Holy Buckets!…Maliko 6

So maybe you’re getting tired of hearing about Maliko runs, I think this is the last one I’ll write up for awhile. But this one was kind of special, and perhaps a little stupid. I called the usual suspects and no one seemed to want to go. Just about as i was about to give up, I got an email from Scott, saying he had managed to buy an F14 without waiting months for it, and he wanted to go for a run. This one would be his third.

So here we are, two newbies–Run 6 and Run 3. Off on our own, and the wind was howling. I don’t mean that figuratively, it was blowing so hard that the rack on my jeep was making a mournful howling sound as i pulled into the harbor parking lot, the traditional shuttle meeting spot. There was no one there. Usually there’s a selection of trucks with canoe racks on them–return shuttles for canoe downwinders, and perhaps a few obvious SUP shuttles. This time the parking lot was empty. Bad sign.

We decided to exit at Kite Beach instead of the Harbor, partly because we were getting kind of a late start (we met at 2:30), partly because the wind was swinging somewhat offshore in the harbor and it would be a slog for the last half mile, and partly because neither of us had tried a kite beach landing before. So we dropped off Scott’s truck at Kite beach and continued to Maliko.

No one was at Maliko either. the surf crashing on the rocks at the gulch exit looked hideous–it was filling the exit with foam and spray. We paddled out a good distance, turned left and committed to the run. ZOOM–I immediately caught a runner that took me what felt like a mile. As I angled in the swell to run outwards from the beach i saw why my ride was so powerful–the swell I was in was substantially over my head. I felt like I was down in a valley. Kinda cool, kinda NOT.

When that swell finally passed i realized I was huffing and puffing–i must not have been breathing. I looked ahead and inwards and saw Scott in pretty close to Ho’okipa. “Hmmm, pretty aggressive” I thought and continued to work my way out. I don’t really need to see the outer reefs of Baldwin Beach and Spartan’s reef again anytime soon. One bowel slacking incident per month is good enough for me. About that time Scott disappeared from view up ahead. After some time he reappeared, still ahead of me but closer to me and further out. I thought “either he saw Jesus or Spartan Reef, because something made him get the hell out of there”. Turns out he did more than just see it, he got inside of a couple of breaking waves. Got knocked around a little bit, and had to knee paddle out around them, but no harm, no foul except for a semi-permanent wide-eyed stare that should go away sometime next weekend. If he stays out of the water. Or drinks a lot.

The run was going really well, the wind was certainly hitting 35 mph, and the swells were easy to catch and hook up. Then we got close to Spreklesville and the ocean turned into some kind of crazed undulating waffle pattern with a bongo board under it. Big groundswell from the left, wind swell from behind, and the occasional huge thumping swell coming from the Northeast. I started having a little vertigo, probably from the light bouncing off the heavy waves, or maybe just from looking at he undulating surface under the nose of my board. I tried watching the horizon–no good, it was moving too much too. I tried taking off my sunglasses, but it just made it worse. I started falling a lot in the big swells.

Just before we got to Kanaha I decided to go closer to shore. the wind was shifting offshore a bit, and I didn’t want to have a long struggle once I turned the corner at Upper Kanaha. Bad idea. I moved a little too far inside, and suddenly I had overhead-and-a-half breaking waves outside of me. I was astonished at how fast I got into trouble. I tried to turn and paddle out past them but a monster rose up and started to break fifty feet outside. Just as the whitewater reached me I dove into the face, and then was snatched backwards violently by my leash. “Please hold, please hold” I thought. And then when the dragging continued far, far beyond the fifteen seconds I expected I thought “okay, got to do something or I’m NEVER going to get air.” So I doubled over against the rushing water and got my hand onto the leash and tried to pull the board towards me. It didn’t budge, but my less streamlined, doubled over body must have pulled my big, floaty board out of the whitewater, because i popped up and got a few breaths.

These are local windswells, so the period is really short. A few seconds behind the first wave was the next, even bigger. I flipped my board over and grabbed the edge saver on the leash and held on. I got worked awhile, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Got a couple more breaths and SLAM again. This time my feet brushed reef. I was well and truly screwed, Caught inside BIGTIME with no where to go, and being pushed onto the reef, with huge waves crashing on top of me every few seconds. And now that i was on the reef even the mid-sized waves were starting to break on me.

I pulled the board under my stomach, shoved my paddle between me and the board, and started paddling like hell to catch the wave bearing down on me. If my weight had been centered i would have pearled instantly in the steep, critical face, but in my boogie board position the nose was up high enough to clear the backside of the wave I was being hurled into, and the board surfed along. I pulled the board under me and got up to my knees, wobbling around and trying to get the paddle engaged–the board was trying to curve up and out of the wave. I got the board more or less under control, and rocketed over the reef on my knees. When the wave started to peter out I staggered to my feet and started paddling like mad for the lagoon.

