26th Annual Santa Cruz PaddleFest

The 26th Annual Santa Cruz PaddleFest, March 16-18th, will be remembered as the week Steamer bestowed its best. I have made it a life dream to surf the best waves I can find. Through the World Surf Kayaking Championships I have surfed many fine breaks. The Basque in their noble attempt to give us Mundaka, could not get the wave to work for the length of heats required-Mundaka only went off prime for an hour a day. It is a problem that many venues have finding good swells to match a day of contestants. It is very difficult to plan a year in advance for a weekend of perfect swells of 8 to 15 feet, for an international crowd intent on surf wizardry-nearly impossible. The weather of Santa Cruz for the first quarter of 2012 was without weather-it was sunny surf city Santa Cruz . We were predicting drought-skiers were stuck with man-made ice crystals. A week before the PaddleFest, rain was predicted for everyday of our event. Now this is not necessarily a bad trait in that you can’t have swells without storms. But we did not want the horrendous conditions that lead to the cancellation of the final day of 2011. Rain happened on Thursday of our beginning celebration party. Everyone got together and raised a circus tent to cover the pool, the blues band played from the classroom, and Randy of the Class V surf dogs served steak from pop-ups-the event was on. Friday was rain, 8 foot waves-within-waves storm stuff. You had to find the waves. Saturday woke up to 8 to 10 foot glassy swells that started at 7:30 am and ran all day. Truly perfect, especially with the SUP Race passing in front of the surf venue on their way to the SC harbor. I can’t remember a contest that had every heat a potential of truly epic waves. Sunday was a maelstrom, 10 to 15, slight offshore, with mountains you had to commit to make the finals-you couldn’t have asked for a better show of the sport. Before my Masters final, Ken King said, “Did you see that Rain Bow?” It was a multi colored band extending from Seal Rock to Cowell’s Beach. You couldn’t have asked for a more auspicious event. On Monday, it all went away.

We will be planning the 27th Annual Santa Cruz PaddleFest and we will pick dates a year in advance. We only can hope to approach a classic weekend the Steamer Lane set in our laps this year. Next year we will plan on another SUP race and Surf contest staged in one of the best oceans in the world. We will emphasize beginning classes as this is our charter to help the sport progress. I hope you will join us in this grand exercise of environmental excitement.

Swaggerjack Productions

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Bryon Dorr

Teaser Trailer from Mikko, from 2011

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