Sur­geon Surf­boards put together a great lit­tle video of Flat-Water SUP in Japan. Team Rider Eugene Teal is fea­tured. Check it out:

The 23^rd Annual Santa Cruz Surf Kayak Fes­ti­val was a major suc­cess this past week­end.  Every year, kayak surfers and wave ski enthu­si­asts from around the world head to Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, CA, to put on a show for their fel­low com­peti­tors, com­rades and passer-byers walk­ing along west cliff.  Pad­dlers are blessed to have Steamer Lane to them­selves for three whole days and always make the most of it.

This year’s con­test was a bit dif­fer­ent than the last 22 years, though.  This was the first year that a Stand Up Pad­dle Divi­sion was added to the slate of events.  3 Elite heats were on tap and another 2 of Inter­me­di­ate SUP were sched­uled for the con­test.  And the stand up pad­dlers didn’t dissapoint.

The first heats of the Elite SUP divi­sion started kicked off the 23^rd SCSKF under gray skies and knee to waist-high surf.  As the day wore on, the sun came out but the surf was drop­ping.  Com­peti­tors were keep­ing their fin­gers crossed that rumors of an incom­ing swell would come true and the surf would increase.  Although the surf con­di­tions may not have been ideal, entu­si­asm was run­ning at all-time highs.

Sat­ur­day, the weather was dete­ri­o­rat­ing with the waves.  The wind was slowly pick­ing up through­out the day and the tem­per­a­ture was drop­ping.  Elite and Inter­me­di­ate SUP heats were ran in the after­noon.  Despite the lack­ing surf, the com­peti­tors were still able to show their stuff on the water to spec­ta­tors lined along the cliffs.  With the wind blow­ing onshore, we were all hold­ing out hope that a new swell was com­ing in.  The surf fore­cast for Sun­day was con­stantly mon­i­tored in hopes that the con­test site would get hit with the 3–6 ft waves they were reporting.

Sun­day morn­ing came with peo­ple eager to see what the surf was doing.  The con­test start was delayed an hour to con­tinue to let the tide drop.  Even with the high tide, the surf was notice­ably big­ger.  The sec­ond heats of the Inter­me­di­ate divi­sion kicked off at the B Site and as time passed by, the waves con­tin­ued to show more and more through­out the day.  When it was all said and done for the Inter­me­di­ate com­pe­ti­tion, local Sher­riff, Joe Clark pad­dled his way to the 1^st ever Inter­me­di­ate SUP Cham­pi­onship at the SCSKF.  Sher­riff Clark pad­dled the 11’6 Takayama Ali’i to vic­tory.  Right behind him was Surftech’s National Sales Man­ager, Ty Zulim, also surf­ing the Ali’i model.

Later in the after­noon, at the opti­mal tide, the Elite SUP Cham­pi­onship Heat pad­dled out.  The surf had started to show chest to head-high waves with a few over­head sets rolling in.  Spec­ta­tors lined the cliffs in antic­i­pa­tion of the show they were about to see.  There was a lot of hype sur­round­ing the cham­pi­onship heat and for good rea­son.  Chuck Pat­ter­son and Bryce Sae­mon of Dana Point, local shaper Ward Cof­fey, and Surftech’s Gen­eral Manger John Grif­fith were com­pet­ing for the first ever Elite Cham­pi­onship.  A 20 minute “warm-up” before the heat was sched­uled were final­ists and ousted com­peti­tors were carv­ing up the build­ing surf.  The spec­ta­tors in atten­dance were wit­ness­ing a real treat.

After 20 intense min­utes the heat was over and the crowd acknol­wledged what they had just wit­nessed with a roar of applause.  The finals did not dis­ap­point and there was a real buzz about the spec­ta­tors as to who they thought would take home the crown.

Elite SUP Cham­pi­onship Heat Results:

1^st Place — Chuck Pat­ter­son 64 points

2^nd Place — John Grif­fith 62 points

3^rd Place — Bryce Sae­mon 57 points (own­ing the tiebreak)

4^th Place — Ward Cof­fey 57 points

The 24^th Annual SCSKF is already being planned.  Mark your cal­en­dars for MARCH 26^th — 28^th.

Join us at the Intra­Coastal SUP Cup in Wrightsville, NC, May 16^th 2009.  If you were lucky enough to attend Coastal Urge’s

1^st annual Cold Stroke Clas­sic, then you know what a fine race they put on.  Over $4,500 in prizes, includ­ing a Laird Tuflite SUP,

will be given away.  3 dif­fer­ent race divi­sions offered… Fun for the whole fam­ily.  For more infor­ma­tion, visit Coastal Urge or the Intra­Coastal SUP Cup Race web­site.

In case you did miss the Cold Stroke Clas­sic, check out the video of race day:

The 1^st annual North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Dealer Con­fer­ence was a huge suc­cess.  Cur­rent and poten­tial deal­ers through­out North­ern CA vis­ited our Santa Cruz head­quar­ters for a tour of the facil­i­ties, Surftech and SUP his­tory lessons and to be the first to hear about what’s in store for the future of Surftech and Stand Up Pad­dling.  Once the “bor­ing stuff” was out of the way, every­one headed to the har­bor to spend a few hours on the water on our cur­rent SUP mod­els and some new prototypes.

Thanks to every­one who attended and made it a success.

Per­fect Wave Surf Shop in Kirk­land, Wash­ing­ton, put together this great SUP promo video.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you NEED to check it out.

You can also check out their web­site, www.PerfectWave.com for more infor­ma­tion on their SUP program.