As I approached the edge of the reef one last big wave nailed me and knocked me off my board. I went through the whole get-dragged-twice-as-long-as-usual routine again, and came up spluttering and completely out of breath. Fortunately i was inside the lagoon in relative calm. I really didn’t have much left.

I got up on the board and started catching swells and wind, running down on the inside of Lower Kanaha, past the lifeguard tower. Comfortable, familiar territory. Way ahead i could see Scott heading in. He took the turn in the right spot and stayed outside long enough to eliminate all the drama.

We both arrived at the beach within a few minutes of each other. We both had hair-raising stories to tell. We both shared long moments of silence as we drove back to my jeep in the gulch. When we arrived, the wind had dropped, the ocean looked inviting. I had this momentary, irrational, totally scary thought that we should do another run. This stuff is like Heroin. life threatening, dangerous and very addictive.

This GPS track tells the clearest story of any track I’ve recorded. Oh my God he got caught inside and went over the reef. Plain as day.

The speed track (the green squiggles) also tells a story. That’s a 19.5 MPH peak you see there where the Heads Up display box is. My, my, my. And then right where I went over the reef and managed to catch a wave to get my chubby ass out of there, you see a high speed blip that goes on for a long time. That’s me catching that long ride off the reef. Or maybe it’s me being dragged underwater.

Maliko Quattro

Maliko run number four is in my official record book. Last guy to the beach again, but I improved my time over the last run (the Maui Canoe and Kayak club race) by 15 minutes. If I keep improving at this rate by the time I have Maliko 10 under my belt I’ll be whipping Dave Kalama’s butt and be first in line for the beer. Nothing like an active fantasy life to keep up the old motivation.

It was a pretty good run for me. I fell thirty times–literally, you can count them on the GPS trace. But that’s down substantially from the 200+ of the last run. I got some great swell runs, and even linked up a couple, a phenomenon that I previously considered some kind of inept description by my fellow downwindpeople. It just didn’t make sense to me that you could shoot down one swell with such vigor that you could catch and ride over the swell in front of you and catch it. Seemed like some kind of perpetual motion nonsense. But it turns out that you can indeed do that, and it feels GREAT! I actually managed a triple, which i celebrated by falling in gripped in some kind of wild surfing frenzy while trying to get over the top of number four. You can see the event clearly at mile four on the trace.

Trust me, it was a lot more exciting on the waves than on the trace. The run was pretty wild. The wind was gusting well over thirty knots, blowing the tops off the swells, and some of the doubled-up swells were over ten feet. You DON’T want to look behind you in these kind of conditions, it’s pretty damned intimidating to see an well-overhead swell running up behind you.

About halfway to the harbor, right off Spreklesville, the swells got a lot steeper, and I started having some problems with Gumby pearling. It didn’t pitch me off, but the nose of the board was well underwater, and that made the tail feel very loose and weird. I tried stepping back, but that made it to hard to catch swells, so I tried taking off at more of an angle, and that seemed to help. It worked best on lefts rather than rights, so my track headed gently towards the beach, as you can see on the map. Right until I started seeing the breakers at upper Kanaha, at which point I went RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT. I need to get over my nervousness about getting caught inside on these reefs. This run is supposed to be 9.5 miles and even though I though I took what i thought was a more aggressive line this time, I actually did 10.1 miles. With a five MPH pace that extra .6 miles cost me at least six minutes. Hey, I could have been under two hours!

It’s really fun going on these runs with the Maui crew. This Sunday that was Randy and Chan Strome, Larry Risley, and Jack Dyson. a great bunch of people and fun paddle with, even if they do all leave me in the dust.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Go! Gumby Go!

I turned the corner onto South Kihei Rd and saw whitecaps. Big, fluffy spraying-off-the-top whitecaps, and chunky swells even with the short fetch from Maalaea Bay. Perfect for a fast downwinder to the Four Seasons beach. Diane was dubious as usual, she considers anything beyond a gentle zephyr to be life-threatening, but I couldn’t wait to get the board off the car and into the water. Diane doesn’t mind being my shuttle driver, gives her and Sam some time for some nice south side walks.

I hopped on the board and paddled out a few hundred yards, and instantly regretted not starting at Haycraft Park on the other side of the bay. It makes for such a ripping run when the wind is slightly onshore, and this was, decidedly. I was going to have to work a bit to clear the reefs and that would slow me down. If I had started at Haycraft I’d be riding swells the whole way. It was Nukin’. You can pretty much see from the GPS speed trace that I wasn’t getting any good swell rides for about the first mile–I had to cut too tight an angle against them to get long rides, but once I turned the corner on the Shangri-La reef it was pure rock ‘n roll.

I was paddling Gumby, my Foote Maliko 12, since the Penetrator is back at the Ding King’s, drying out. I punched a small ding in it paddling on the North side the other day–no idea how, I didn’t feel a thing–and it was enough to cause a leak. So it’s getting pumped out to be ready for the next race. Gotta say, the Penetrator FLIES in flatwater. Now that I’ve learned how to get some muscle into my paddling, and i’m not doing balance checks all the time, it just rips.

