Paddleboard.com reader, Mike Jones sends us this account of his first time paddling the Jay Race up in Santa Cruz this past June. For those of you that haven't done the Jay before, it is one of the most fun, well organized, and pretty races that takes place during the paddling season. Thanks for the story Mike!

 

Stepping Up To Twelve
By Mike Jones

 


The O’Neill catamaran leads racers to the first yellow buoy/DeeAnn Thompson


Setting aside two years of excuses, and with modest expectations, I entered my fifty-five year old self and my 14-foot Eaton paddleboard in our first Jay Moriarty Memorial Paddleboard Race. And not the two-mile course, but the more daunting twelve-mile course, our longest race so far attempted. My longest before this one was the 6-mile race in Tahoe last fall ...

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This year's Catalina Classic saw quite a few paddlers making the channel crossing for the first time. One of those paddlers was Danny Brown who wrote about his experience for Easy Reader. Thanks to Danny and Kevin Cody for sharing the article. Reprinted from Easy Reader. Enjoy!


    Danny, with the end in sight.



Donkey Crossing

“I grew up surfing 16th Street and used to see all the top surfers and watermen of the day paddle the Classic every summer. I wanted to do it for a long time.” – Donkey coach Matt Walls on why he competes in the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race
by Danny Brown


Go down to the 16th street lifeguard tower in Hermosa Beach at sunrise, when the winter swells begin to fade and the ocean begins to warm, and you’ll ...

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What would it feel like to go out the front door with a paddlboard under your arm and thoughts going through your  head like, "Will I be able to cross that river or are the salmon going to be so thick that I can't paddle throught them?" or "I wonder if the Jiu-jitsu classes I've been taking will be effective against a bear?" George Weetman of Vancouver, BC confronts these and many other dilemmas every time he leaves his house to go and paddle. Using a homemade wooden paddleboard equipped to carry gear for multi-day trips, he is opening up the waterways of coastal British Columbia to a whole new means of transport. George chronicles his adventures on his website, paddlboardtouring.com, and he was nice enough to share one of his adventures here for us. Take a look at the rest of his site when you get a chance, as ...

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This Sunday, nearly 150 competitors will line up in the early morning rough-water hours on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai. They'll stand in knee-deep water the same as they have for the last eleven years, each competitor with the same gut-twisting combination of fear, excitement, anticipation and doubt. But, just as soon as they get there, they will jump on their boards, and they will be gone, nothing ahead of them aside from a 32-mile channel of rough winds, a tattered sea, a handful of tiger sharks, too many thoughts, a lot of sun, wave after following wave, and a lot of work to be done, one stroke at a time, all the way to the finish, all the way across the channel to another island entirely, at Oahu.
    So it's easy to see the allure that the Molokai race holds ...

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It’s 6:30 AM on a gray and overcast day in the Cardiff State Beach parking lot. The marine layer is so thick, it’s almost raining.  Most people would look out their window on a morning like this, roll over, go back to sleep and do their scheduled morning workout under fairer skies. This morning however, there is a group of 20 or so people gathered in the south end of the parking lot with paddleboards of varying lengths strapped to their cars, laughing and chatting with each other.


6:30 AM Cardiff parking lot

This is the NCP or North County Paddlers, an informal group of like-minded athletes that gather several mornings a week to paddle together.  The group consists of men and women, young and older. There’s Brian Szymanski, several time winner of the Catalina Classic stock division and ...

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First Race of 2008 Proves to be Challenging

By Clark Abbey

With the start of the 2008 Paddleboard Season a new race was born on June 1, 2008, Sunday. The 1st Annual Quiksilver Mokapu Challenge Paddleboard Race is now in the record books. Winning it all is Kailua's Brian Rocheleau, a contender for the last 5 years to the Quiksilver Edition Molokai World Championship of Paddleboarding. Rocheleau set a bench mark record time of 1:29:34 this past Sunday. Keone Watson came in second place at 1:32:46, Chris Owens came in third place at 1:33:02. The race started from Kapoho Point on the North Side of Kailua Beach and uphill 2.5 miles to Mokapu Point then a downhill run 3.5 miles to the R-2 Head Buoy 3 miles outside Heeia Kea Pier where the racers finished. Aaron Kaeo Abbey jumped into the front at ...

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Paddling is not fun. It is grueling. It is tiresome. It is something to be endured. It is boring. It is not enjoyable.

Right.

Don't tell that to the group of paddlers who make it their business to milk every last drop of their Monday nights. While the rest of us working-stiff paddlers are licking our wounds from our first days back on the job, trying to squeeze in an after work paddle or surf, these guys meet up after-dark in Long Beach, California, sink a few apres-paddle beers, and then get after it--as fast or as slow, as serious or as lighthearted as they care to.

We thought the idea of a buzzy Monday night paddling in Long Beach's flatwater canals with a crew of like-minded paddlers might get you going, so we're presenting you with the evidence from a recent Monday night paddle. The group ...

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Tips to get you going

Paddling may be back on your mind, and if it is you may be considering options to get back in shape for the upcoming season. Most important is to protect yourself from injury so you can make it through the entire season.

As many of us know the most common mistake is to go too hard too early which can lead to injury. Start with some easy paddles at a mellow pace and give yourself some rest between paddles. Just get some miles under your belt before you get too serious about the training.

The following list of exercises will hopefully give you some ideas to get started on a training program while keeping your body healthy.

My favorite way to jump-start my paddling is a good surf trip



We can’t ...

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Last Sunday, on an overcast day with water temps in the high 50s, over 100 paddlers showed up for the start of the Malibu Downwind Paddleboard Race.


Though the wind wasn't howling, like most of the competitors would have hoped for, by the time the race ended, there would be plenty of downwind runners to propel them toward the finish.


At the head of the pack, stalwarts Gary Fortune and Kyle Daniels came into the final buoy with Gary about five yards in front of last year's Catalina Classic Champion. With a  beach finish, both competitors needed to cross the finish line, board in hand. To that end, Kyle caught a wave, hoping to ride it to shore. Instead, he pearled, his board flipped sideways, hitting Gary in the head. The two competitors gathered themselves, and sprinted for the finish, with Gary barely ...

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As a vehicle for fundraising, the sport of paddleboarding is perhaps not an obvious choice. It's a small, idiosyncratic sport whose biggest events still draw less than 1,000 people. Races are long and grueling and not conducive to drawing huge crowds. Its champions are little known regular folks who don't have a giant soapbox from which to campaign.

            And yet, for the past several years, it's the sport of paddleboarding that's been drawing huge sums of money to a charity that has chosen this niche sport as its main vehicle.

            The Ocean of Hope campaign is a charitable effort whose mission is to remain, in their words, "dedicated to the sea of people affected by cancer." At nearly every major paddleboard race in California (and at many races internationally) one can spot the O2H logos on the sides of paddlers' ...

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