Hey Guys,

What a week­end. The Gore Canyon fes­ti­val was a huge hit once again and the turnout was great. So was the response to stand up pad­dling! I arrived Fri­day and within an hour had five peo­ple out on boards run­ning the class II stretch from our camp spot to about three miles down­stream. One of the pad­dlers had done it before and the other four were first timers, and they all did great. If I had 10 boards they would have been used too. I had to turn peo­ple away as I had five boards total. We ended up doing a cou­ple runs so every­one got a chance.

Mel­low run

On Sat­ur­day I vol­un­teered for the race as the head fin­ish line timer. I could have raced but wanted to give my shoul­der some rest from kayak­ing to make sure it’s strong. Stand up pad­dling puts lit­tle to no stress on it com­pared to kayak­ing so I’ve been super stoked on being able to run rivers on my board. I decided to hike up from the bot­tom and pad­dle up the flat-water to the fin­ish line so I could pad­dle the mile down to the camp ground when the race was over. We even used the Black­tip and Surftech pad­dle to mark the fin­ish line for the rac­ers. Wrapped it in pink rib­bon and stuck it out next to the river so pad­dlers knew where the race ended.

A BLAST for the whole fam­ily! Check out the fin­ish line…

Typ­i­cal of the race every­one gath­ered at the fin­ish line for a bit of par­ty­ing before pad­dling down­stream to the camp ground and race head­quar­ters. You should have heard the hoot­ing and cheers when I jumped on my board and ran the first rapid in front of every­one! They were so fired up. I pad­dled the remain­ing class III rapids with a few dozen kayak­ers /rafters and sev­eral of them asked when they could try it out. “Back at camp” I told them and sure enough a bunch showed up. Some rac­ers, a few rafters with their fam­i­lies and oth­ers all did a down river with me. Must have had 25 peo­ple in our group. We switched out boards and rafts and just made our way down. We had kids as young as 4 on them to new pad­dlers as old as 55 on the same sec­tion of river. I even had Bill Mat­ti­son, cap­tain of Team Vail (they won the Eco chal­lenge a few years back) He was so into it. Asked where to get a board also. Talk about a diverse crowd of river run­ners. Every­one picked up SUP fast and many asked ques­tions about what board to buy and where can they get them. A total suc­cess with even more folks com­ing up to me at the awards cer­e­mony and party ask­ing about boards and where to get them to try.

So thanks to Surftech for hav­ing boards out here for pad­dlers to try out. All we have to do is get peo­ple on the boards and the rest takes care of itself. The river was full of stand up stoke this week­end. Stand up pad­dling is going to BOOM out here by next sum­mer, watch.

Pad­dle,
hobie

The new #3 issue of online skim mag­a­zine Tydle is out! Check out its’ 293 pages of amaz­ing Flatland/Inland Skim­ming fea­tur­ing Team Rid­ers Matt Ratoni, Brent Lip­pin­cott, and Mike Louie! HYPE!!!

Click or cut & copy:
http://www.tydlemag.com/Vol3/index.html

Use tools below mag­a­zine to turn pages:

Pg 123 Matt Ratoni huge launch­ing shove-grab air over dou­ble stack garbage cans.

Pg 124–125 Brent Lip­pin­cott bot­tom & Mike Louie mid­dle top also huge launch over dou­ble stack.

Pg 126 Brent Lip­pin­cott back­side shifty

Pg 178–179 Matt Ratoni

Pg 184–185 Matt Ratoni (green shorts& Surftech hat) win­ning the Frankston Beach Pro/Am in Aus­tralia on his Pro Model Roush/Surftech Skim.

Pg 192–193 Brent Lippincott

Pg 245 Surftech logo on con­test flier 13^th Annual Sacra­mento Skim Fest

Pg 278–279 Matt Ratoni

This issue alone rep­re­sents Skim from Canada, Wash­ing­ton, Cal­i­for­nia, Utah, Alaska, Swe­den, and Australia.

Flatland/Inland Skim­ming is rapidly pop­u­lat­ing the planet as evi­dence through pho­tos, mag­a­zines, and websites.

Besides the listed loca­tions above, coun­tries with grow­ing Skim momen­tum include but not lim­ited to: Poland, New Zealand, Nether­lands, and Germany.

