Baja Lesson #2: Know where you're going...

Lesson #2: It sounds obvious but if you don't have the basics figured out (Seven Sisters area? Strictly winter time) your paddle trip might just end up being a case of chasing rumors and myths. Or, in my case, you might end up asking yourself why you're slowly melting into polyester sheets in a 106 degree cinder block box masquerading as a hotel room. Solution? Get a map or some type of guide (try www.surfmaps.com) or bribe your local surf guru with a six pack and you may even score San Jose on that next south.

Update Alert: I'm in Costa Rica right now!!! Long day of travel involving a plane with some type of malfunction that had to be left on the runway in Houston... that's a new one for me. Spending the night here in Liberia and then off to the Nicoya peninsula tomorrow. Excited to post up some photos so with your permission (or even without it) I"m going to skip over Baja for just a bit and post up some paddle surfing in Costa Rica stuff! Yahooooo!

Paddle Surf Baja: It ain't easy.

If you want to stand up paddle Baja California, you've got to know a few things. First of all, driving the Baja Highway ain't for the timid. The road is narrower than you are used to, there are no shoulders (the pavement simply drops off at the edge- perfect for rolling a car) and the truck drivers like to play matador games that will get your sphincter clamping like a hydraulic vise. Other than that, it's bitchin- if you know what you're doing.

Check the next couple of posts and I'll get you Baja-educated with some pointers. 

The infamous Hector memorial. These little markers are set up by the families of those who've died along the road. Hector's used to be just that little model of the truck he presumably used to drive- it's getting bigger every year. Like I said, the highway is a dangerous route, take your time and be alert.

Lesson Number 1: Buy car insurance. Yeah, I know, your buddy told you that you don't need it because your credit card's got you covered or the toll road on the cuota pays your insurance while you're on it, or your car insurance actually covers you in Baja- these excuses are just a list of maybe situations. Let me give you a certainty: If you get in an accident in Baja, you have just broken the law. And, if you don't have auto insurance- you just made your life much more uncomfortable, in Baja, in jail. So do it- get yourself covered, it's easy to do. 

Here's how I do it: Go online and buy it at BajaBound.com. This is a no brainer, select the coverage you want, pay on their secure site and then just download and print the policy. Easy. These guys are known in Baja- if you have a problem and the officials see that you've got a BajaBound sticker everything get's real tranquilo- believe me, I've been there... but that's a story for another post.

More Maui: Stand Up Paddle Surfing, Maui Wave Riders and Loco Moco

Maui was a great getaway from the June gloom of San Diego. A quick flight (four bloody marys and a couple bags of peanuts) and you're there- landing on a windy, fragrant island. And the water's warm too. 

We were fortunate to have a friend on the island, Ina Tagaloa. Ina played host to us during the stay, showing us around the island, setting up boards everyday and showing us the best places to eat. I can not begin to adequately describe the hospitality and warmth that Ina shared with us. I hope that someday I'll get a chance to show my new friend around - and maybe stick an extra ten pounds on him as repayment! 

Here's a few extra photos from Maui:

Maui Wave Riders corporate office- does this qualify as the best cubicle in the world? Ina works for Maui Wave Riders and it was through them that were able to get boards and paddles everyday. If you ever get over to Maui, make it a point to stop by and see the brand new shop that they are building- and check out their complete line of stand up boards and paddles. They are definitely good people.

MWR location, right across the street from Kalama's a surf spot that has to be THE best place to learn to surf or stand up paddle on Maui- their new building is going to be killer. 

Summer time is the brutal season for surf on Maui- brutal meaning it's tough to find waves. Our secret weapon was Ina- he'd know where to go each day. Let's get this straight- it was small- but it was super fun and the water was warm. Here's something else to know, everybody surfs on the islands; girls, grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunties, kids, rippers... everyone. It's cool to see how they all get along- and how well they all surf.

It's called Loco Moco and I cannot resist it...

South swells have to sneak in to Maui- but they do and it's fun to stand up surf there.

Mikey's Board Room - Humble Beginnings of a Stand Up Paddle Board

If you are riding a custom shaped EPS board built in Southern California, you're probably riding on WNC Foam. 

The crew at WNC are the real deal. Originally an architectural foam builder, the crew saw the need for quality EPS blanks and WNC Surf was born. I for one am stoked to have a quality EPS foam supplier just minutes from me. 

Mike Jean gluing up a blank.

WNC offers a full catalog of stringered EPS blanks from short board to SUP. They also have a wire cutter on site with the ability to read CAD files for your specialty blank. 