Back to Gumby and the swells. What a friken rocket this thing is in a hefty swell. Glide after glide after glide. I was looking at my GPS and seeing seven to eight MPH most times. Never less than 5.5. what a hoot. Plus I’m learning to carve the swells to get more speed and better direction control. I’m also learning to get my paddle out further and pull hard in the beginning of the stroke. This pulls the nose up and gets the board into the swells quickly.

Once I’m in a swell I put my weight forward until the nose is just skimming the water, slide my back foot towards the rail I want to set, and give it steady pressure. As long as i keep the nose down the board just keeps accelerating and turns along the face of the swell. As you can see from the trace I got some pretty long rides this way, some of them in the 10MPH range, and one at the five mile point that hit about 11. Pretty fast for a goofy looking 12 foot board.

I don’t know how this software computes average speed, must be some kind of instantaneous value averaging. But I did 7.0 miles in 1:20:34 , that’s 5.83 mph average, not 5.2. What fun! And I’m sure I can go a lot faster in similar conditions next time. We’ll see.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Konrad’s Ship Gallery, Paia

You can spend  a small fortune at Konrads or you can buy a beautiful model of a Victorian Pond Yacht for a few hundred buck. Nautical models and art is a specialized market, but there are a few really great shops in the world that carry high-quality models of historic ships, and they’ve got nothing on Konrad. Not selection, not range of quality, not rarity, and not price. Pretty unbelievable to find a shop in Paia, Hawaii that makes the expensive shops in Carmel, Susalito, Boston, and London look like pikers and dabblers.

One of Konrad’s specialties is Hawaiian Canoe models, and his shop has become known as the premier source of these models. The quality and beauty of these models is simply amazing. If you’re anywhere near Paia and you don’t eperience this shop, you’re missing a very enjoyable experience. It’s best to be there when Konrad himself is tending the shop (which is most of the time) because he’s a wealth of information about everything in the shop. If you show an interest he can tell you the history of each ship, artifact, sculpture or painting, the story of the artist, and the special characteristics of each piece. all related in his relaxed, offhand manner.

You’ll enjoy it.

Here’s a little Animoto video  of some photos from Konrad’s:

SUP Surfing 101 Basic Track Chapter 1

This post is the first in a very long series (I hope) on surfing your SUP. A lot of people are buying SUP boards just for flatwater paddling. More power to them, but there may come a day when you decide you’d like to try a bit of surfing. The good news is that all the things you’ve learned in paddling flatwater–balancing on the board, paddling techniques, turning, moving around on the board–will all come into play. The bad news is that it’s not nearly enough.

This series will give you practical knowledge about surfing. It won’t teach you to do it–only time in the water can do that. But it will accelerate your learning by showing how to best spend that time.

I’m not qualified by long experience to teach you to SUP surf. I’m a writer who SUP surfs. The knowledge here comes largely from other, more experienced people and from the lessons I’m learning as I take the same path you will take. I’ve been doing SUP surfing for about two years, but I do it intensively. I live in Portland, Oregon and Haiku, Hawaii, and I SUP surf and paddle in both places. I have the luxury of time–I’m semi-retired. I try to get in the water every day and probably succeed about 300 days per year. When I’m in the water I don’t just play, I’m always trying to learn new things.

Chapter 1 Section 1
Etiquette, safety, and wave knowledge

Step one is to reassess your swimming ability. When you’re SUP surfing, as opposed to flatwater paddling, you’ll be in rougher water, and you’ll have a higher likelihood of losing your board, even if you have a leash. You need to be able to swim to the beach from wherever you are surfing. In some cases, like reef breaks, that could be a mile. You also may be swimming in currents, chop, whitewater and breaking waves. Beef up your swimming before you tackle surfing.

Step two is to practice your breath-holding. It’s easy to get held down by a wave, even in relatively small surf. You might be held down for just a few seconds, or it might be more like fifteen. In very rare cases you might have to hold your breath for thirty seconds. That may not sound like much when you’re sitting on a couch, but it can be difficult. It’s worthwhile to practice holding your breath while you’re doing inactive pursuits, like watching the TV, and especially worthwhile to practice swimming underwater. The key to surviving a long hold-down in a big wave is not to panic. The only way to train yourself not to do that is to experience it many times. Start small–trust me, a hold-down from a chest-high wave can scare the hell out of you.

Etiquette and Safety
Before you venture into the water you should know what the surf community expects of you. There aren’t any true rules other than to respect the people you are going to surf with. But there are some customs and expectations you should know about. The “rules” of the SUP community are contained in a site called SUPright (HTTP://WWW.SUPright.com). these rules will change over time as other people add refinements to them, but here is what this site says today:

First thing to understand is that there really aren’t rules–not yet anyway. Right now there are simply ways that the community of SUP surfers believe we should act. If you don’t follow these ways, someone might yell at you, and people might think you’re a jerk, but that’s it.

