August, 2009

August 24, 2009: Flatwater Paddle Tour around Deep Cove

Posted on: August 28th, 2009 by Paddle Surf No Comments

 

We went for a group paddle around Deep Cove on Monday August 24th with six of us on stand up paddleboards plus a few kayaks.

The day was a touch bittersweet as this was my last chance to paddle with Johnny, who returned home to San Francisco later that day with his wife Adrienne. These are two of the most stoked and avid paddlers I've ever had a chance to meet. During my week of paddling with Johnny, I learned a ton and had a great time showing him the sights around Vancouver on our standups. Was  a pleasure meeting you and definitely looking forward to next time!

Conditions were typical Deep Cove, super calm glassy water with great weather all around.

Pretty interesting part of the trip was the chance to see one of the Fastcat ferries up on a ship transporter up close, being prepared for its trip to its new home in the United Arab Emirates. They'd even already gone ahead and covered the old signages with the new owner's names.

Upon returning to the beach we met Kelvin Humenny, a local stand up paddleboarder who was on the most beautiful board ever... A meticulously hand built twelve foot hollow cedar strip SUP board that Kelvin built from scratch, accompanied by an equally impressive custom build wooden paddle with carbon inlay. Take a look at the image gallery at the bottom of the page for some photos of the board, very impressive!

Overall a great day for sure!

Todd Bradley Teaches Proper Paddle Technique

Posted on: August 20th, 2009 by Paddle Surf No Comments

 

Some very solid instructional video footage from Todd Bradley of C4 Waterman.

Video #1 (link to large format)

Video #2 (link to large format)

Impressive video trailer for “The Stand Up Project” website

Posted on: August 19th, 2009 by Paddle Surf No Comments

 

Caught this over on Twitter via Soul Surf Media

Great footage and production, plus quite an interesting discussion at around the 3:00 minute mark, with Ekolu Kalama about how to catch open ocean swell.

Beach Shorts Trailer- The Stand Up Project from Soul Surf Media on Vimeo.

Gerry Lopez teams up with Surftech to bring you his SUP Quiver

Posted on: August 13th, 2009 by Paddle Surf 1 Comment

 

Gerry Lopez teams up with Surftech to bring you his quiver of personally designed stand up paddleboards. No word yet on which Surftech's Canadian retailers will be carrying the boards, but should be showing up soon!

“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

lopez_7626_huber09Gerry’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…

Click here for the full story!

Eagle Harbour to Lighthouse Park Flatwater Paddle Tour

Posted on: August 13th, 2009 by Paddle Surf No Comments

 

Looking for something different, Corey and I decided to head further into West Vancouver on Wednesday August 12th, 2009 to check out the area around Eagle Harbour Yacht Club.

Upon arriving we found the entire area packed with teenagers all over the beach, movie crews setting up gear on the Eagle Harbour Yacht Club wharf, and paparazzi with big ass cameras milling about. Sort of a surreal scene, especially here in sleepy West Van.

We weren't all curious to figure out what was going on, so started off east towards Lighthouse Park. Heading straight out of Eagle Harbour, we made a straight line for the rocky outcroppings just out from Klootchman Park. On the rocks we encountered the biggest group of harbour seals I've ever seen around here, must have been 20 or 30 of them. As we approached more than half of them jumped in the water and swam up for a closer look at what we were doing. Though we had no close encounters such as the one with a baby seal from a couple weeks ago, it was still pretty impressive to see how much wildlife still lingers around these heavily trafficked waterways.

From there, after some pretty major crossup swell from passing ferries and tugboats we reached our destination at Lighthouse Park, just beyond the popular rock climbing area of Juniper Point.

After a short pitstop, we made the return with a route closer to shore where we found much calmer water.

Good paddling location, we'll definitely check it out again!

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