OCC Member Profile
Last year, Toa Pere wanted to be the youngest to race the Kaiwi channel on a prone paddleboard. His parents said no. “He had just turned 14 when he asked and we felt it was too young,” his mother, Katie Pere, remembers. Both his parents had paddleboarded across the channel and “knew the pain, the danger and the intensity of it,” she says. His father, Guy Pere, had raced in the inaugural 32-mile M2O paddleboard race in 1997, winning the stock (12-foot board) division and setting a record that would hold for seven years. Katie paddled the channel twice and won both times in her division. “Guy has done the channel races over 50 different times, maybe more, on different craft. He understands on the deepest level how hard it is to cross on a paddleboard.”
before that, he had crossed the channel solo on an OC-1, in fierce winds and 20-foot swells that flipped his canoe. On this day, he said, “I’m super excited. I can’t wait to get back to the channel again.” The difficult part now, before the race, was resting. It’s hard, he said, “not being able to do anything when I’m used to doing everything.” Now 15, he has channeled his drive and enthusiasm into a number of water- sports—surfing and big-wave surfing, outrigger canoe, paddleboarding—racking up recogni- tion and wins: first in the stock division of the storied Cline Mann paddleboard race; winner of the Hawaii Paddleboard Championships; the youngest to ever win Da Hui’s 4th of July race; the youngest competitor in the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race; and OCC Junior Surfer of the Year in 2023—to name just a few. Billy Pratt, OCC Club captain, has known Toa since he was born. The level of comfort that he and his brother, Tama, have in the water is “really a natural progression from who their parents are…a bonafide waterman and waterwoman,” Pratt says. Over the years, he’s witnessed “the various dimensions of Toa. He’s an exceptional surfer and his canoe paddling
As a rebuttal, Toa detailed his training plan. “He presented it to us as a challenge he very much wanted to conquer,” Katie says. They caved, with the caveat that if they thought he wasn’t ready, he would have to withdraw. He did solo long distance runs with his dad escorting on a jet ski or in a surf ski. He paddled the 6-man and 1-man canoe. He trained with paddlers on the North Shore. And in 2023, he became the youngest competitor in the channel, finishing at 6 hours and 17 minutes, coming in second in the under-19 division. When we talked, he was on Moloka‘i, two days before his second M2O. Just two months
14 AMA | SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2024
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