Today, on the water in front of your own shoreline, a race is happening that most people driving Highway 11 will never notice. It started at Hōnaunau Bay, a few miles south of Hōkūlia, and it has been run in some form since the 1980s. The course runs straight past the same stretch of coast where the community's own canoe program puts members in the water. If you have ever paddled out from Nawawa Bay with one of the Club's guides, you have been on the identical water that a canoe club has raced continuously since 1974.
Most private communities treat an outrigger canoe outing as a resort activity, something invented to fill an afternoon and photograph well. Hōkūlia's version is different mainly because of where it sits. The three miles of shoreline in front of the community are not a blank stretch of ocean chosen for scenery. They are part of a working paddling coast that a nearby club has occupied continuously since 1974, and understanding that context changes what the Club's own program actually is.
What you're actually booking at the front desk
Hōkūlia's ocean program launches from Nawawa Bay, inside the community's 140-acre shoreline park. The park includes a built canoe landing alongside its hiking trails and picnic areas, and the outrigger outings run from there with Club guides. One member account posted on Hōkūlia's own site describes an outing led by two guides, Kaua and Bugz, and credits them with covering more than just the paddling itself.
"We had so much fun learning about the history, culture, topography, and geology of our new area."
That framing matters. The outing is built as an introduction to the coast, not a fitness class in a canoe. It is a small, guided, member-facing version of something that exists at a much larger scale a short drive south.
Three miles south, the same water has been racing since 1974
Keōua Honaunau Canoe Club sits at Hōnaunau Bay, next to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park. The club traces its lineage back to a Hōnaunau canoe club active in the 1930s, when local fishermen and county road workers paddled competitively before the club disbanded during the war years, as many of its paddlers left for jobs on Oʻahu. Keōua Honaunau reformed in 1974 and has run continuously since, now with roughly 100 to 150 active members.
The club still practices out of the same bay. Adult women paddle Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday starting at 4:45pm, and adult men paddle Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday on the same schedule, with a keiki and menehune program for younger paddlers on Mondays and Thursdays. Its fleet includes three koa canoes: Hōnaunau, carved in 1983 and the club's first koa hull; Kaʻahumanu, a canoe with enough racing history to have competed in the Molokaʻi Hoe and Na Wahine O Ke Kai channel crossings; and Aleʻaleʻa, the newest addition. This is not a demonstration club kept alive for tourists. Its results are current. West Hawaiʻi Today's coverage of a June 2026 island regatta shows Keōua Honaunau winning Division AA outright, edging out Kai ʻOpua Canoe Club with wins across six separate divisions including men's novice, men's freshmen, and women's masters 40.
Today's ten miles trace your own shoreline twice
The event on the water today is the Calvin Kelekolio Long Distance Race, named for a Keōua coach and mentor who died in 1986 while preparing the club's Tutu Clara regatta. The club created the race in his memory, and it has become one of the more demanding long-distance events on the island, known as much for its post-race luau as for its course. Moku O Hawaiʻi's official 2026 racing schedule, last updated in February of this year, lists the race for August 22 out of Hōnaunau.
The course itself is the part that matters to anyone living at Hōkūlia. The legs break down like this:
- Junior crews: Hōnaunau to Moinui Point and back
- Women and mixed crews, 8 miles: Hōnaunau to Kealakekua Bay and back
- Men, 10 miles: Hōnaunau to Kealakekua Bay, out to Keawekāheka Point, and back to Hōnaunau
Keawekāheka Point sits just south of Hōkūlia's own coastline, inside the remote Keopuka tract. Hiking north from Keawekāheka leads directly onto Hōkūlia's golf course and shoreline park, which places the community's own three miles of water squarely between Hōnaunau and Kealakekua Bay. The men's long course does not skirt around Hōkūlia. It runs straight up the coast past Nawawa Bay to reach Kealakekua Bay, then back down past the same water to Keawekāheka Point before finishing at Hōnaunau. Every long-course paddler crosses in front of your shoreline twice.
One bay, two ways to be on it
This is the piece that reframes the Club's canoe program. Booking a guided outing at Nawawa Bay and standing at the shoreline park watching long-distance crews go by are not two unrelated activities loosely connected by geography. They are two ways of being present on the same working stretch of coast, one guided and educational, the other competitive and generations old. The guides who take members out to talk about the history and geology of the area are describing water that a club three miles away still races on every year, with a roster of members whose grandparents may have paddled the same bay.
For a resident who has already done the Nawawa Bay outing, or who has simply seen the small outrigger canoes moving along the coastline from a lanai or the shoreline trail, that context is worth having. A private club amenity can feel manufactured. Knowing that the same water carries more than fifty years of racing tradition, with named canoes, a founding history tied to specific paddlers and coaches, and a race calendar that still runs every August, makes the outing feel like what it actually is: a small, respectful way into something that was already here.
If you want to see it for yourself before next August's race, the Hōkūlia shoreline park and the trail past the Club's golf course give a clear view north toward Kealakekua Bay, the same stretch the long-course paddlers cover twice. And if you'd rather be on the water than watching it, the Club's front desk can set up a Nawawa Bay outing with the same guides who introduced other members to this coast.
For anything else about life at Hōkūlia, from the shoreline park to the golf course to what's next on the community calendar, the team is glad to talk.