And that’s the best reason of all to follow these ways–because we don’t want that to change. Join the community and share the stoke because that is what makes surfing–all surfing–so very special. Don’t put yourself outside of that by being an idiot.

Beginners and experts have a different set of responsibilities. We’re going to take pains to explain everything as clearly as possible, which will make this a little tedious. If you find that too slow just jump to the summary at the end.

Beginners
What’s a beginner? Well obviously if it’s your first week on a SUP and you’re still falling in every few minutes you’re an absolute beginner. Once you get into waves you’d probably count yourself a beginner if you can’t turn easily without falling. But the definition needs to be a little more precise.

Beginner: You can paddle out past the breaking waves without falling when knee high whitewater hits you. You can pick the right place to be in a wave, paddle to the right spot and turn in front of the wave without falling, then catch the wave.

Intermediate: In waist high waves you can do a bottom turn, a cutback, and turn out of the wave without falling. When you do fall you can grab your board. Your leash is rarely needed.

Beginners have no business in a popular break. You’ll get in the way, you can get hurt if a closeout wave or set comes through, if you catch a wave and fall you’ll lose your board to the end of your leash. Almost everything you do will endanger yourself and endanger other surfers. Paddle away from the break, find some small waves and practice.

One very important thing to practice is controlling your board. If you watch experienced surfers you’ll almost never see their boards at the end of their leash. They either turn out of waves at the end of their ride, or in the rare cases that they fall they grab the board as they fall.

The leash DOES NOT prevent your board from hurting other people. When your body is outstretched, being dragged by your runaway board you have four feet of body, perhaps ten feet of leash and eleven feet of board. That’s at least a 25 foot radius you can hurt other people within. Your board will generally be in the wave, sticking out just waiting to nail another surfer.

One disciplined way to practice controlling your board is to surf BY YOURSELF without a leash. By yourself means NO ONE in the water who could be hit by your board–all the way to the beach, because that’s probably how far you’ll have to swim to regain your board. You can certainly simulate this with a leash if you don’t want to do all that swimming, but going leash-less is a useful training aid and a commitment. Just never do it around other people.

If you are a beginner, and you want to paddle out and watch the more advanced surfers, stay in the channel (which should be obvious–it’s the way most surfers will be returning to the lineup) and sit down. Don’t wobble around in the lineup and loom over all the prone surfers. It’s rude and intimidating.

Intermediate: If you can execute basic surf maneuvers without falling and can control your board, you should be welcome in an uncrowded lineup. If the crowd grows you should paddle off to the side or go looking for new spots. Your SUP board can catch waves that longboarders can’t. Don’t be a sheep, you don’t have to be in the pocket of a lineup with twenty other surfers. If you can’t thread your way through a half dozen people in the way, and contend with people dropping in or the need to pull out from the wave at ANY time without EVER losing control of your board, then you shouldn’t be there. Yes there will be be people there that can’t do that. Just because someone else is a kook doesn’t mean you need to be. Ride your own ride

All SUP Surfers

1. Don’t be a wavehog: It’s easy to grab every rideable wave with a SUP. You can always be first into the wave, closest to the shoulder. Everyone else is just dropping in. If you are spinning laps, paddling back out quickly and setting up for the next wave, you’re the worst kind of hog.

2, The second worst wavehog is the guy that maneuvers outside, coming in like a locomotive on every good set wave. Do it once and you’re getting all the wave can offer. Do it five times and hoot others off your wave and you genuinely, truly, absolutely suck.

3, When your turn comes, take your wave, surf it well, paddle back out and sit down. Talk to people. Watch for good waves. Let them pass and make it obvious that you’re sharing. Show some aloha, some kindness, some wisdom.

4. Don’t drop in. Dropping in means another surfer has caught the wave closer to the shoulder. If you find you accidentally have, turn out of the wave immediately. If you can’t do that without falling then sit down on the tail of your board (and if you can’t, what are you doing in a crowded break?). Never undertake a maneuver that might cause you to ditch your board in front of the overtaking surfer.

5. Using your high vantage point to call out waves might be a good thing, but ask your fellow surfers if they’d like you to do that. A lot of people surf to decompress and relax. Having some guy bellow “here’s a good one” five times in a row for mediocre waves may disturb their Wa.

6. Don’t paddle out through the middle of the break. Go off to the channel, or if there is no channel, well to the side out of the surfing zone. Killing someone’s ride by standing like a deer in the headlights will not gain you any points.

7. If you must paddle in the surfing zone, signal which way you are going to try to pass any surfer on a collision course with you. Generally you want to pass behind them so they don’t have to cut back, so if you fall you won’t take them out. Make your intention clear. It might not work but at least you tried.

Any time you think a rule doesn’t apply to you, you’re just BS-ing yourself. “I didn’t really drop in because I was so far down the wave”: BS–you wouldn’t come up with an excuse if you didn’t KNOW you were wrong.
“I tried to grab my board but I missed it” BS–go back and practice control.