Humble beginnings. This bad boy is 1lb EPS foam ready for the wire cutter.

If you are looking to build your first SUP, or are an experienced backyard shaper, go check out what WNC has to offer! 

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Lagging... but having fun. And while I was away, we busted a half million!

Jeez, I haven't forgotten about this place! I've just been out and about- down south, up the coast... and way down south. But here's where I am at: I've got a lot more to say about my Maui trip... a lot. Especially surfing with my friend Ina who showed me real aloha... and about the unreal food that I sampled on that beautiful island (oh yeah, I packed on about six or seven extra pounds- REAL FAST too... going to have to get back on the lean train!).

I'm also currently typing this from southern-ish Baja California where it got so fricking hot that I seriously was afraid of drying out in the middle of the night and dying. But that's another story for another time. Until then, here's a couple of snaps from each of the trips to keep you occupied:

This is bruddah Ina Tagaloa who took us out to one of his favorite spots... which I will tell you all about soon- promise (although I'm sure somebody will chime in with the spot's name soon). Ina's got the biggest heart on Maui- getting us into some fun surf and killer food... and laughing the whole time- thanks bruddah Ina! 

 

Looks nice and traquil, eh? Loading up the Ramble Wagon in southern-ish Baja and it's 106 degrees in the shade, muthaf#$%er!!! Are you kidding me??? This one's a good story- which you will hear about soon.

And for those of you who care about things like this... we busted a half million hits on this site- which I guess is cool in some way. Thanks guys and gals- more stuff coming soon!

Watch your feet... or always follow the local boys through the keyhole!

Stand up paddlesurf in Maui? Well, you're gonna know what a keyhole is- and if you don't find out quickly, this is what will happen to you:

When you step on a vana, this is what happens. Those black dots are the spines of the sea urchin embedded in your skin... um, ouch!

Hot tip #1: Take some time watching where everyone is getting into and out of the water. Here in Hawaii, since most of the breaks are over rock and reef, you've got to find the safe channels through the vana covered hazards. The safe, sandy channels are called keyholes and they can be very narrow and tricky to find so definitely slow it down and take notes when you get to the beach. Once you've found the safe entry and exit keyholes, look for a marker on land so that you can find them from the water.

See the little sand channel that leads through the rocks... that's where you want to walk when you're coming in or going out.

Our friend Ina told us how to handle the vana spines in your skin. I guess it happens all the time around here- more on that later!

Paddle power breakfast... Maui-style!

Breakfast #1, Lulu's Restaurant, Lahaina: Kimchee fried rice (it's gone by 9am so get there early!), eggs over easy and three grilled pieces of spam... paddle like a maniac all day long.

Must do... Maui!

Stand up paddling was reborn on Maui. Blame it on Laird. Or credit the big man because if you're here reading this chances are that you're just as crazy about this stuff as I am. If that sounds like you then you've got to make the pilgrimage to our paddling Mecca... Maui! I'm here now, just finished paddling a fun little reef break and am having a great time. Check out these photos: 

Oh yeah, it's really small- but even small here is considered fun back home... especially if the water is in the mid-70s and the sun is shining.

Plumeria... everywhere. Reds, yellows, whites, sunsets... all colors, all over the place.

Now this is called "getting your back foot into it".

Check out this Tahitian ripping:

Mikey's Board Room - Yeah I suck...

So I pretty much blew it after my last write up and never got to finish up the lighted SUP project. George Gall of Plus One sent me the first water run with the board a few weeks back. Looks like it was a success!!!

Watch the wake off the bow, it wasn't just about the lights, this board has all the makings of a purebred race board...

With that out of the way, I'm hoping to get on here and be a little more active as I originally intended. As summer approaches and the sleeping shapers come out of their cocoons, I think this will be the summer of the one off SUP builds...

Stay tuned!

Surf Dogs Rule!

I was a dog lover but now I've crossed over into the land of dog-weirdo... and I'm okay with it. I love my little Lilly.

Depth of my dog-weirdness? Put it this way, if I could find a little dog-kini for her I'd buy it and force the poor mutt to wear it. And a little pair of sunglasses.... Okay, I just realized what I wrote- maybe I need an intervention.

You know how parents will bust out a bazillion photos of their kid playing AYSO soccer and you have to politely act like you care for the two hour long photo album session? Well, get ready- this is just one of the twenty surf dog photos I have from today's session... and you're gonna be forced to see them all!

Meet Tim Stamps: Bio Vid Clip talking SUP board design

This is the guy who makes all my boards:

Southern Orange County Beach Break Stand Up Paddle Surfing: WB charging!

