The Green Room

A small encampment of smiling people lying on beach towels and sitting in folding chairs was the only sign that the biggest bodysurfing event in Northern California was happening in Santa Cruz. There were no sponsor tents, no sound systems thumping out music, no contest announcer. Just an inconspicuous scattering of swim fins and wetsuits on the sand in front of a nice peak breaking at 26th Avenue Beach.

Eric Gustafson of San Francisco, above, looks out from the mouth of a 26th Avenue barrel during a senior men’s heat Saturday.

The Santa Cruz Bodysurfing Association’s annual California Bodysurfing Championships was held in typical low-key fashion on Saturday. The contest, first started in 1983, continues to run relatively unchanged since its inception. That includes the pancake breakfast for participants at event director Tish “The Fish” Denevan’s house, a group barbeque, and no mention of prize money anywhere. The competition aspect remains informal [Denevan walked the beach Saturday asking if anyone wanted to help judge heats while the other judges headed out in the water]. It’s less about a contest and more about gathering the small, scattered tribe of bodysurfers, Denevan said.

“It’s a little bit lonely out there,” Denevan said. “Anytime you see another bodysurfer out in the water, you naturally gravitate to them. If I ever meet another bodysurfer I say, ‘Hey, join our contest!’”

When asked what she liked most about putting on the event every year, Denevan described a “feeling of being connected with everybody” and “the camaraderie.”While stand-up surfing today is featured in mainstream movies, fashion and advertisements, bodysurfers continue to operate under the radar. There are no bodysurfing magazines, no professional bodysurfing tour, and even the world’s most talented practitioners perform their dolphin-like acts to little fanfare or recognition. “Professional bodysurfer” remains an oxymoron.

Aside from wave riding of dolphins and seals, bodysurfing is a rare sight along our coast. The small cadre of lifeguards and water people who regularly partake in the sport are often forced to do so alone.

Case in point: Two bodysurfers at this year’s contest meet on the beach and begin talking about the waves. It turns out they both live in San Francisco and often surf the same spots. Both said they usually go out alone and were happy to find a partner to paddle out with, “especially on a big day at Ocean Beach.”

Nick Harvey shoots out of a large wave off of 26th Avenue on Saturday during the first semi-final junior men’s heat.

One of the men, Eric Gustafson, said that in the nearly 15 years he’s been living in San Francisco, he had only met three other bodysurfers — in a city trafficked by a million people every day. While the small number of bodysurfers around San Francisco may have something to do with the frigid waters and punishing surf of Ocean Beach, most of the bodysurfers at 26th Avenue on Saturday agreed they were something of a dying breed.

“There aren’t many of us,” said bodysurfer Peter Horak, of Santa Cruz. “Look around — a bunch of silver streaks.”

Quinn Sandberg, 17, was one of the few youngsters surfing in Saturday’s event. Sandberg, a senior at Soquel High, said he was one of just a few kids at his school who like to bodysurf. He attributed the underground nature of bodysurfing in part to the lack of commercial opportunities to make money off the sport.

“There aren’t really any products to sell besides swim fins,” he said. “They’re not selling anything with bodysurfing. There’s no magazines or shops or anything like that. There’s a lot more of that with stand-up surfing.”

A small clan of 31 bodysurfers from up and down the California coast — nearly half made the trip up from Southern California — showed up for Saturday’s gathering. They were treated to some pretty good conditions: The sun shone down all day as a fogbank was kept at bay far offshore and 2- to 3-foot green waves peeled left and right before hollowing out onto the sand.

Among this year’s contestants was Judith Sheridan, the San Francisco bodysurfer of underground surfing lore known for her fearless sessions out at triple-overhead Ocean Beach and as the only person ever to attempt to bodysurf Maverick’s. Sheridan said the attraction of bodysurfing is simple: an undeniably smoother, more intimate interaction with the wave itself, without the board as intermediary.

“I don’t like the idea of all this gear,” she said. “[With bodysurfing] there’s nothing between you and the water.”

Spring officially started Thursday, but for many of us spring has been in the air since the beginning of March. That’s because for the past few weeks the northwest winds have been coming up like clockwork every afternoon, pushing whitecaps into the Bay and blowing out all but the most protected spots.

Meanwhile, kiteboarders, for whom spring’s typical howling winds are a boon, couldn’t be more stoked about the solid start to their prime season.

Oh, and windsurfers too. Almost forgot about them.

“There’s definitely more kiters than windsurfers now,” admits Joe Dihl, owner of Davenport Surfsail and a diehard North Coast windsurfer for thirty years. “Occasionally there’s a new person who wants to learn how to windsurf and that’s really exciting, but usually it’s someone bringing a friend in saying they want to teach them how to kite.”

Local kitesurfer Josh Nehf throwing buckets on his kiteboard. Photo: Kim Kern

Head up to Waddell or Scotts on any windy afternoon and you’ll likely see almost all kites flying around the lineup instead of sails. Just ten years ago it would have been all windsurfers out in the water on such a day, but kiting has proliferated rapidly in recent years, attracting both rookie wave riders as well as many experienced windsurfers. In fact, Dihl estimated that upwards of fifty percent of the local windsurfing population has crossed over to kiteboarding in the last eight years.

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Received some interesting–and some not so interesting, I’ll spare you the outright trash talk–responses to the story on surf kayakers operating on the margins of the surfing world and their three-day free pass to surf Steamer Lane during the annual contest.

