Gear is key...

So I have new gear ensemble that you should try if you paddle in the winter here in Malibu, CA. This gear is meant for sunny days on a stand up paddle board when the water is freezing. Wetsuit shorts, trunks over top of those (this is to keep 2 things warm, that's it), a long sleeve rash guard to help with the sun (saves time not putting sunblock on my arms) and finally a farmer john wetsuit top that's 3mm. Why farmer john? because if you go with a full top or a full wetsuit, I find it very constrictive and you get chaffed raw in the pits! Trust me on this one. If you do standup in the winter you want this outfit. If you don't believe me, have fun sweating your ass off in a 4.3/3.2mm wetsuit or if you just want to be the cool guy and go out in shorts with no protection you will end up a shriveled miserable prune if you end up getting wet. Enough of that, I should just put another entry in about SUP attire.

I think I might have to update the gear section for every season and every possible combination. Don't worry about, I will do the learning on what gear to have the HARD WAY. All you have to do is sit back relax and read the blog.

SUP Gear baby! that's what I'm talking about...

Zoom ahhhh....

No pic today unfortunately, however I am hoping to make up for it with very descriptive vernacular! I gotta get a waterproof digital camera for sure. Every single moment of every single day that I am NOT paddle boarding, I think about paddle boarding. The only time I do NOT think about paddle boarding is when I am actually paddle boarding. Drugs? Don't need them. So anyway, after making a few phone calls to my normal SUP crew and realizing that I could not get anyone to play hooky for an hour on a beautiful afternoon, I went at it by my self today. My girlfriend and I have been taking some great walks at lunch over at Westward Beach and the waves have been pretty solid for the short borders. Given I rarely paddle Zuma and I was looking for a challenge, I decided to give it a go. I figured high tide was at 1030am, which would allow me some time to actually ride waves that don't close out. I put in at Tower 14 up by Trancas around 12noon. Man was the water COLD!

After waiting for the shore break to die down a little, I threw my board in the water and barely made it over a couple sets. One thing you don't want to do in the winter before you have had a chance to warm up is fall in the freezing water right away. All your muscles tighten up which is not good for balancing on your board. It's not good for back spasms or a number of other sports related injuries that can happen by not being loose. So I headed down the coast towards Westward beach and got a good 30min work out paddle in. Turned around and started heading back around 1230-1245 and decided that just paddling wasn't going to be good enough for me today. I saw some pretty nice sets rolling in so decided to give them a ride. Well, seemed like a great idea until I realized I am in shore break with a 10'6 paddle board that is 30' wide and 4' thick! Yupper...nose down, dug right in and mr. wave man threw me for a good one. Good thing I'm not a quitter, becuase I attempted to ride waves for another 30-40min all the way back up the coast. Mostly unsuccessful, but had fun non the less. I wasn't around any surfers when I was dropping in but they looked at me like, "dude are you dumb or something"? I looked back at them like, "or something".

I caught the last wave in...stood all the way at the back of my board so I didn't get throttled and rode the whitewater to shore.

sweet!

until next time...

Space between...

The good news is I set up this blog about a month ago with full intention of updating every time I went for a paddle. Unfortunately, it is harder to write these mini posts than originally anticipated. I do however have 3 blogs to keep up with so maybe that's the issue. Lucky for all 6 of my readers, I am most passionate about this one so it gets updated most.

2009 will be a great year for this blog and a great year for SUP surfing!

stay tuned