Check out this killer shot:

This is the kind of stuff I like to see: forcing the stand up paddle issue by surfing sucking up, partially closed out, meaty, Southern Orange County beach break. Real surfing. Here's what Will had to say about it: 

"Hobie 8.6... Kinley broke his Nectar here on a different day. Once, I got pinned to the bottom for a fifteen count. Lucky for us it's a sand bottom but sand can still break your neck. You can see me starting to unweight the front edge here- basically a survival move. A big toe's worth of pressure on that front inside rail and you pearl up to your ballzack, then it's a face full of sand and you get flexed into a pretzel. My home break, love it!"

The more raceboards start looking like canoes... the more I want to race in the surfboard class.

I'm gonna let the all the Olympic hopefuls, 2% body-fatters, former East-bloc athletes and sponsored paddle/ambassador/pro (everybody's an ambassador these days) race their four thousand dollar stand up boats... I'm gonna carbo load on fish tacos and beer, plug in a Futures surf fin and bang rails with my fellow weekend warrior... surfboard class baby, surfboard class.

Board Review: Bic Sport Paddle Surf's Bomb Proof 10'6 Ace-Tec

Time's have certainly changed. It wasn't too many years ago that your choice in production stand up paddle boards came down to exactly two: The very surfable, but brutally narrow (a relative sliver at 26" wide) and fully banana-rockered Mickey Munoz UltraGlide or Sean Ordonez's super versatile, cleanly shaped 11'11" Big Red. That was it. Really. Sure, there were local shapers popping out a custom board now and then but if you wanted to grab something off the rack and get out on the water that afternoon you were stuck. Fast forward to, oh say, yesterday and there I am walking through Costco eyeballing a full stand up paddle package, institutionally wrapped in super-cling plastic, paddle and all. Time's have changed all right, SUP boards are everywhere and they are easy to get. But being "able to get" and "being able to surf" are two different things- and I had to ask myself if the two requirements could ever be met; are there great surfing production boards?

That was the question that popped into my mind when a friend at Bic handed me a couple of boards for review. I was told to thoroughly and completely abuse them- and oh, yeah- surf 'em too. Frankly, the construction of the boards was just plain weird- I had instant doubts about their surf-ability. These boards are made differently than anything I'd seen out there. The 10'6 Ace-Tec (Advanced Composite Engineered Technology) is shockingly light which is a total surprise given the fact that the board is completely wrapped in a plastic shell! My traditionalist, surf board sensibilities were ready to write the thing off as a freak. I was sure that there was now way that a board like that could perform at an acceptable level. But, as with many things in life, I learned that there was more here than I had first thought. 

First of all, I learned that the board's core is ultralight, non-water absorbing polystyrene. Did you catch that? The foam blank does not absorb water and it's way lighter than the foam conventional boards are shaped from. That shaped core is then wrapped in fiberglass wetted out with epoxy resin, this is exactly how conventional stand up boards are glassed. Here's the big difference, the final layer is a thermoformed plastic coat that is a virtual suit of armor for the board. Additionally, the process of thermoforming the plastic coat, sucks all the other layers down onto the foam core and almost perfectly bonds them to it. The result is a board that is frickin' ridiculously tough. Don't tell Jimmy or Mark, the Bic guys, but I actually plonked a couple of softball sized stones on them to see what would happen... result, a big bonging sound and rock bouncing off the deck... no ding- wow!

I surfed the 10'6 a few times over the course of a couple of weeks. And, the ultimate challenge, I released them to a class of sixteen year old high school newbies. The kids surfed them along what would normally be considered a surfboard death trap, a cobble stone lined point break. My impressions? The 10'6 is a nice, all-around shape that is surprisingly spry for it's size and width (31"). In high tide, shore break surf I found it to be a smooth, predictable performer with plenty of stability in the chop (again, thanks to it's ample width). Importantly, and surprisingly,  the above average width doesn't take away from the boards surfability. 

This is a board that will put a smile on a lot of faces- especially if you are new to surfing and want to transition into wave riding without the frustration of falling every couple seconds. What I really liked about the board was the foam distribution from tip to tail (technically called the board's foil), the 10'6 is nicely bladed-out, pulling thinly towards the nose, which lowers the volume and weight there. Foiling the board that way allows you to swing it around nicely on cutbacks and bottom turns. It's like swinging a bat, if you've got the 5lb warm up doughnut on the tip of the bat, you're swing is slowed way down. Now switch to a light weight aluminum bat and you're able to swing much more quickly. The same idea applies to stand up paddle boards. Swing weight is typically a weak point for many production boards, they seem to be so uniformly foiled that their nose weight is excessive. The result is a board that comes off the bottom like a dead pig. The Ace-tec constructed Bic 10'6 is so light and stiff that it almost springs out of turns- I'd love to give this board a shot in lined up point break surf where I could really get my legs into it and jam it down the line. 