Find new places. SUP boards are magic for that. You are missing out if you don’t explore, and you’re just adding to the congestion. Five miles is no big deal for a SUP board.

Don’t let nitwits control your standards. Just because someone doesn’t appreciate your efforts to share and to observe traditional etiquette doesn’t mean you should abandon it. Set your standards and live by them.

Summary

Beginners: Stay out of popular breaks. Find some small waves and practice controlling your board. Learn to turn out of waves and/or grab the board as you fall. Do not rely on your leash–in fact consider learning to surf BY YOURSELF without a leash with NO ONE in the water who could be hit by your board–all the way to the beach. Alternatively simulate this with a leash if you don’t want to do all that swimming, Going leash-less is a useful training aid and a commitment. Just never do it around other people.

Intermediate: If you can execute basic surf maneuvers without falling and can control your board, you should be welcome in an uncrowded lineup. If the crowd grows, paddle off to the side or go looking for new spots. If you can’t thread your way through a half dozen people in the way, and contend with people dropping in or the need to pull out from the wave at ANY time without EVER losing control of your board, then you shouldn’t be in a crowd.

All SUP Surfers

1. Don’t be a wavehog.

2, When your turn comes, take your wave, surf it well, paddle back out and sit down.

3. Don’t drop in. If you accidentally have, turn out of the wave immediately.

4. Don’t paddle out through the middle of the break.

5. If you must paddle in the surfing zone, signal which way you are going to try to pass any surfer on a collision course with you.

Any time you think a rule doesn’t apply to you, you’re lying to yourself.

Waves and breaks
Before long you’ll be sitting in a lineup with other surfers and they’ll start talking about the waves. That they are mushy, or blown out, closeouts, or sectioning or A frames. That there’s too much west in them (pick a direction), that the tide is going out or it’s all short period stuff. There’s a lot to know about waves, but you don’t need to know much to start with. Here’s the basics and we’ll talk a lot more about waves later.

Waves for Surfing

Surfers ride waves on the shoulder (or curl), which is the steepest part of the wave, right where the smooth face of the wave and the whitewater of the already broken part of the wave meet. Beginners can have fun playing in the whitewater, and a SUP board can use it’s speed and size to ride a wave almost anywhere on it’s face, but the shoulder is the sweet spot of the wave.

The broken part of the wave is called whitewater, foam, or soup. It’s turbulent and a lot of the power has been spent. You can ride it if you point your board mostly toward the beach, but it’s bumpy and hard to maneuver in.

The lip is the top of the wave, especially when it’s starting to curl over as it gets ready to drop. How the wave drops is an indication of the amount of energy in the wave and how the ocean bottom is shaped to form the wave. When the lip pitches way out and falls into the trough at the base of the wave or even well past it at some fabled breaks it can create a tube (called the shack, a pipe, the green room, breaking top to bottom, etc.). But most waves crumble or form just a partial tube as they pitch over and fall into the face of the wave

Beginner Waves

What you want as a beginner is a wave that has a shoulder that is gently spilling as it travels across the face of the wave. And you want mushy waves, which are waves that crumble down their face, rather than the ones that toss a lip far out and fall with a whump to the base of the wave. You also don’t want waves that are breaking right onto a steep shore or in very shallow water. In other words, you don’t want to paddle out at Pipeline, unless you have grown tired of life.

Waves create rip currents and often have channels in them, that are simply deeper water that doesn’t permit the swell to kick up into a wave at that point. The rip currents and channels are useful for moving back out through a wave, but they also can be a source of danger. A rip current can move a lot faster than you can paddle. If you get separated from your board you may be battling rip currents while you try to get back to the shore or to your board. Simply put, don’t fight rips. Go with the flow and look for a way to get back to shore when the rip dissipates. Generally you can make your way across the backside of the breaking waves and find a place where there either is no current or it’s going more in the direction you want to go. Often you can bodysurf your way closer to shore. In any case, you need to assume that you can be in for a tough swim, in conditions that cause most beach emergencies, injuries and deaths.

The channel might seem like a happy place, non-breaking waves, a favorable current, a fine seat to watch the real surfers from. And it often is, right up until it isn’t. Waves can come up quickly in size, and even if they don’t there is often a sneaker wave that will clean out the lineup as everyone scrambles for the horizon, and not everyone makes it. In those conditions the channel can sometimes be a lousy place to be, because the wave can be at its biggest and most poweful right where they weren’t breaking before. The sneaker waves usually break outside, and sweep up the slow movers in the whitewater. But in the channel they can break right on top of you, and that’s the worst possible situation. The full power of the wave is unleashed on you and your board, You can be pushed to the bottom, grabbed viciously and wrenched back to the top of the wave in a second. Going back over the falls and being pummeled repeatedly. Surfers call this the spin cycle, and that’s exactly what it’s like. You have to be ready for that and constantly vigilant for what’s happening in the outer waters.  We’ll talk about that more later in the sections titled “caught inside” and “big wave safety”.

