About a month earlier, Hugh Shields paddled his way through the Ka’iwi Channel in Hawaii, a 28-mile stretch of Pacific Ocean. Barnegat Bay, particularly on Aug. 29, wasn’t anything like the “Channel of Bones.”

“There’s no comparison at all,” said Shields, the 15-year-old Barnegat Light Beach Patrollifeguard in training and Philadelphia resident, who won the Barnegat Bay Challenge paddleboard class. “This is all flat and much shorter, obviously.”