Bic's Jimmy Blakeney surfing an Ace-Tec and showing what the absence of excessive swing weight (and good paddle torque technique) will do for a cutback.  Photo credit: Peter McGowan

Like, I mentioned before, the real test came when fifteen of my students fought over the boards at a local cobblestone pointbreak. These were kids who were new to stand up paddling. Once again, the width of this particular model is a real winner when it comes to beginning stand up paddlers. You should be aware that the width of a stand up board is vastly more important when it comes to stability than the length. This is a board that, through its modern construction methods, is able to come in at a very light weight while still maintaining a comfortable width that provides loads of stability. I had complete newbie paddlers cruising the point and even paddling into a couple of small waves. Best of all, when the board got away from them and went bonking over the rocks, I didn't have to worry about the board getting completely torn up (in fact, the board looked brand new even after a two days of total abuse). The thermoformed, plastic armor definitely stood up to the board eating teeth of that rocky point.

Who should buy this board? Well, I sure as heck would not mind having this, or even the 10'6's larger brother, the 11'6" Ace-Tec in my lesson quiver. These are very stable, light, bomb proof boards that could be used both in the surf and in flatwater and with that tough plastic skin, they'd hold up in a rental/lesson environment. Who else might want an Ace-Tec? I think a beginner/intermediate paddler would get a lot of mileage out of the 10'6 version of this board, especially if you were thinking of transitioning into stando surfing. If you've got access to a spot like San Onofre's Dog Patch, this board would be the ticket- the length would give you the board speed to get into those slow rollers and the shape and weight would allow you to whip that thing around.

If you get a chance to try one of Bic's Ace-Tec boards, definitely give it a shot. I think you'll be, like me, surprised at just how well this particular modern production board performs. This may in fact be the chimera of the production board world; both accessible and surfable- what's not to like?

Home For Kids in South Africa: HOKISA fundraiser this Sunday, May 20th... be there!

Come help raise money for homeless children in South Africa. I'll be manning the bar at the event this Sunday, May 20th, 11am - 3pm. Sushi and wine will be served. Be sure to check out the silent and live auctions for gift baskets. All donations go to the children of HOKISA in South Africa, this ain't like the Red Cross, we're not using the money to build new corporate parking spots... grassroots baby, grass roots! Get more information about HOKISA here.

Stand Up Paddle Surfing Puerto Escondido

I get these text messages from my friend SK. They are incomprehensible most of the time. I love them. Every time I get a doozey from him it cracks me up. Lately, he's been in Vegas. I'll get shots of the Venetian with messages like: "Thanks for tip craps table bombay saphire yes good call not gonna pay". I'll write back, "Wait, what?" and there will be no reply. Even better is when he sends me shots of stand up paddling in Puerto Escondido courtesy of Angel Salinas and crew- he just sent this one:

His accompanying text: "What Euro trash isn't". Huh. Love those cryptic babblings. I'll write back, "Wait, what?" and there will be cricket chirps in reply. Or he'll send more of those shots- let's hope for more photos.

Whatever happened to, "Thou shalt not steal."?

That was the central question going through my head as I was gut shank-snaked on a little left peak by a North County shaper with a Jesus dove on his board. Now, I'm all about forgiving and forgetting but heck, I didn't even get a playful over the shoulder, I'm-gonna-rip-you-off-just-cause-it's-small-out-here nod. I'm used to getting cut out like that, that's an easier burn to swallow. No way, this was a stone cold assassin move. It had been practiced. Maybe perfected. At Cardiff. 

Or maybe he just thought I was going right.

Bombing it up North: Surfing Patch then checking out the Paddle for the Cure

Hook up with me. I'll be surfing DogPatch early Sat. morning then jamming over to Newport to have a gander at the Paddle for the Cure (as well as say Hi to some paddle friends). Ask about the Mystery Cooler and sample it's magica contents (hint: there are no protein drinks, coconut water, or Monster Energy drinks in there... unless they can be mixed with the Kraken!). See you there!

Played out

Played out...

The expression, written on Facebook: "Yewww"
The word über used in any context at any time... anywhere- ever.
This: "I know, right?"

Thank you.
Goodnight.