The best places to get initial experience is beaches that have a sandy bottom or a relatively friendly reef–by that I mean not much coral or rocks sticking up close to the surface at low tide. You don’t want a heavy shorebreak or a steep beach. Not much rip, not much current, and not much wind. Look around for the kind of place that has other beginners, but don’t plan on surfing right in the middle of them, you need to be able to get away from the other beginners.

…to be continued

Troubled waters–San Diego Union Tribune

The San Diego Union Tribune published a very interesting article about SUP and the backlash to it in Southern Cal. Read the full article here: Troubled waters.

Here’s an excerpt:

The sport originated in the South Pacific and briefly flourished in Hawaii a half-century ago. In Southern California, stand-up paddle surfing was almost unknown until just a few years ago. There has been friction between traditional surfers and stand-up paddlers ever since.

Practitioners of the sport use extra-thick surfboards from 10 to 12 feet long, which they propel with a long-handled paddle that, from a distance, resembles a broom.

It’s the paddle that prompts some traditional surfers to derisively refer to their brethren as “sweepers” or “janitors.”

“I wish they’d get them out of here. They’re mostly kooks who don’t know how to surf,” said Richie Cravey, 20, who surfs regularly at Cardiff Reef in Encinitas, a spot that attracts legions of stand-up paddlers.

Well, it’s not necessarily true that they don’t know how to surf.

Surfboard shaper Ron House, 61, surfed the traditional way for more than 40 years before switching completely to stand-up paddle surfing.

“I’m not inclined to lay down and wallow on my stomach anymore,” said House, who lives in San Clemente. “The stand-up thing is way more comfortable.”

The most pervasive complaint about stand-up paddlers is that they can dominate the water. By standing rather than sitting to wait for waves, they can spot swells before traditional surfers and then use their superior paddle power to catch waves first.

“If there’s a sweeper who’s pretty good at a reef or point break, nobody gets waves except the sweeper,” said veteran long board surfer Joe Ditler, 57.

“For a surf break to function properly, people have to share. Sweepers don’t share.”

Stand-up paddle surfers say they try to practice the “aloha” spirit and often let waves go by that they could easily take.

But the temptation to grab the wave is almost irresistible when one has such an overwhelming advantage, said Scott Bass, a former professional surfer, author and filmmaker who helped popularize stand-up paddle surfing at Cardiff Reef.

“The animosity out there is pretty thick and it’s understandable,” said Bass, editor of Surfer magazine’s Web site. “And it’s because, no matter how hard we try to share, we’re almost always catching another wave.”

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Another SUP article–from Virginia Beach, VA

By Laine M. Rutherford

Correspondent

At first glance, the two men seen out past the breakers and the surfers off of 45th Street seemed to be doing the impossible: walking on water.

A longer look during a morning surf session last week showed more. The men were standing on boards, propelling themselves with paddles, practicing a sport that’s creating a wave of interest in Virginia Beach this summer – Stand Up Paddle surfing.

The trend – called SUP, Beach Boy surfing and other names – is already hugely popular in California and Hawaii and began lapping at the Virginia Beach shoreline a few years ago.

This summer, enthusiasm swelled as surfers and other athletes began embracing it with the same excitement they give to reports of double overheads in October.

Translation: they’re getting stoked on SUP.

“I didn’t know there was anything left to do on the water that was this much fun,” said Rick Romano, a local artist and avid SUP surfer. “It’s fresh, it’s new and it’s very addictive.”

Romano first tried the sport three years ago after visiting legendary surfer Laird Hamilton’s home in Hawaii.

“I saw these boards in his garage and heard the great things he had to say about it and I knew I wanted to do it,” Romano remembered. “You couldn’t get boards here then, so I started paddling on an old windsurfer, lopped off the end of an old kayak paddle and went out like that all summer long. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Romano’s equipment has improved over the years. He now counts four “real” SUP boards in his quiver and has local access to the latest products. He cites Freedom Surf shop on Laskin Road and Surf & Adventure Co. in Sandbridge as the first area shops to carry SUP products and to promote the sport locally.

Gear consists of an epoxy board and a paddle, usually made of carbon. Boards average 11 feet, weigh about 20 pounds and are 30 inches wide with a turned up nose. Traction pads usually cover the surface. The average paddle is 80 inches and has a scooped end.

“It’s definitely an investment,” Freedom Surf owner Dave Shotton said of the $1,500 tag for board and paddle. “But once you’ve made that investment, you’re set. Three generations, from 8 to 80, can ride the same board.”

Shotton took up the sport when he bought Freedom Surf last year.

“We spotted the trend and knew it was coming, but if I was going to talk the talk, I knew I had to walk the walk,” said Shotton, who used to be surfboard sales rep. “I was hooked immediately.”

Shotton, 41, is one of SUP’s chief local proponents and part of a North End contingent that hits the waves nearly every morning and evening. He is also a witness to the popularity of the sport at the Beach. Since the beginning of the year, he has sold about 50 boards.

