Anyone who walks past the Second Northside Bridge around sunrise has seen them: a long, narrow canoe with an outrigger arm skimming the water, six paddlers moving together, someone in the middle calling "Hut ho!" to switch sides. Most people assume it's a guided tour, since Wrightsville SUP runs outrigger trips from that same launch. Others assume it's a private club that doesn't take newcomers. Neither guess is quite right, and the actual story is more interesting than either one.
Not a Tour Company Prop
The canoes belong to the Wrightsville Beach Outrigger Canoe Club, a nonprofit that stores its boats at Wrightsville SUP but operates as its own organization, distinct from the rental business. WBOCC is North Carolina's first outrigger canoe club, and it has spent a decade building something most residents drive past without registering: a competitive paddling program with an international résumé, run out of a beach town most people associate with rental weeks and sunset walks rather than ocean-channel racing.
The confusion is understandable. Six-person outrigger canoes, known in the sport as OC-6s, are also what tour operators use for sightseeing trips, so the boat itself doesn't announce which kind of paddle is happening. The difference is in who's holding the paddle and where that crew has raced.
Five Families, Two Used Canoes, 2016
The club's origin is small and specific. In 2016, local entrepreneur Reggie Barnes bought two traditional canoes called Lightnings, and Jarrod Covington, who owns Wrightsville SUP, added two more Mirage-class boats to store alongside them. The founding group also included Bernadette Burton, Emily and Rob Disroth, and Susan and Lou Devinish, a handful of transplants with ties to Hawaii who wanted a way to keep paddling in North Carolina.
Burton's own paddling history predates the club by nearly a decade. She started in Dana Point, California, in 2007, and her crew there finished third overall at the Catalina Crossing, the roughly 30-mile race that serves as the U.S. National Outrigger Championships. She also raced in Na Wahine O Ke Kai, the Women's World Championship, a 42-mile crossing through the Ka'iwi Channel between Moloka'i and O'ahu, a stretch of water paddlers call the Channel of Bones. When she moved back to North Carolina and settled near the water in Wilmington, she brought her single-person outrigger with her and found a small group of transplants who had done the same.
One year after the club formed, in 2017, WBOCC's women's team paddled their first Catalina Crossing and the men sent a crew to the Moloka'i Hoe, the men's world championship. A club that started with two used canoes was racing at the sport's highest level within twelve months.
"The sounds that surround you at a 5:30 a.m. paddle are electric."
That's Burton, now the club's president and women's head coach, describing what keeps members coming back to the water before sunrise, as told to Wrightsville Beach Magazine earlier this year.
From 80 Members to 140 in Four Years
The club's growth tells its own story about how much appetite exists locally for this kind of paddling. A 2022 profile put membership at more than 80, ranging in age from the 20s to the 70s. By this June, that figure had climbed to roughly 140, a jump of nearly 75 percent in four years, according to the same anniversary feature marking the club's tenth season in Wrightsville Beach.
That growth matters because it isn't tourist traffic. WBOCC members train year-round on Banks Channel and the Intracoastal Waterway, and the club describes outrigger paddling as a cultural practice rooted in Polynesian tradition rather than a fitness trend, guided by the Hawaiian proverb that care for the ocean is repaid by the ocean's care in return. New members are welcomed each spring through a novice orientation, and the club states plainly that no prior experience or particular athleticism is required to start.
The Weekend Banks Channel Becomes a 14-Mile Racecourse
The clearest sign of how far the club has come sits on the calendar this fall. On October 3 and 4, 2026, WBOCC hosts the Outrigger East Coast Championship, a two-day event that starts and finishes at Soundside Adventures and turns Banks Channel into part of a course covering nearly 14 miles of flat water and open ocean, according to the official race registration. Saturday is reserved for six-person OC6 races, Sunday for smaller craft including OC1, OC2, surfski, and V1 categories.
The championship isn't just a local meet. WBOCC belongs to ECORA, a network of 22 outrigger clubs stretching from Canada to Florida with more than 1,400 members combined, and the event draws competitors from across that entire footprint to race on water most residents only associate with sunset views from a dock.
A Club That Paddles for More Than Medals
Between 2022 and 2024, WBOCC members also completed a three-year advocacy effort called We the Water, paddling the length of North Carolina's 325-mile coastline in stages to raise awareness for clean water, in partnership with the North Carolina Coastal Federation. Coastal Review covered the project's final leg as the team pushed the last 110 miles from Buxton toward the Virginia border, closing out an initiative that doubled as a fundraiser for the Federation's water quality work. It's the kind of project that only makes sense for a club whose members already spend most mornings reading tide and current for fun.
Where to Actually See It
If you want to watch rather than just wonder, the practice schedule runs early. Crews launch from the Wrightsville SUP dock near the Second Northside Bridge, typically at dawn or in the evening depending on tides, and the six-person boats are easiest to spot gliding along Banks Channel or cutting through the Intracoastal just off the island. The club posts its novice orientation dates each spring on its own site, and membership includes access to weekly practices for anyone who wants to trade spectating for paddling.
What's easy to miss, watching from a dock or a porch, is that the boat gliding past on a Tuesday morning might be the same class of canoe that carried a Wrightsville Beach crew across a channel named for its danger, or that will carry a competitor who traveled from as far as Canada to reach a finish line on Banks Channel this October. The club didn't set out to become a fixture with that kind of range. It started with two secondhand canoes and five families who wanted somewhere to keep paddling, and a decade later it's still just that, only with a much longer stroke.
Living near water this active means the neighborhood's daily rhythms are shaped by people who show up before most residents are awake. Understanding who's actually out there, and why, is part of what it means to know this place rather than just visit it.
If you're curious about life on this stretch of coast, from the water culture to the homes that put you closest to it, Lynne Galloway would be glad to talk through what fits. Let's Connect.