One thing that I alluded to in the article–and a primary concern for surfers–was the safety issue of kayaks in the surf. A kayaker in a crowded lineup with surfers is kind of like a Hummer in a bumper car ring. Basically, surfers could easily get hurt because they are at a supreme disadvantage should a collision occur. Kayaks have a lot more mass, and the kayakers are higher up on the water and wearing protective gear along with a paddle. One reader elaborated on this subject, pointing out that the law actually forbids kayaks in surfer areas:

Hi, Leo - Actually the State of California Harbors and Navigations
rules & regulations expressly forbid kayakers in any area where there
are bathers (of which surfboard is specifically listed)….or any
watercraft that uses a mechanical means of propulsion- listing oars
and paddles.

Why does the City of Santa Cruz willfully break State navigation
regulations for kayakers but go after surfers at the harbor, even when
the harbor is not navigable?

Another reader also made some keen, albethey slightly antagonizing, observations:

Congrats to the kayakers who have stepped up their performance by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years…Your discovery of fins and surfboard design theory has (obviously) resulted in huge performance gains. One might ask…why not just surf (on a board)?

For god’s sake, you can bounce off rocks in a kayak (I’ve done it) and keep on surfing…Kayaks get rolled through the lineup like a log when sets come in, you can’t unweight (and reduce the mass on impact) by bailing when confronted by an “obstacle” (i.e. someone paddling out)…The impact of a kayak with a surfer can be catastrophic…Impacts between surfer/surfer happen all the time and rarely result in more than banged up rails. Like the longboarders, kayakers need to find their spots and stick to them…Davenport, South wind/high tide big middle peak, after dark…even Pidgeon Pt (ever notice how many empty waves go through there? Do sharks like to eat boats?)….Lot’s of little (and big) wedges suitable for kayaking to be found up and down the coast if you look…

Oh…and about using public trust resources for the commercial gain of a select group…how is it that you can rent out middle peak on a beautiful weekend with overhead nw swell? Yes, this is good commerce (after all, those kayakers might actually spend a few dollars in the bars or hotels and it continues to help SC maintain it’s Outside Magazine “status”), but the exclusion of other surfers (who have often paid dearly in lifestyle choices to be able to surf this spot on a regular basis) seems questionable. Perhaps that flavors the informal “regulation” that is imposed on kayaks the rest of the year?

Surf kayakers endure a lot of abuse.

We’ve all heard the elitist — but clever — cliché that surf kayakers, along with bodyboarders and kneeboarders, are all less evolved sub-species of standup surfers, lagging behind on their knees, bellies and butts in prehistoric times while surfers shred on two feet millions of years ahead (by that logic I guess SUP surfers represent the final stage of surfing evolution since they remain standing upright at all times, never paddling on their stomachs).

“‘Go back to the river.’ That’s one you hear all the time,” said Graham Meese, 20, a ten-year surf kayak veteran and a founding member of the UCSC Kayak Club.

Even during the opening rounds of this weekend’s 22nd Santa Cruz Kayak Festival — the largest surf kayak competition in the world — Meese and his fellow surf kayakers couldn’t seem to get much respect in the Steamer Lane lineup. While the main competition area at Middle Peak was left clear for the kayakers to run their heats Friday morning, eight surfers monopolized the waves off the Point, occasionally connecting a longer ride through the Slot and surfing right through the competitors’ area.

Imagine if a kayaker tried to pull something like that during the Cold Water Classic. The offender would probably be dragged out of the water and have his kayak and paddle burned bonfire-style in Lighthouse Field.

Aside from the three days out of the year when the kayak festival comes to town, you rarely ever see surf kayakers out at the Lane, or at most other heavily trafficked surf breaks for that matter. Why? Well, quite frankly, because surfers make it clear that they’re not welcome.

For example, if you look at one of the city’s warning signs by the staircase at the Lane, cautioning the public of the “unstable cliffs, high water and slippery rocks” that can all “badly injure you,” you’ll notice that someone decided to add “kayaks” to the list of hazards with a permanent marker.

Demany Smith, who first took his kayaking skills from the river rapids to the waves eight years ago, said that it’s not impossible for surf kayakers to earn a spot in the lineup, so long as they show the prerequisite skills and respect to fellow surfers.

“Like anywhere, you have to prove yourself,” he said. “Don’t come in and paddle straight out to the main peak and try and catch all the waves. First you have to prove you can control your kayak and then try and dazzle the crowd a little with your skills. Then guys will let you surf.”

“I’ve surfed up and down the coast at places like Swami’s, Sunset Cliffs … some hardcore, localized spots. You might get some bad looks at first, but once they see you can surf and aren’t hogging all the waves, eventually they’re hooting you into waves.”

Most surf kayakers around Santa Cruz, however, tend to frequent the less glamorous, more out of the way spots up north, according to Meese.

“You have to go where other people don’t want to go because we’re not the dominant, accepted group,” Meese said.

While many of the kayakers I spoke to said surf kayaks and wave skis are big in other parts of the world, especially Europe and Australia, the consensus was that the ranks in California are still small.

“Locally, I don’t know that it’s so big,” said Dennis Judson, a 30-year surf kayaking veteran competing in the International Class Masters Division this weekend.

While he said that Santa Cruz is an epicenter for surf kayak design, Judson estimated the total number of surf kayakers in Northern California to be only 200 or so.

Because of that, surf kayakers are a more close-knit group, said Judson. These days while it seems as though everyone and their dog surfs, most of the surf kayakers at the kayak festival know each other, even though they come from all across the U.S. and as far away as England, Ireland, Scotland, Costa Rica, and Japan.

“It’s kind of like a big family get together,” Judson said of the Santa Cruz Kayak Festival. “We’ve all known each other forever. I think surfers have lost that.”

Check out the Sentinel’s full coverage of the 2008 Santa Cruz Surf Kayak Festival:

Contest preview story on Bettie Crandall and the “Kayaker Hotel” by Julie Jag

Day 2 coverage by Hayley Hinz

Final day coverage by Julie Jag