The newly formed Core Scholas­tic Surf League couldn’t have picked a bet­ter day to kick of it’s new league and sea­son. Sat­ur­day was the first fog free day that Santa Cruz had seen in over a week.

More impor­tantly, thanks to Super Typhoon Choi-wan, the waves started arriv­ing pre-dawn and by mid day there were con­sis­tent over-head sets for the high school com­peti­tors to rip!

The Core Scholas­tic Surf League or CSSL is a new non-profit surf league where high school and mid­dle school surf teams com­pete in surf con­tests at mar­quee loca­tions from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay. “The CSSL is off to a great start” said Exec­u­tive direc­tor Kim Clary, “we have a ded­i­cated crew that’s put in a lot of hours over the past four months to make sure that Saturday’s con­test ran very smoothly.”

With the first con­test of the High School sea­son being held at Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz High coach Joe Hut­son had his team more than pre­pared to defend their home turf. “We’ve been doing some pretty intense work­outs up at Nat­ural Bridges lately” reported Joe, “I’ve had the kids run­ning in the deep sand, sprint­ing up the sand hill, push-ups, sit-ups… just try­ing to get them whipped into shape for the new sea­son.“

What­ever Joe has them doing, seems to be work­ing as Santa Cruz opened up the day with a deci­sive win over cross town rival Soquel High, 64–43. The scrappy SCHS Car­di­nals team ended up nearly fill­ing the Men’s Short­board final at the end of the day, with five of the six final­ists being from Santa Cruz High.

Sean Burns (Santa Cruz High) took the Men’s Short­board win, with Kai Madeiros (Har­bor High) win­ning Men’s Long­board, Carly Wil­son (Har­bor High) win­ning Women’s Short­board, McKen­zie Stair (Soquel High) win­ning Women’s Long­board & Pete Mueller (Santa Cruz High) tak­ing top hon­ors in the Co-Ed Body­board division.

The remain­ing team vs. team results fea­ture Aptos High defeat­ing Scotts Val­ley High 74–44 and Half Moon Bay High took down Har­bor High in a close bat­tle, 59–55.

The next CSSL con­test will be at Wad­dell State Beach just north of Santa Cruz, Ca. Novem­ber 20^th & 21^st.

For more info, check out www.surfcssl.org

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Despite heavy winds and rain, the 1^st Annual South­east SUP Cham­pi­onships went off yes­ter­day.  The bad weather couldn’t dampen the par­tic­i­pants’ spir­its as over 50 pad­dlers pad­dled the race.  Rac­ers from Hawaii, Cal­i­for­nia, Florida and Vir­ginia joined local pad­dlers all in search of the crown.  Jeremy Riggs ended up claim­ing the title, “SOUTHEAST SUP CHAMPION”, fin­ish­ing with a time of 41.18 min­utes.  The tem­per­a­tures were low, but just like the winds dur­ing the race, the stoke remained high through­out the day.

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It’s a big week­end for SUP races this week­end, with two pre­mier events tak­ing place on each coast of the coun­try.  To the east, in Wilm­ing­ton, North Car­olina to be exact, where Coastal Urge is host­ing the 1^st Annual, SOUTHEAST SUP CHAMPIONSHIP on Sat­ur­day, the 26^th.

On the 27^th, we’re off to the west coast where we’ll be at the ROUND THE ROCK RACE for another full day of SUP.  Tech reps will be on hand at both events with new boards and prod­ucts to try out first-hand.  Get your ques­tions answered and try that board you’ve been eye-ballin’ for three months now.

Bring the fam­ily, SUP is for everyone.

Good Luck and see you at the fin­ish line.

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Come down and test drive Surftech’s lat­est boards this Sun­day at the Ocean Minded Beach Clean-up at Ocean Beach in SF!

The surf fore­cast is look­ing promis­ing. All you’ll need is your wet­suit and dri­vers license. Come check us out from 9:00-Noon between Bal­boa and Ful­ton streets. And pack some trash while you’re down there…

Beach clean-up and demo spon­sored by: Ocean Minded, Aqua Surf­shop & Surftech

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EIGHT-TIME world pad­dle­board­ing cham­pion Jamie Mitchell had the sur­prise of his life when a hump­back whale sur­faced cen­time­tres away from him off  the New South Wales north coast yesterday.

Mitchell told news.com.au he was out film­ing a pilot for his com­ing doc­u­men­tary, Liv­ing in Liq­uid, when a pod of up to five hump­backs sur­faced, and started fol­low­ing him off Tweed Heads at about 7.30am (AEST).

He said the pod played around him for about 10 min­utes.

“We were just out on the water pad­dling around and all of a sud­den, boom, a whale breached about 100m away from me,” he said today.

“I thought that was pretty cool and then all of a sud­den another whale came up right in front of me.

“At the start it was sort of scary, I got goose­bumps and the adren­a­lin started flowing.

“But then I real­ized that they were just play­ing. They swam right under­neath my board and I thought I’d be in strife if they came up but they had a good sense of where I was.”

The 32-year-old,  who lives on the Gold Coast and spends most of his time in the water, said the migrat­ing hump­backs drifted off after a while.

“It’s cer­tainly the clos­est I’ve ever been to them,” he said.

Mitchell is soon head­ing to Cal­i­for­nia to com­pete in the Hennessey’s Inter­na­tional Pad­dle­board Race.

Link to story from News.com.au

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Surftech SUP Team Mad­man, Ken “Hobie” Hoeve recently reviewed the 12’1 Ron House Laird for Col­orado Kayak Supply’s blog. Hobie spared no detail, review­ing the the board’s char­ac­ter­is­tic in thor­ough detail.
If you’ve ever had a ques­tion about this board and how it works or any of its fea­tures, your ques­tions have been answered. The review is com­plete with pic­tures, video and appli­ca­tions for this board that you might not have thought of yet.
Check it out on the CKS blog:
http://cksblog.com/?p=2751

Thanks for the review, Hobie and thanks to the crew at CKS for post­ing it.

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The South East SUP Cham­pi­onship, hosted by Coastal Urge is around the cor­ner. The 3.5 mile cham­pi­onship race takes place on the 26^th of Sep­tem­ber in Wilm­ing­ton, North Car­olina. Join us for this first-class event…

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Another day at the lake.  The sun is shin­ning and the SUPs are in full-effect… This time behind the boat.

With a Stand Up Pad­dle­board, the fun never stops!

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Aloha Boys here is the “Duke” Fest update.

Surftech team rider Kai Salas won both the Noserid­ing and Long­board divi­sions on the 9’6 Takayama In The Pink.

If he had not got­ten a tri­an­gle he prob­a­bly would have fin­ished high in SUP… Surftech tan­dem team came sec­ond in World Cham­pi­onship Tan­dem rid­ing the 11’6 Takayama Ali’i I SUP. Corey Schu­maker took 2^nd in Women’s on a Surftech Takayama.
Dur­ing the event we loaned out demo boards and sent over 300 boards out over the four day event! Our boards were used by all the com­peti­tors in Leg­ends Divi­sion who did not have their own boards. In Noserid­ing event 5 out of 6 com­peti­tors were on Surftech. The Takayama In The Pink cap­tured the first three places. Pic­tures are of an 11 sec­ond ride.

Team rid­ers Lance Hookano and Dino Miranda worked the demo tent from Tues­day through Sat­ur­day. Both deserve hon­or­able men­tion for model
behav­ior.… All in all a great week­end for the Duke Ocean­fest and Surftech Hawaii!

A Hui Hou

Queen St. Crew.
Surftech Hawaii

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