coral head. There was no other coral around it and he inched his way out there in the whitewater and stood there. He goes, “Hey you guys, go from that rock to this rock, and then out right behind the wave. You enter right behind the wave.” He dove in and started swimming.
We’re like, “God,” so off we go. I mean, I was a lifeguard in the summer for income. I’m following him. Terry Ledford goes right behind me and in we go, and we get out just outside the whitewater and Terry goes, “Mike, have you ever seen an ocean like this in your life?” I go, “No, but don’t think about it. Let’s get to the escort boat.” I could see him losing confidence. He goes, “This is crazy. We’re going up and down in these big swells.” I go, “Let’s get to the escort boat.” We get to the escort boat. We jump in, climb in. The canoe comes by, and now they’re rocketing down swell in the Sandy Beach stretch.
We had no sooner gotten in and they catch a swell, and it starts going left. The steersman is on the right trying to hold it, but he’s got four guys on the right and two on the left, and all the force of the swell is pushing the ama up in the air. He decides it’s coming over. It’s going to flip, and he jumps out with his paddle. The ama comes back down, and the boat is a runaway. George goes, “Mike, take this paddle, get it, give it to number four and get in the canoe, you steer.” I went, “Oh my God, I’ve never done a change in my life.”
I take the paddle. I jumped off the escort boat. I looked and here it comes. I go, “Oh my God.” I sprint over. I handed the paddle to number four, duck under the second ‘iako, and I grabbed the canoe cover, and I go, “Oh, this thing is going so fast, I can’t hang on.” My hands are just sliding right down the gunnels. I go, “What next?” I’ve only seen pictures of previous people changing. I go, “What now? I’ve got to grab the manu. I can’t hang on to this.” My legs are already sideways and I’m sliding back.
The next swell is coming,” and I see it. I go, “Okay.” I’m sliding down the slippery part at the back of that canoe and I just do this. I grabbed the manu and I hang on. I catch it. The swell floats me up like a little guppy, and I go, “I can do this.” I just start swimming in the mass of water that’s overtaking the boat. I get in over the seat and I can get it. I grab the gunnels and I get it. Butch Hemmings was in five, and he goes, “Are you in?” I go, “Yeah, I’m here.” He hands me the paddle and we go the rest of the way to Waikiki. I went, “Wow, that was really something.”
MK: For never having done a water change.
MH: Then I went, “That was nuts.” I think that’s how I ended up steering that race.
MK: Wow.
MH: I think that’s how George made his decision, guess he can handle it.
MK: Before we leave Molokai, in the days you were paddling, there were, what, ten or fifteen crews entering?
MH: Twelve and thirteen, I think, that year.
MK: Where did everybody stay on Molokai? There’s not a lot of places?
MH: Everybody camped overnight at the beach in those days.
MK: At Hale O Lono?
MH: Yeah, it started at Kawakiu up by the northwest corner, but the surf in September always comes up by the first week. You get all that northwest swell. George told me that on the very first race, by the time they got their canoe in the water, they were a quarter of a mile down the coast before the second boat came out. By that third boat, they were down the coast to half a mile. They couldn’t get it together. That’s when they came up with the Hale O Lono idea. Get it away from the corner.
MK: Everybody camped on the beach?
MH: Everybody camped at the beach at Kawakiu, and then down at Hale O Lono Harbor.
MK: Did Outrigger also camp?
MH: Everybody else camped, but we stayed up in the mountains so we could get some sleep. It was a party. The whole community ended up down there six thousand people drinking and partying and music and hula all night long. They were still going the next morning.
MK: Kind of hard to get the paddlers up and going by seven a.m.
MH: Yeah, you’re ready to race to get out of there by that time.
MK: Outrigger just took a bus down or a truck or something to get down?
MH: I think we shipped the van.
MK: Oh.
MH: The whole Outrigger van, it was pretty good.
MK: Now, the canoes that come over, they come over on a barge.
MH: Right.
MK: All the canoes come on a barge, and then how do the canoes actually get from the harbor down to Hale O Lono?
MH: The Molokai people trailer them all down and unload them on the beach. Everybody comes down and rigs after that.
MK: Canoes come in a week ahead or something?
MH: Yeah, it’s a logistics nightmare.
MK: Well, after George Downing left Outrigger, Rabbit Kekai came in as our coach. Did you paddle for him as well?