“There are so many benefits to it,” Shotton explained. “It’s a great core exercise, you can stay in the ocean longer, later in the year and on flat days, I’m still out, getting exercise, and enjoying the water.”

The learning curve is steep, comparable to snowboarding.

“It can take three hours or three days, but once you get it there’s no problem getting up and getting out,” Shotton said. “Right now it’s mainly surfers, but we know it’s going to expand.”

A ripple of SUP opinions

In town to host a surf camp last month, Robert “Wingnut” Weaver borrowed a board for a quick SUP surfing session. Weaver, who is a member of the Surfers’ Hall of Fame, gracefully dipped his paddle in the water, using it to traverse the board and carve turns in the small waves he rode to shore.

“It’s super fun to do and it opens up a whole new realm of wave riding,” the Santa Cruz resident said. “It’s just a great workout that gets people outside and gives them another way to interact with the ocean.”

Not everyone is riding the wave of support for the new sport. D.J. Joyner, 25, an employee of Freedom Surf, counts himself among the “haters,” those who find the big boards offensive. For D.J., and others, SUP boards have replaced longboards in the chain of “haterdom.”

“I consider them canoes; you can’t bring canoes into the lineup,” the Hilltop resident said. “They can catch absolutely everything and they do – they’re people who don’t know how to share. There might be a place for them, but it shouldn’t be near surfers.”

Sandbridge resident Bill Gassett stresses good surf etiquette to those who try out the boards multiplying in his backyard.

“This is such a positive sport that anyone can do – we don’t want bad behavior rippling through to cause negative attitudes,” said Gassett, 48, a retired Navy deep-sea diver. “Because this is not a fad, it’s something that will change a lot of people’s perspective on how they can enjoy the water and more people are doing it every day.”

The sport is evolving as it gains popularity. Boards are becoming more specialized – refined for conditions and uses, such as distance touring or racing. SUP surfing is showing up as a category in surf contests and other water events.

New terms are coined daily, such as “downwinding,” where a vehicle is dropped off miles away from a starting point and surfers make their way down the coast, running with the waves and the current.

“I’ve seen it grow exponentially this year,” Romano stated. “And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. Whoever embraces this sport now is going to be a frontrunner. It’s going to be fun to look back and say, “I remember the early days.’”

Laine Mednick Rutherford, Laine.R@cox.net

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Midwest SUP

People are definitely catching on that SUP is great for inland lakes and rivers. Here’s an article from the Minneapolis Star about SUP in local lakes and a company that’s doing a good job of selling and publicizing SUP as a core workout and fun activity.

Stand-up paddling

Stand-up paddling melds a surf sport with a core-strengthening workout. No waves required.

By STEPHEN REGENOLD

Last update: August 4, 2008 – 10:08 A

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Liam’s Alaskan Adventure

Liam Wilmot of C4 Waterman submitted this interesting story of an Alaskan SUP adventure using a ULI inflatable SUP board.

–ALASKA June 6th. Field Report.

Being a surfer in a surf-orientated family that lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, a trip to Alaska in the middle of summer may seem a strange choice of destination. However, with the onset of stand up paddling and its potential to make any day on any body of water a blast, a trip to the land of 10,000 glaciers with a sun that never set promised to be a real adventure.

Flying up Shelikof Straight and Cook Inlet into our arrival point of Anchorage, it was stirring to see mountains and snow after such a lengthy tropical hiatus. When you see glaciers like this one below, so huge they’re easily visible from 10,000 feet, it’s mind-boggling to think that thousands of years of flow-freeze are now rapidly dissipating – inches every year, sometimes even feet.

With seemingly endless potential for flat water adventures it was hard not to pump up the ULI (ultra light inflatable) and paddle out at every turn.

My first attempt failed. Overcome by the scenery I opted to save time by dissing the wetsuit and confidently headed out in my shorts and vest! My toes nearly froze off. One word of advice on the ULI, be sure to inflate to the recommended level. Anything less and it won’t be anywhere near as rigid as you need it to be. It’s rigid or frigid in Alaska!

On second attempt I would go all out. The wetsuit was lent to me by Garrett McNamarra, who tested and proved it last year towing into calving glacier waves in SE Alaska. You really need a good wetsuit. This one was a 7mm Hotline full suit with a built in hood, plus booties and gloves. Toasty!! Thanks GMac. (Like all wetsuits, they make you look fat

I rode the converging waters of glacial melt from Exit Glacier and the flow of Resurrection River for about 7 miles.
It took me a little over an hour.

