Competitive paddlers live for big winds — similar to big-wave surfers, whenever the wind comes up, paddlers hit the water.

Optimal training conditions Thursday afternoon led youth paddling coach Nathan Grocholski Lopez and four of his Big Island Jr. Va’a students, including his son, to head out on a downwind paddle. The group, in one-man canoes, left Mahaiula Beach Park between 5 and 5:30 p.m, heading toward Honokohau Harbor.

It was an outing that ended in the coach’s rescue after surviving hours in frigid, rough seas in the dark, with the community in dozens of cars and trucks lining up along the shoreline keeping their lights on and waiting for Grocholski Lopez to return.

His ordeal began about an hour into the paddle when Grocholski Lopez said his canoe flipped, the leash keeping him tethered to the canoe broke and his canoe “just went to sea.”

Grocholski Lopez tried to swim after it for a little while, but every time he would get close enough to reach it, the canoe would go even farther out. “I coach junior paddlers, and one of the things I tell them is that if your canoe gets away from you and you’re going to swim to shore, don’t waste your energy chasing down your canoe,” he said. “I decided I was going to swim, and that’s it.”

By the time Grocholski Lopez decided to swim to shore, the sun had gone down and it was already dark. The weather conditions had also worsened at that point — between 30- to 40-knot winds and 3- to 4-foot chop.

“Honestly, the only option I had was to swim to shore,” he said. “I was thanking God that I had a good swim coach that taught me how to swim. I kept telling myself I just had to swim a bit and rest a bit, swim a bit and rest a bit.”

Meantime, since the others in the group were ahead of him, they didn’t notice until everyone was back ashore that the coach wasn’t with them. They went back out to look for their coach but couldn’t find him.

Grocholski Lopez wouldn’t return for more than four hours — after a two-hour search by boat led by Liam Powers, who owns tour operating company Sea Quest Hawaii and is a close friend of Grocholski Lopez.

“This is the guy who, just a couple years ago when my son first started paddling, was doing two-man races with my son. He is with them all the time,” said Powers, who is based in Keauhou Harbor. “He’s a big part of my son’s life and our lives. I’m just so grateful that we found him.”

Powers said he was just about to sit down for dinner at around 7 p.m. when Charlie Becerra, who coaches Big Island Jr. Va’a with Grocholski Lopez, called and asked whether Powers had access to his boat.

“(Becerra) said Nate never made it back in. He said three or four of the boys made it in already, and he’s still out there,” he said.

Powers immediately went down to Keauhou Bay, where the boats he uses for his tour business were already in the water. The boat he and fellow Sea Quest Hawaii captains Mike Poerstel and Skyler Marciel would take for the search was a rigid-hull inflatable, a boat Powers said is “made for heavy water.”

“That’s why I felt confident that we had to be out there, because these boats we use are made for this,” Powers said.

Poerstel, who also works as Sea Quest Hawaii’s operations manager, did a few calculations based on the currents to find a starting point for the men to begin their search. Although both he and Marciel didn’t know Grocholski Lopez personally, they insisted on going with Powers on the search.

“I knew it was going to be a long night. When you go do these things, you don’t stop. I was just like, ‘You guys know this, right?’ And they said, ‘We know. We’re coming,’” Powers said. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”

They left Keauhou Harbor at around 7:30 p.m. and traveled north to Kaiwi Point, before going out to the wind line, toward Keahole. They made a first pass into Keahole and went back down with the wind, trying to find him with the boat’s spotlights. When they arrived at Honokohau Harbor, the men turned back around, went out another quarter-mile and headed back up north. While on their way, after stopping their boat for a second, they heard a yell.

“He was right there. He was no more than 75 yards off in the dark. We turned to him and there he was, still swimming, no paddle, no canoe,” Powers said.

Grocholski Lopez, who had been treading water for around three hours, said that his body was cramping all over, but around 10 minutes before Powers found him, his hamstring cramps were severely worsening. After seeing airplane lights that he thought could be helicopters that could help him, seeing the different light of Powers’ boat made Grocholski Lopez push himself to swim into the boat’s path.

“I pretty much knew that that boat was looking for me, because no boats would be out in those waters,” Grocholski Lopez said. “(Powers) was a little closer to shore on a line going straight north, so I had to push to swim in his path. And sure enough, he came straight to me.”

At approximately 9:20 p.m., Grocholski Lopez was located about 2.5 miles off Pine Trees Beach, around a mile off from Poerstel’s initial calculations. The men pulled Grocholski Lopez onto the side of the boat and wrapped him in towels to warm up his body. Initially, Grocholski Lopez didn’t know who had come to his rescue — his eyes were burned from the salt water.

“I was talking to him, and he was in the back of the boat. We got him wrapped up, and at one point while I’m talking to him, he said, ‘Oh, Liam?’” Powers recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, man!’ He said, ‘How did you find me?’”

“I can’t even explain how happy I was,” Grocholski Lopez said. “I couldn’t believe that they found me like that.”

But Powers wasn’t the only person searching. Throughout the search, hundreds of cars and trucks lined up along the shoreline from Pine Trees Beach to Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park, keeping their lights on and waiting for Grocholski Lopez to return.

Upon arrival on shore at Honokohau Harbor, Powers said there were at least 100 people at the dock.

“I’m really so thankful for our paddling community, the Kona community especially,” Grocholski Lopez said. “The Big Island people just came together. It was amazing to have that support.”

For Powers, the motivation to go out and look for Grocholski Lopez was partly rooted in the strength of the local community. He said he knows that anyone would have done the same for him, and that Thursday night’s event just “reminds (him) how special this place is.”

“He’s been there for them, and the community just really came together. Everybody was out doing everything they could. Without a boat and in those conditions, you really feel helpless. You can just go to the shoreline and look, and everybody did that. They really did whatever they could do,” Powers said. “It wasn’t an attitude of ‘if we find him’; it was ‘when we find him.’”

Upon his arrival, Grocholski Lopez was transported to Kona Hospital, where doctors told him he had hypothermia and was dehydrated but was otherwise healthy.

As for the next time Grocholski Lopez hits the water, it’s again not a question of if, but when.

“As soon as I get a few days’ rest, I’m going back in the water for sure,” he said.

He also said that from now on, he and his paddlers will approach downwind paddles with added safety measures, like double-checking their canoe leashes and using tracking devices.