Ten young women at the Kailua Canoe Club will take paddling's ultimate rite of passage at the Na Wahine O Ke Kai women's canoe race on Sunday.

Along with their paddles and water bottles, they'll need to have their IDs ready.

The minimum age for participants is 18, and all the paddlers in the Kailua crew are 18 or 19. All 10 of them are entering the Na Wahine O Ke Kai for the first time.

"We've been planning this since we were 12 years old," said Roclynn Nosaka, one of the paddlers in the crew.

Teammate Honu Singlehurst added: "We've been watching all these other crews do it and waiting our turn ... we finally get our turn."

It's not going to be easy.

For starters, the race course covers 41 miles across the unpredictable Kaiwi Channel. It starts at Hale O Lono Harbor, Moloka'i, and finishes at Duke Kahanamoku Beach, Waikiki.

It is considered the world championship of long-distance outrigger canoe racing for women's teams.

The elite teams can complete the course in less than six hours.

Average teams — like the Kailua rookies — usually take between seven and eight hours to finish.

"I would love to see these girls finish under seven hours, and I'm confident they can have a good race," said Dar Singlehurst, the crew's coach. "The girls are in shape, that's not the problem. It's more that this is a race that can be tough for any team, let alone a bunch of 18-year-old girls trying it for the first time. So I guess to finish safely is the main thing."

Members of the crew are Alanna Bender, Sara Hamel, Chelsea Kahalepauole-Bizik, Ryann Kurahara, Britty Leandro, Kehau Makaena-Gillum, Roclynn Nosaka, Bobbie Poppler, Cortney Singlehurst, and Honu Singlehurst.

Most of them learned to paddle with Kailua Canoe Club, but a few transfers were added to the roster this summer, when the idea of training for the Na Wahine O Ke Kai became a reality.

"The girls who have been with us here at Kailua started training for distance races last year, actually," said coach Singlehurst, who is also the mother of paddlers Cortney and Honu. "We added a couple girls this year to make our 10 (paddlers)."

Poppler, for example, joined the team last month. She is from California, but is now attending the University of Hawai'i. She heard about the team through her older brother Tyson, who also recently joined Kailua Canoe Club.

"Ever since I started paddling, I heard that this is the biggest race ever, and I couldn't be more excited to be a part of this group," Poppler said.

The physical preparation for the race started a year ago, when the crew entered two long-distance races on O'ahu (minimum age for those "shorter" races is 16).

"They did pretty good, but you could see they weren't ready for Moloka'i," Dar Singlehurst said.

Some of the paddlers who are now 19 even waited a year so they could do the Na Wahine O Ke Kai with the rest of the Kailua crew.

Cortney Singlehurst, for example, could have paddled with an open Kailua crew last year, but opted to wait so she could experience the race together with her younger sister, Honu.

"Some of us have been paddling together since little kid time, so this is like a rewarding experience for us just to do it together," Honu said.

This past summer, the team worked on extended conditioning and gaining experience on the open ocean.

"A lot of running; some push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups," Dar Singlehurst said. "And, of course, longer practices than what they were used to."

Many of the practices even extended into the night hours several miles off Kailua Beach. Before every long practice, the paddlers loaded the canoes with glow sticks to help them see in the dark.

"It's been pretty intense — we prepare for the worst," paddler Makaena-Gillum said of the practices. "Plus, we're trying to eat right and stay in shape."

The recent weeks have also been about building camaraderie and mental toughness.

Several weeks ago, Dar Singlehurst was concerned about the mixing of new paddlers with the returning Kailua paddlers, so she started scheduling dinner get-togethers.

"At first, we came from different clubs and we didn't really know each other," Kahalepauole-Bizik said. "Now, we can joke around and say anything to each other."

It is a bond that should lead to an everlasting experience on Sunday.

"We're doing this incredibly long race that not many people can do," Bender said. "It's going to bring us together no matter what."