Plaskett Creek SUP Campout 2008 Wrap-up

I pulled into Plaskett Creek Campground at about 10:00pm Friday night and was stoked to see John and Sam. They helped me back my trailer into one of the nicest camping spots and then went back to the airstream to toss back a few. Here's a picture of our little camping configuration. John Stevenson drove down his self-contained van, Sam and his wife pulled their Airstream, I had the 27ft trailer, Liz came up from San Diego and tent-camped, and Pat came down from San Francisco with his 17ft fiberglass pod. It really was shaping up to be an awesome weekend.

We rolled out of bed around 7:30 and checked the surf. It was glassy, with peaks all across the beach, and the morning fog was light... it looked like it would burn off, and it did. Saturday was picture-perfect. We had shoulder, to head-high waves all morning and only a few surfers out with us. There were three main peaks with channels between them and we were able to paddle around picking off rights and lefts without any problems. My favorite spot was a left breaking way down the beach, just far enough to paddle to, but not close enough to pick up a crowd. I surfed about 6 lefts in a row and was able to feel the power of surfing backside on the Mahi. I have a new favorite bottom turn.

Here's a photo of me and my son, Ethan. He was having a blast on his boogie-board and I was stoked to see him getting in the water. The cool thing about this photo is the wave breaking in the background. These were the kinds of peaks we were surfing all weekend.

Here are some photos of the guys. Of course you never get photos of the good waves because everyone is surfing, and you never get photos of your best wave because nobody else is willing to get out and take pictures. So I made the ultimate sacrifice and paddle into shore just so I could document a bit. These photos are from Sunday just before we all packed up and headed home. The swell had dropped and it wasn't as clean as Saturday, but still a whole lot of fun.

Aside from surfing our brains out, we had a whole lot of fun just hanging out and playing music, too. Saturday night Sam Nigh and John Stevenson got out their guitars and I brought over my mandolin. Sam had an amp and an iPod hooked up with an entire backup band that sounded great! We were joined quickly by Pat, his wife, Liz and my family, too. There were even other campers who strolled by and sang with us as we rattled off everything from Rock-n-roll to folk to bluegrass. We had to finally call it quits after about 2 hours!

In the end I realized this: Stand Up Paddle Surfing breaks down barriers of age, race, gender, longboarder, shortboarder, bluegrass, rock-n-roll, family, single and so on... We all came together and had a great time just being human and loving life. Would I do it again? In a second! As a matter of fact, I'm already planning another Plaskett Creek SUP Campout for next year. Are you in?