(Just don’t get side­tracked by their Bikini of the Month section…)

Josh Mulcoy’s TL2 surf­boards have been a three way col­lab­o­ra­tion between Josh, Bill “Stretch” Riedel, who’s been refin­ing Josh’s shapes for over 15 years and Randy French at Surftech. TL2 con­struc­tion makes Josh’s boards per­form to his stan­dards, and equally impor­tant, to take the beat­ings that surf­ing, kit­ing and trav­el­ing put his boards through. Recently one of the major surf mags basi­cally said that P.U./Poly boards are the best of what’s avail­able to surfers right now, so we caught up with these three for some Q & A.

“FLEX, FLOAT,WHATEVER…ALL THAT MATTERS IS
HOW THEY RIDE, YA KNOW? I MEAN, I’M NOT
GONNA RIDE IT IF IT DOESN’T WORK.”

When did you start rid­ing Stretch epoxy Boards?

I started rid­ing for Stretch when I was about 18 and I’ve been rid­ing for him ever since. The epoxy boards were pretty much the rea­son I got started with him and they just keep get­ting bet­ter and better.

Your Surftech boards, what do you like about ‘em?

I travel a lot and always take my TL2s with me cause they don’t break down and they last a really long time. They have sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics to the cus­tom epoxy boards that I get from Stretch. That’s a hard thing to find, to be able to just go to the rack and grab a board and know that it’s going to work as good or bet­ter than any­thing else.

So how much do you really ride the Surftechs?

This board right here has been on two trips to Mex­ico, it’s been to the Tuamo­tus and up to Canada twice. I’ve had this board for about six months and pretty much surf it every­day. It still rides like new and if you look at it, it’s in good con­di­tion. I just got back from a trip to Main­land Mex­ico with my dad and pretty much rode this board the entire trip. I mean the waves were from 2 feet and kinda fun to 6 feet and per­fect and I rode the TL2 in every con­di­tion there was and it worked great. Guys were trip­ping out cause I rode the board all the time.

For most guys who are work­ing day jobs and not livin’ the dream get­ting paid to travel the world and surf like you are, TL2s & Tuflites are pretty expen­sive boards. Do you think they’re worth the extra dough?

I think when you go into a shop and you see the price tag of a Tuflite or a TL2 and it’s a bit more than some other boards you have to real­ize that you’re going to get a lot more life out of the these boards. They just last a lot longer than your nor­mal board would. The TL2s last about as long as maybe three or four reg­u­lar poly boards. So you’re def­i­nitely going to get your money’s worth.

Yeah. If you were rid­ing P.U. boards, how many would you break a year?
Depends on whether I was just surf­ing or surf­ing and kit­ing. If I was kit­ing, I could pretty much break a P.U. board every­day. Kit­ing is def­i­nitely harder on a board cause you’re always stand­ing on it and you’re putting so much pres­sure on the deck. What’s crazy is I’ve yet to break a TL2, kit­ing or surfing!

Hey Stretch, how do you respond to your Surftech boards being called pop-outs?

Well there’s at least four times the crafts­man­ship and hand­work involved in a Tuflite or TL2 board than in a PU board. Surftech boards are the far­thest thing from a “pop-out”. When I build a cus­tom com­pos­ite board like a Tuflite, I have to charge more than two grand for one, mainly because of how labor inten­sive they are to make and the mate­ri­als cost more. The peo­ple that call them pop-outs just don’t really know any­thing about build­ing com­pos­ite boards. There are lots of new peo­ple try­ing to build com­pos­ite epoxy surf­boards (since Clark Foam closed) but I chose to go with Surftech because Randy’s been per­fect­ing the tech­nol­ogy for more than 14 years and has got it dialed.

Josh Mul­coy Interview

Join us at Rusted Moon Outfitter’s 6^th Annual Moon River Week­end Canoe & Kayak Sale, where we’ll be hold­ing Stand Up Pad­dle clincs and demos May 9^th, 10^th and 11^th.

Try a new model you’ve never pad­dled before or come by to pad­dle your favorite board.  For more infor­ma­tion or direc­tions, click here.

With ugly, wet weather out­side and the ocean doing it’s best impres­sion of Vic­tory at Sea, we’re locked indoors today.

What bet­ter way to fight the dol­drums than with pho­tos of good weather and surf?

Ty Zulim mak­ing music on the new 10′ Gerry Lopez SURF MUSIC model…

We caught some pics of NFL All-Pro Line­backer Junior Seau’s recent SUP ses­sion.  Seau has made a liv­ing chas­ing down oppos­ing runningbacks

over the past decade.  Its good to see that when he’s not sack­ing quar­ter­backs, he sack­ing a few waves on his 12’1 Laird.

At Makaha Beach every Feb­ru­ary, surfers from around the world get together and enjoy 2 week­ends of wave rid­ing at Buffalo’s Big Board Surf­ing Con­test.  Surf­boards, stand up boards, canoes, bully boards, paipos, and the lat­est addi­tion of the Alaia boards are all used as water­craft.  The old-style Hawai­ian surf­board is basi­cally a plank of wood with a rounded nose, a square tail, and no fins… the young Makaha Beach kids were rip­ping on these boards!!! They were get­ting bar­reled, doing floaters and 360s! Buffalo’s Big Board Con­test is real test of skills for water­men and water­women who often enter mul­ti­ple divi­sions. All final­ists received prizes of surf­boards, stand up boards, bully boards, and pad­dles. Make your plans now for next February!!!

Pho­tos cour­tesy of Teene Froiseth