A LEGACY CARVED IN KOA
In Hawai‘i, the Koa canoe is more than a vessel—
“ Even now, when I see those things I made, I still wonder—how did I do that?“ — Demetrio “Domie” Gose
—it’s a symbol of identity, history, and resilience. At the Outrigger Ca- noe Club (OCC), few objects are as revered as its Koa canoes, and for more than 40 years, Demetrio "Dom- ie" Gose quietly became their care- taker—not by design, but through an instinctive knack for building, fixing, and preserving. Growing up in the Philippines, Gose was building things with his hands long before he had formal
Kakina and Leilani were acquired by OCC in 1936. In the 1980s, after the Club earned a Koa log for scoring the most points in the O‘ahu Hawaiian Ca- noe Racing Association (OHCRA) regatta season, that log became the Kaoloa—designed and built by legendary canoe designer and Club member Joe Quigg, and blessed on July 12, 1986. Years later, by straightening and lightening the Kaoloa, Gose helped propel the canoe to a land- mark victory in the 1990 Moloka‘i Hoe—one of the few times a Koa canoe outpaced the increasingly dominant fiberglass models. The winning time of 5:19:38 remains the third-fastest ever recorded for a Koa canoe. “The Kaoloa’s kind of a special thing,” says re- nowned waterman and past Club president Wal- ter Guild. “It was built in the modern era by Joe [Quigg] and then updated by Domie. It’s the last Koa canoe to win the Moloka‘i to O‘ahu race. A Koa boat has not won since.” Years later, Domie worked with Quigg to mod- ernize the Kakina, and eventually spearheaded the extensive rebuild of the Leilani—replacing its fiberglass with Koa and lengthening the hull. He worked nonstop, every day, for seven months to complete the project. Today, he considers it his fa- vorite. “With Domie’s guidance and skills,” Guild explains, “we’ve been able to develop probably the
training. “I'm a machinist—we used to make parts of a car,” he explains. “By the mind only—I know how to make it work.” One of his earliest memories is building tiny sail- boats with his cousin after school when he was about 10 years old, using their grandmother’s handkerchief for a sail and racing them down the river—just for fun. Gose left school at 13 to work in a bakery, later farmed tobacco, and eventually graduated from vocational school, where he trained as a machinist, blacksmith, and gun- smith. In 1971, his brother brought him to Hawai‘i, where he started part-time at Outrigger leveling the volleyball courts and quickly became a go-to problem-solver. He served in many roles, including gardener and custodian, before joining the maintenance team, where he took on his first carpentry project: the women’s locker room counter. “After that, they brought me all kind of work for car- pentry,” Gose laughs. “Even now, when I see those things I made, I still wonder—how did I do that?” Gose went on to create many of the fixtures still seen around the Club today: the front desk, the beach desk, the portable bar in the dining room, the Hau Terrace busing station, and computer stands throughout the property. Eventually, that same skill and care extended to OCC’s Koa canoes, where his instinctual understanding of wood, shape, and balance became vital to keeping these treasured vessels not only seaworthy, but race-ready. Today, the Club is fortunate to have three state-of-the- art Koa racing canoes: the Kakina, Leilani, and Kaoloa. The
14 AMA | JULY / AUGUST 2025
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