A final tune-up showed that the Lanikai Canoe Club was running smoothly.

What happens a month from now remains to be seen.

Lanikai won the Henry Ayau Memorial Race for men's crews yesterday, completing the 33-mile course from Maunalua Bay to Nanakuli Beach in 4 hours, 11 minutes, 45 seconds.

Lanikai's next appearance will be in the Moloka'i Hoe world championship race, which is scheduled for Oct. 12.

"We've been training big since June," veteran Lanikai steersman Jim Foti said. "I'd like to think we're where we want to be at this point. But there's still a month left before the big one, so there's still a lot of homework to do."

Lanikai is specifically training to catch Tahiti's best teams, and it got Tahiti-like conditions — the ocean was calm, with light winds and rising temperatures.

"No waves, nothing," Lanikai's Karel Tresnak Jr. said. "We might have got a little bit of wake from the tugboats off Pearl Harbor, but that was about it. The rest of it was like a lake. It wasn't a fun race at all."

Tahiti teams have dominated the past two Moloka'i Hoe races, and Lanikai is considered Hawai'i's top contender this year.

"The whole time you're out there, you keep thinking about the times Tahiti put up the last couple years, and that keeps you going," Lanikai's Kekoa Bruhn said. "But, yeah, it was tough today with no surf. A couple of times, I was like, are we in Hawai'i or Tahiti?"

Members of the Lanikai crew were Kai Bartlett, Ka'ai Bruhn, Kekoa Bruhn, Dave Daniels, Patrick Dolan, Jim Foti, John Foti, Mike Judd and Tresnak.

Each team could have nine paddlers, but only six could paddle in the canoe at any given time.

Lanikai controlled the race from start to finish, and did it in a koa canoe named Hokulele (most of the other top teams used fiberglass canoes).

"I think you always take less chances and are a little more cautious in a koa," said Tresnak, who took turns steering the canoe with the Foti brothers. "So to come out with a win like this is good."

Lanikai will likely use a fiberglass canoe for the Moloka'i Hoe. It used a koa canoe yesterday as part of a tribute to Leighton Look, the late Hui Lanakila paddler/coach who was also a koa canoe builder.

"We've still got some choices to make for Moloka'i," Jim Foti said. "But we love the Hokulele and it was great for us today."

Yesterday, Lanikai used all nine of its paddlers in various combinations.

"It was a great workout," Jim Foti said. "In case we do have a flat channel (on Oct. 12), we have this under our belt."

Perhaps because of the conditions, several paddlers took turns setting the pace in the stroker position for Lanikai.

"We tried to stay a steady 60 to 62 (strokes per minute)," Kekoa Bruhn said. "It was hard to keep the rate up the whole time, but the energy was there from everybody."

Team Pa'a placed a distant second in 4:17:11.

Manny Kulukulualani, the organizer of the Pa'a crew, said they stayed within striking distance of Lanikai for the first three hours of the race.

"Everybody knows how good Lanikai is, so we were stoked to be with them," he said. "Only in that last hour, they started to really move on us. A lot of that is conditioning and the fact that we don't really train with each other."

Pa'a is a mix of elite paddlers from around the state. Many are paddling together for the first time this year.

"Schedule-wise, it's almost impossible for us to train together," Kulukulualani said. "But hopefully this is motivation to train more. This race was as hard as it gets with these conditions, and for us to get second, that's a good race."

Members of the Pa'a crew were Kulukulualani, Raven Aipa, Norm Bradley, Ikaika Hauanio, Aaron Napoleon, Kekua Nolan, Kea Pa'iaina, Alfred Van Gieson and Tapa Worthington.

Kailua placed third in 4:21:50, Outrigger was fourth in 4:23:06, and Hui Nalu was fifth in 4:24:24. Outrigger also used a koa canoe.

Despite the gap between first place and the rest of the pack, Lanikai was not quite satisfied with its performance.

"The last two years have been such a cakewalk for the Tahitians, so it's hard to tell where we are after a race like this," Tresnak said.

Kekoa Bruhn added: "We still have a lot of work to do. We were trying to calculate the speed of the Tahitians from last year, and we're not there yet."

Another Outrigger crew placed ninth overall and won the masters 40-older division in 4:33:34.

Kailua won the masters 50-older division in 4:46:30, and Hui Nalu won the masters 55-older division in 4:51:06.

More than 50 crews from around the state participated.

The Pailolo Challenge — a 26-mile race from Maui to Moloka'i — is scheduled for Saturday, but not all of the top teams are expected to enter.

The Na Wahine O Ke Kai women's world championship race is scheduled for Sept. 28.