Surftech China Coast (Hong Kong) team rider Craig Col­bran com­fort­ably secured
his right­ful 1^st place at the recent Quik­sil­ver short­board com­pe­ti­tion in Tai­wan.
Craig was rid­ing a Tuflite Byrne 6’0” Tom Car­rol sig­na­ture model fish, which was
the per­fect choice for the soft mushy 3’-5’ waves that built in size over the 2 day
comp. Winds were mostly light with per­fect beach going con­di­tions. The mas­sive
spec­ta­tor crowd ranged from curi­ous fam­i­lies who had never seen a surf­board
before to the usual surf­ing enthu­si­asts that had trav­eled the globe to be there.

The event, which was held at Wushi Har­bour Beach, Toucheng, Yilan (north east
part of the Tai­wan Main­land) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion of Local Surf Clubs and the Yilan
gov­ern­ment as part of the two-week rain fes­ti­val celebrations.

There were 178 con­tes­tants over all divi­sions, which included Mens & Wom­ens
short and long­board, body board­ing and a Grom’s short­board division.

For more info, you can go to http://rainfestival2009.pixnet.net/blog/post/25522966

Skim/Surf/any-type-of-craft-you-want-to-ride-on-the-water Shaper and mas­ter crafts­man, Eric Roush shaped a TL2 pro­to­type for Kelly Slater recently.  Heads started to turn and ears started to perk up as other surfers, includ­ing Rob Machado, caught wind of the new prototype…

Stay tuned, more to come…

Terry Way and his fam­ily took an after­noon pad­dle a few days ago in the Santa Cruz har­bor when they were quickly joined by this lit­tle har­bor seal. The sport of SUP’s newest fan wasn’t shy in express­ing his inter­est as he quickly made him­self at home while the Way Fam­ily pad­dled on. It good to see that seals choose the best boards on the planet, too..

If you are still look­ing for lodg­ing in Tahoe that is paddle-friendly and right at the race site, you are in luck! There are two lodges, the Sun n’ Sand and Stevenson’s Hol­i­day Inn, both of which are located on the beach next to the race!.
Ameni­ties include:
1. Refrig­er­a­tor.
2. Microwave.
3. Hot Tub.
4. Free Wire­less.
No need to drive as we are on
the Beach!…

http://www.sunandsandlodge.com

530 546 2515

http://www.stevensonshollidayinn.com

530 546 2269

Do your­self a favor and give them a call if your are still look­ing for a place to stay this weekend.

The “Hunt­ing­ton Beach Bad Boy” stopped by recently and picked up his own SUP. Tito Ortiz’s board of choice? A yel­low 12’1 Laird Hamilton.

“Surf­ing is a deeply won­der­ful thing – any­time, any­where and any way”
– Gerry Lopez from his book “Surf is where you find it”.

“The new boards turned out way bet­ter than I expected. I thought I made all of them for big­ger guys than me but after rid­ing them, I found .….. I really like them. And I rode them in some very chal­leng­ing surf in Hawaii at Popular’s, Num­ber Three’s, Kaiser’s, Rockpile’s, Ala Moana Bowls, Old Man’s, Rice Bowls and Zero’s. This was a wide range of dif­fer­ent types of waves and I liked the han­dling in the big­ger waves, the speed, the light­ness, the dura­bil­ity and just gen­er­ally how well they all surfed. I par­tic­u­larly liked the 8’11″ quad and was sur­prised when some of my 200+ lbs. friends floated nicely on it and loved it as well. I think we have a nice trio of good surf­ing SUP boards for pretty much any range of con­di­tions.” — Gerry Lopez

Gerry’s deep rela­tion­ship with the water is exceed­ingly evi­dent in the smooth lines and sub­tle curves of each of his three new Surftech stand up pad­dle­boards. “The 9’6″ & 10′ Surf Music boards were designed specif­i­cally with wave rid­ing in mind. Many SUP shapes lean more toward the pad­dling side but I have taken the lib­erty of assum­ing the cus­tomer has already learned his paddling/balance skills and is look­ing to max­i­mize his surf­ing per­for­mance.” Said Gerry. “The 8’11″ Lil Dar­lin’ is basi­cally a scaled down ver­sion of the Surf Music series but with a quad fin set-up. I have found the quad fins to work very well in wave rid­ing… looser, faster and just as positive.”

The much-anticipated release of Gerry’s three-board SUP quiver has finally arrived! Stop in to your local surf shop or stand up pad­dle­board dealer to check them out for your­self. And don’t be sur­prised if after stroking into your first wave on a Lopez Tuflite board, you find your­self soul arch­ing off the bot­tom into a per­fect crys­tal cav­ern and glid­ing effort­lessly across the wave’s face and feel a lit­tle bit of Gerry with you as you glide over the shoul­der and pad­dle back out for another one…