Like going from road biking to mountain biking or from skiing groomed runs to attacking moguls, the nine members of the Bend Oregon Outrigger canoe team headed to the open waters of the Pacific near Hawaii are prepared to get rattled.

The crew, all from Bend, will take to the rough ocean water of Ka’iwi Channel on Saturday for the 53rd running of the Molokai Hoe Outrigger World Championship Race. The team will race against more than 100 canoes in the men’s open division, paddling a 41-mile stretch of ocean from the island of Molokai to Waikiki on Oahu.

While facing some of the top outrigger teams in the world, the Bend crew’s greatest challenge will be navigating across the unpredictable waters of what race organizers say is one of the world’s roughest sections of open water.

In addition to twice-weekly practices on the Deschutes River in Bend, the team also regularly travels to the Columbia River Gorge, where wind-produced waves simulate the feeling of the rolling ocean.

But, it’s not quite the same.

”The channel is an incredibly gnarly place,” admitted Dave Chun as he watched the team practice last week from the footbridge over the Deschutes River in the Old Mill District.

A native of Hawaii, Chun has paddled outriggers for many years and is one of the founders of the Bend outrigger club.

Despite the club’s disadvantage of not being based near the ocean, the team manages to produce impressive results.

Last month at the U.S. Outrigger Championships, the Bend team paddled a 31-mile ocean channel from Catalina Island to Newport Beach, Calif., finishing with the 15th-fastest time out of 52 teams from around the world.

”The reason we do so well is we have great athletes,” said team captain Peter Yonan. ”We’re as fit and strong as anyone.”

Two team members are professional trainers at a local athletic club. Another is the 2005 winner of the Pole Pedal Paddle, Central Oregon’s annual multisport race. Two others are top Nordic skiers.

Members of the Bend team range in age from 27 to 40, and some of them had little or no paddling experience before joining the club.

Yonan, a 40-year-old dentist, is the only crew member to have paddled outriggers competitively before joining the Bend team. Yonan grew up in Hawaii and was a member of his high school’s outrigger squad.

After moving to Oregon in the early 1990s, Yonan believed his outrigger days were done.

”I had written off outrigger paddling for the rest of my life if I was going to live in Oregon,” he recalled.

But Yonan met up with Chun and Chun’s wife, Meg, who had already begun a women’s outrigger team. Together they founded the Bend Oregon Outrigger canoe club back in 1993.

Today, Meg Chun and Craig Sowers serve as coaches for the men’s squad. The last time the men’s team competed at the world championship race was in 1999.

”One of the challenges is getting nine solid team members to make a commitment for something that’s way off in the distance,” said Yonan. ”Each year, you kind of don’t know where it (the team) is going. Either the momentum catches on and people buy into the commitment, or not.”

The nine-man crew operates a narrow six-seat fiberglass canoe with teammates paddling on alternate sides of the boat. After every 15 strokes, they switch sides. During this Saturday’s long-distance race, three paddlers are switched out of the boat every 20 minutes and replaced by three fresh paddlers. Performing this sliding into and out of the canoe seamlessly is key to maintaining a consistent pace.

”The mental confidence that we have in each other is huge,” said Yonan. ”It’s really exciting and fulfilling to have a group of people come together with a common goal, and not to leave anything on the table and give a hundred percent. It’s special to have that synergy among nine people.”

As the most experienced of the paddlers on the team, Yonan operates the steersman’s position in the back of the boat, which is just wide enough to snugly fit his hips. It’s his job to navigate the boat and serve as coach on the water.

Unlike the other paddlers, who will race for 40 minutes before they get a 10-minute rest, Yonan will complete the entire race with merely a break or two. At the 1999 Molokai Hoe, he paddled the entire race.

”The skill or knowledge that I might possess is understanding the ocean a little better,” he explained. ”It’s a very dynamic, constantly changing environment. I think if you have an experience or base of knowledge in being in that type of water, you can draw on that to make the canoe go faster.”

Depending on weather conditions, the Bend outrigger team expects to finish Saturday’s race in 5> to 6 hours. Their goal is to be no more than one minute per mile slower than the fastest team.

In 1999, the Bend team finished the 41-mile race in 5 hours and 48 minutes, and the winning time was about five hours.

”What we tell our guys is that when you’re in the canoe, your mind-set is that it’s a 40-minute race, not a six-hour race,” said Sowers, a coach and team member.

The key to a strong crew, Sowers added, isn’t just nine fit guys. Teammates paddling in unison is what drives the boat forward faster.

”One of the terms we use is ‘six as one,’” says Sowers. ”All other things being equal, the way to make yourself go faster is to make sure you’re in sync.”

Before joining the team about 10 years ago, Sowers said, he had some experience sea kayaking and wilderness canoeing.

But the opportunity to paddle an outrigger canoe presented something unique for Sowers – a team sport.

”It gave us a water sport that was different,” Sowers recalled. ”We have all these individual-type sports that people traditionally do in Bend. This is a team sport to access.”

The nine members of the Bend crew all have regular lives, too – with jobs like teacher, plumber, and contractor – as well as families.

”In a way, it takes you back a little bit to a simpler place in your life,” Yonan reflected. ”Like high school, when you’re with a bunch of guys and you can have fun, and not take life as seriously.”