Santa Cruz Surf Kayak Festival

Readers of my blog knows that I have kayaked several times with Dave Johnston. In this Metro interview with Dave, there was some mentioning of Santa Cruz Surf Kayaking Competition. I found out this event after its completion last year, so had waited a year for this year's event. You can read more about it in this Wave Magazine article as well.

I reached Santa Cruz at about 1:30pm. The event was held in Steamer Lane, but parking was limited around the Santa Cruz Surf Museum. I had to park in some residential neighborhood and took a short walk to the cliff.
The first event I saw was stand up paddling. I had not even heard of this sport, so this event was quite exciting for me. The board seems incredibly stable and the competitors were moving smoothly on the water. Some competitors were even able to ride the wave! This is something I like to try.

After the stand up paddling demo, there was a surf kayaking heat. Dave was among one competitor in the heat, so I had someone to root for:)
For surf kayaking, short kayaks were used instead of the longer sea kayak that I am more familiar with. This gave the competitor much more control of the boat. And they needed every bit of control! The competitor paddled much further towards the ocean compare to surfers, and then waited for a good wave. When a good wave comes along, they turn their back towards the wave and paddle quickly in an attempt to ride it. With simple paddle stroke, they were able to control their kayak to go either parallel to the wavefront or perpendicular to it. When perpendicular to the wavefront, they received a lot of push from the wave and could ride it. However, the wave would push them too much after a while, and the competitor would turn their kayak into the wave for a second ride.

The following is a video posted by Dave that illustrate what I was talking about.


Dave had some good rides, but so did some of his competitors. After about 10mins, the heat was over. There was another stand up paddling demo, followed by the finals for surf kayaking.

The other spectators seem to know all the competitors and every time a competitor caught a good wave and began their surf, the spectators would yell out encouragement. I doubt any of the kayakers could hear us high up on the cliff, but the sport had a nice cosy feeling to it where everyone was cheering for everyone.

I saw several good runs, including on by Rusty where he was tossed into the air for what felt like a couple of seconds, then landed safely and continued to paddle and surf! I have not done surf kayaking, so am unable to determine how difficult those moves are, but am fairly sure beginners do not stand a chance:)

I was at the event for a total of 3 hours. The weather had cleared up nicely for Sunday and I had a great time watching the competition.