Freezing water, snow and glaciers were a totally new experience for me. My friend Charlie McArthur, C4’s team rider up on the Colorado River, probably would have laughed at me. The white water (mini) rapids hardly compare to the walls of white water he scales with ease. Any how, I figured I would wear the bright yellow rash vest for visibility. I had a WalMart issue 2-way radio in a zip lock stuffed down the front of my suit should I need contact my wife in the trailing RV. If I got into trouble and had to bail, a walk through bear country might be less scary if I could hear our kids arguing in the RV! I had a leash. I have read horror stories about surfers getting trapped, overcome by the force of the current and not being able to reach their leash to remove it, but I didn’t want to go with out it, despite that ‘free’ feeling. So… I fastened it to my elbow so it wouldn’t drag in the water and I could always reach the release tab should I need it.
Charlie might laugh but I hope water safety expert Brian Keaulana would be proud!

The waters snaked back and forth from the road every mile or so, splitting and merging at will throughout the gravel banks and wash-through of tons of fallen birch and spruce trees. All this gravel comes from the melting glaciers which grind away at the mountains over eons. Following the branching water’s strongest lead was a fun game in order not to become stranded in a weak off-shoot.

There are thousands more short trips like this in Alaska, It was nothing extreme, but to me that is part of the broad appeal of stand up paddling. Anyone can do it, and you can do it anywhere. Charlie, who is a top level white water kayaking champion says “it makes class I and II fun again”. For me, to get out into the wilderness and float along with the current through pristine wilderness is in a class all of its own.

Despite the sport’s broad appeal, I don’t recommend using your inflatable SUP as a snow toy.
My 2-year-old Maika loved it while I felt like pitching a new series to National Geographic: “I wish I wasn’t alive”. Turns out that the PVC coating switches gears from slip to grip when on frigid snow and ice. This is not a snow toy.

More perfect scenery. It was so still I would paddle out in my rubber boots and throw a lure straight from the board. I managed to catch a dozen or so rainbow trout. At Johnsons Lake, near Kasilof, I was cleaning my catch and a local guy comes over shaking his head to say “Now I gotta take a look at this! What do you call this?!”. All these guys with boats and I was in and out before they had even primed their engines. Not to mention the fact that the fish never heard me coming.

Open roads, endless possibilities and empty line ups………….

Seward, on a beautiful calm morning paddle. The surrounding mountains of Resurrection Peninsula reach higher than 5,000 feet, though the morning low-level cloud obscures the towering landscape.

Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm have some spectacular paddling areas. With a tidal difference of 24ft the mud flats are literally quicksand, annually claiming the lives of those who don’t get pulled out fast enough and either suffocate or drown on the incoming tide. No joke.

Turnagain Arm is also home to the elusive bore tide, which I had every intention of riding but, like the salmon, it was the one that got away on me. You need to know the precise spot on the narrowing of the 40-mile probe of Cook Inlet where the incoming tide doubles up on itself and transforms into a muddy, churning wave. It happens in an instant. We ended up racing alongside it in the RV without enough time to get into the water before it dissipated after several hundred yards of rolling.

Below is an aerial shot of the Cook Inlet tidal flats on the outgoing tide. You can see how far it stretches inland. This Inlet was named after Captain Cook, who initially thought it may have an outlet but learned he’d have to turn his fleet around again to get out, hence the name given to its inland end: Turnagain Arm.

The board I took to Alaska was a C4 Waterman Ultra Light Inflatable ULI. It was fantastic for this type of thing. It handled the knocks and bumps of the shallow parts of the rivers, was a perfect mid-lake landing pad for the trout, and rolled up nicely into the side compartment of the RV – not to mention the fact that it fits in a duffel bag and can be checked in as a regular piece of baggage, rather than a bulky surfboard.

Check out our web store for more details. www.c4waterman.com

Thanks for reading,

Aloha,
Liam Wilmott.

Ernie’s Van For Sale

Ernie Johnson (Johnson Big Stick Paddles) is selling a custom van he has on the big island. Why is this in Ke Nalu? Well, its just about perfect for an extended Hawaiian SUP trip. I sure like the looks of this thing. I’d guess you could go about anywhere with it. I’ve lived in less comfortable quarters (a ‘70 econoline with a foam pad during my “totally broke, paying child support and racing motorcycles era”). This thing is infinitely nicer than mine was.
[Read more]

Long Lens

A couple of weeks ago Diane got a new long lens for the Nikon–a 180 to 500MM. I just downloaded the pictures to my computer–some of them are pretty neat.

She put the long lens on our big tripod and this was the first shot she got:

Here’s the second:

Nice job, kid.

Some waist-high waves at Kanaha

My Jimmy Lewis 11er

Decent wave, but closing out fast

Randy looking sylish

Likewise

Making Waves: Predicting Your Next Great Day

“Where do waves come from, Master? Why are there forty foot waves at Jaws when they’re just head high at Kenaha. Does swell period have anything to do with pregnancy or sanitary napkins? Why are there sets? How come we surf monks can’t get chicks.”

“Ah, grasshopper. These are all hopeless grommet questions, but then you are a hopeless grommet. Wax my board and polish my paddle and I will enlighten you..”

Wind makes waves. First ripples form, then the ripples give the wind something to push against and it shoves the ripples into chop, then waves, then big humping life-sucking victory-at-sea mackers if everything goes well. [Read more]