Mr. Steady

As much as I would like to name all the spots that I love to surf on my paddle board, I cannot do that in good conscience.  I will always talk about the epic little routes that I love to distance paddle, however there are so few spots that are stand up surf friendly it would be a crime for me to advertise them all over a blog like an idiot.  Therefore, the name of this spot for today's post is Mr. Steady.  Maybe I'll change it next time.  The best way for anyone to figure this out is get committed and start paddling around.  You too will find your own little piece of paradise away from the masses.  These spots are best left for those who earn it.  

I went out yesterday for a couple hours because I heard there was a rising swell coming in. Conditions where fairly windy, however nothing a good paddler couldn't handle.  We aren't talking white caps here people, those conditions are completely undesirable on a 10'6 SUP.  I went out by myself initially, paddled out to the break about 10min offshore and met up with another one of my buddies I paddle with a few times a week.  It was slow and pretty inconsistent but we didn't care as we had the whole break to ourselves.  There was a shortboarder who was having some fun in the shore break about 70 yards away, but he wasn't having nearly the fun we had when we rode our waves 70 yards until catching the barrel near shore.  nice.  The only problem is getting dumped when the sun goes down and you don't have a wetsuite on.  I never plan on falling, but hey it happens.  

So after my buddy left I was out there by myself, being a wave snob, waiting for the "big" ones (3ft or 4ft only) and I see another SUP paddling out in the distance.  It's about a 10min paddle so it's hard to recognize who is coming sometimes.  There isnt that many people in this area that I DONT know on stand up so I was excited to have a fellow SUP partner to close out the session. Sure enough, the guy was someone I met over a year ago at the Malibu Pier.  Here is the crazy part, he was the first dude who let me try his SUP way back then.  A whole year or so ago, hardly anyone was doing stand-up paddle in Malibu.  I would see some guys out there walking on water (so it seemed) and always wondered how cool it must be to actually do it.  Well this guy was the one who gave me my first opportunity.  He paddled up we recognized each other right away and started trading paddle stories and catching up on the latest and greatest in SUP technology.  Race boards, short boards, all wave boards..you name it.  Catching waves the whole time of course, both of us totally stoked.  At any rate, while closing out the session, we talked about all the races that happen here in SoCal for SUP and he directed me to a killer website to keep up to date on the race scene.  I should actually write a whole story on this deal but I will just leave you with the link tonight:  www.eatonsurf.com .  Click on "Information" at the top then go to "Events".  This site is really cool and can't believe I didn't know about it before.  So I've been talking about getting more involved in the whole race scene for SUP, now I don't have any excuses!  

We closed out the paddle session riding close-out shore break all the way back to our put in spot. Dark at this point, both of us totally stoked.  

until next time...