Na Wahine O Ke Kai: Jojo Would Go, Has Gone, and Still Goes

If the Surfing World has the saying, “Eddie Would Go”, our Outrigger World should have, “Jojo Would Go, Has Gone, and Still Goes”- because if the Na Wahine O Ke Kai goes, so does Jojo Toeppner.

“Na Wahine O Ke Kai” translates to The Women of the Sea and is the Women’s Outrigger World Championship Race from Molokai-to-Oahu – often shortened to just “Na Wahine”. This year’s 2025 race was the 50th Anniversary of the first time women unofficially raced across the Kaiwi channel in 1975. Two crews of women made the crossing “unofficially” because it was thought women couldn’t handle the 41-mile course. It took another four years to make the women’s race “official”.

In that first official 1979 Na Wahine O Ke Kai, NAC’s Jojo Toeppner was there…and she’s raced every year since – the only woman to do so. The only times she didn’t make the crossing was when the race was officially cancelled due to extreme ocean conditions and the years during Covid. This year, Jojo raced with four other NAC women (Pam Lind-Jensen, Phaedra Arellano, Natalie Rigolet, and Cathy Weinberg), one Santa Barbara Outrigger member (Maureen Basile), and six Oahu paddlers (Anne Perry, Katherine Heidelberg-Bourne, Joanne Vierra, Cathleen Hedges, Katherine Stephens, Lynn Christensen) in the Women’s 55+ class as Hawaiian Kanaktion.

When I asked Jojo if she gets nervous anymore, or if it’s just like any other race now she replied, “At the very beginning I’m so excited to go, I can hardly wait!”

And look, I’ve known Jojo’s history of racing the Na Wahine for a long time, and I’ve had the privilege of paddling with her here at NAC the last three years, but hearing her say, “I’m so excited to go, I can hardly wait” still surprised me. It surprised me because I imagined that after 40 years of crossing the Kaiwi – The Channel of Bones – her response would have been more along the lines of, “Oh, here we go again…” while gritting her teeth! But her unbridled joy in recounting this Na Wahine was evident through her entire recap of the race.

After a long wait in the holding zone, Jojo said her crew had a really good start. She recalled that there wasn’t much bump to ride in those first few miles, and if there was anything it was at the wrong angle – pushing in towards Molokai. The race started to get more interesting when they came off Laau Point (the southwestern tip of Molokai) where the trade winds and swells open up on your right side and where all the escort boats start to converge on their canoes. As they entered the channel itself the waves started peaking, and would, “Smack ya in the face!” as Jojo explained with a grin. “It’s complete chaos! I get such a kick out of just trying to hang in the boat because waves are slapping you all over the place.”

The crew did the first water change – a 1, 3, 5 – around 50-minutes in and completed the second change of seats 2 and 4 shortly after. Everything was going as it should… until about two hours in when a worst-case scenario happened. Jojo, still smiling, told me that their escort boat broke!

When I exclaimed, “Oh no!” She just shrugged and replied, “Not the first time it’s happened!”

“An escort broke for you in previous Na Wahine?” I asked.

She laughed some more and said, “Yep! But at least the canoe didn’t break!”

I smiled then too, because that’s a story for another time.

It took the ladies in the canoe about 30 minutes to realize that something must have happened to their escort, and another hour before their crew pulled up on an auxiliary escort boat. They did a 1-6 change to give everyone a break, but it seemed like their bad luck was on a roll – one of their Hawaii paddlers hurt her back during a change and was unable to continue for the rest of the race, dropping their crew from twelve to eleven.

As the crew got deeper into the channel, the conditions only got tougher. Jojo recalled (still smiling!) the waves were so peaky that sometimes their paddles would grab air instead of water. Another time during a water change, the paddlers jumped out of the canoe, pushing the canoe left, and completely up and over the heads of the paddlers trying to get in the canoe, leaving them on the wrong side of the boat! One paddler had to hop out onto the iakos, so two paddlers could climb in on the right side (meaning the wrong side of the canoe!). Mid-channel, the ladies couldn’t tell which way the swell was coming from. “There were both diagonals behind and in front of you. You didn’t know which way to lean!” Jojo laughed, like it was a fun ride.

Coming into Koko head, they had hoped the conditions would be more in their favor, but wind switched turning into a head wind, and they had to fight against the current. They anticipated that the six-foot waves off Waikiki might give them a ride in allowing them to catch the canoe right in front of them, but no luck there either. Not a single wave, or even a small push to help them across the finish line. Their crew ended up placing 3rd in the 55+ class, finishing with a time of 7:05:36. When I asked if Jojo had ever not placed, she said, “Well, besides the year we broke the Malama during the race? Maybe once or twice in the age divisions over the years.”

Jojo named her steerswomen, Katie Stephens and Ann Hogan, as the MVPs of their race given how tough the conditions were and shouted out the ladies who sat in seat 5 who had to help the steerswomen throughout the race. She also mentioned how glad she was only having to paddle!

After recapping her race, I mentioned that one of the announcers on the live broadcast said that this would be Jojo’s last time racing the Na Wahine. She nodded, with a wry grin this time, because people kept coming up to her and asking the same thing! “I never thought we wouldn’t have Hanni (Hanni Anderson, Na Wahine’s original Race Director and Jojo’s dear friend) with us…and I always told her that as long as you’re here, I’ll be here. And since she wasn’t there this year, maybe that was it…” Jojo said.

This was the most serious Jojo got during our talk. She said it was quite emotional not having her friend there as Hanni had passed just last year. But in fact, Jojo said she always gets emotional over the race – even after all these years. We talked about a big part of why Na Wahine is so special – beyond the fact that you’re pushing yourself beyond limits and paddling 41-miles in between islands – is because of the struggle the original women had to go through and prove to cross the channel that first time 50 years ago, so that every woman after them would be able to race as well. “The men never had to fight to be able to cross the channel. Those women did,” Jojo said.

“So that wasn’t your last Na Wahine then?” I confirmed.

“No, I like it too much and I have too much fun going across! I like paddling in the warm water too!” she said, again with more joy than I expected.

“Even in the 400lb canoes?”

“Yeah, it’s worth it,” she said simply.

We spoke about how fun and special it is when she sees all the friends she’s made over the years. About how different it feels being in the middle of the Kaiwi channel more than any other race and how this channel is definitely her favorite. We swapped stories of leaving the edge of Molokai waters and the feeling of heading into the unknown. She brought up channels where she laughed like a crazy lady mid-channel in 20-foot swells remembering how much fun it was, and others where the ocean was so calm or malia that she’d spat into the water just to see a ripple and to double check that they were in fact moving forward.

Again, the joy Jojo still feels about the Na Wahine O Ke Kai surprised me. Her history with the race has been written about and documented for well over 30 years… so people may assume that she keeps coming back year after year to keep her unbroken streak, but it’s simply and truly because she loves it and still finds joy in every part of the race – and that’s why she keeps coming back year after year.