MH: I did. I was steering at the time, and he was a steersman coach, more so, he could paddle. He knew paddling, but he was really valuable as a steersman coach. He had a tendency to trust everybody too much. He trusted the kids to get the koa boat down to the Ala Wai, and they swamped and cracked the hull (Kakina). He got under scrutiny for that.
MK: You weren’t in the canoe?
MH: No, we were down at the paddling site.
MK: Yeah, those kids, they were scared to come in.
MH: Oh, I don’t blame them. George instilled in us that canoe never touches the ground. They’re valuable pieces of equipment.
MK: Well, if the canoe never touched the ground, how did they get the canoes out to the water?
MH: Everybody carried. In those days, they taught you how to distribute the weight and make sure nobody let go.
MK: They didn’t have rollers or anything?
MH: No. Koa boats always got carried right into the water.
MK: Well, like today. They’re precious.
MH: They sure are.
MK: Is there anything else you’d like to add about paddling?
MH: No, it’s been a good experience.
MK: You look like you enjoyed it.
MH: Oh, I did. I did. I became a fierce competitor. If I’m going to spend that kind of time at something, I don’t want to be third or fourth or fifth. I want to be way up in whatever division I’m in. That was good.
MK: Well, you had some good teammates. Do you remember who they were?
MH: Yeah, I remember all of those guys clear as a bell.
MK: Tell me who you paddled with.
MH: Paul McLaughlin, Mark Buck, Tommy Rietow, Fred Lowrey, Terry Ledford, Tim Guard, it was a good group of dedicated paddlers.
MK: None of them are paddling anymore?
MH: You wear out. In fact, one of the things you were going to ask me was why I got away from paddling and volleyball. It was because I wore my back out. I had a herniated disk and had to have surgery in the ’70s, and that was it. Twenty years after that, I did it again and had to have the second surgery.
MK: That kind of takes you out of it, just the rehab that you have to go through to get back.
MH: Yeah, but thank goodness I was a paddler because you come back a lot quicker.
MK: Okay. Any other stories you’d like to tell us about canoe racing?
MH: No, that was it.
MK: Those were some good ones. Well, thank you very much.
MH: You’re welcome.
MK: We will see you in part two of our series. Thank you.
MH: Sure.
Athletic Contributions to the OCC
Molokai to Oahu Canoe Race
1965 1st, Open
1966 DNF
1968 1st, Open
1976 7th, Open
1985 2nd, Masters
1987, 3rd, Masters
State Canoe Racing Championships
1960 Freshmen Men
1962 Freshmen Men
1967 Junior Men
Macfarlane Regatta
1961 Freshmen Men
1965 Junior Men
1969 Boys 12 (steersman)
1976 Senior Women (steersman)
1979 Boys 13 (steersman)
1979 Boys 12A (steersman)
1981 Makule
1986 Masters Men 45
1990 Girls 17 (steersman)
Na Wahine O Ke Kai
1982 Coached OCC Women
Kamehameha Cup World Canoe Surfing Championship
1989 (Mike Holmes, John Mounts, Kala Judd)
OCC Club Surfing Championship
1970 Senior Men
World Surfing Championships
1969 OCC Representative
OCC Teams at USVBA National Championships
1965 4th Open
1966 2nd Open
1967 5th Open
1968 Open
1970 Open
1978 3rd Senior Men
OCC Teams at AAU National Volleyball Championships
1967 1st Open
1977 Men AA
Duke Kahanamoku Sand Volleyball Doubles Championships
1966 Mike Holmes-Bob Clem
1967 Mike Holmes-Bob Clem
Hawaii State Indoor Volleyball Championships
1966 1st
1967 1st
Hawaii Stare Outdoor Volleyball Championships
1967 1st
1967 1st
Junior-Senior Volleyball Doubles Championship
1973 Mike Holmes-Kainoa Downing
OCC Mountainball Team
1972
Waikiki Buoy-Diamond Head Paddleboard Race
1967 1st Place Stock Board
Hobie 14 World Sailing Championships
1972 OCC representative, 14th overall
1975 OCC representative, 13th overall
OCC Club Sailing Championships
1975 1st Hobie 14
Service to the Outrigger Canoe Club
Beach & Water Safety Committee
1971 Chair
Canoe Racing Committee
1966 Co-Chair
Sailing Committee
1969 Member
1970 Member
1972 Member
1979 Member
1980 Member
1986 Member
Surfing Committee
1968 Member
1969 Member
1978 Member
1986 Member
Admissions & Membership Committee
1988 Member
Nominating Committee
1986 Member