2010 Surftech Shootout & Surf Kayak Fest, Santa Cruz, CA USA

More Images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25056160@N07/sets/72157623736376824/

Check out our Stand Up Paddling Summer Camp!

Join us for a week of learning how to stand up paddle on the west side of Vancouver Island in Nuchatlitz this summer. Tim's cabin, on Sea Otter Island is only accessible by float plane or boat. We are offering a SUP summer camp to learn how to paddle and surf the area's remote breaks. Our cabin is on a beautiful inlet connected to miles of other inlets each with incredible sea life, clean air, and quiet.

Instruction will be by Rob Casey, who is writing the first guidebook on stand up paddling. From Seattle, Rob has been kayaking for a decade and has been a commercial photographer for 20 years. He found the Hobuck Hoedown, the NW's only surf kayak and now sup surfing competition. Rob does marketing and assists with boat/board design for Tim's company, On Water Designs. His book is due out Spring 2011 with Mountaineers Books.

Fully catered, each day will include SUP instruction while you also enjoy fishing, surfing, shell middens, and miles of incredible flat water paddling.

The cabin and location:
http://www.seaotterisland.com/About_Sea_Otter_Island.html
http://onwaterdesigns.blogspot.com/

Site Coming Soon!

For more info, contact Tim:
onwaterdesigns@gmail.com
Tel: 360-220-2757

Photo Workshop at Sea Otter Island this summer

Sea Otter Island, West Coast Canada, the ULTIMATE photo workshop. Some of the most beautiful scenery and wild life in the world. We have One Photo pro that has done a lot of photos around kayaking. We are putting out the word for more. Dates of the workshops are between June and September and will be fully catered with gourmet food including local sea food. The lodge we will be at is fully solar powered. PS these photos are just my snap shots. If you think they look good it is the area not me. There are no roads or traffic but we do have phones.

I am still looking or another world class photographer to teach this work shop as well as a few people interested in a once in a lifetime experience and chance to push their skill level to the next notch with top level instruction.

The black bears never seem to bother anyone and are great to take pictures of and spend time on the intertidal zones

Wild life galore with hundreds of Sea Otters with many that are less than a mile away.

Lots of intertidal and some spots that are very abundant.

The eating is always fantastic and very fresh

There are many beaches to explore

Many nearby first nations art

The weather is always changing

Think about it and CONTACT ME at onwaterdesigns@gmail.com or for more of my crappy pictures go to www.seaotterisland.com. Tell me when you have time to do this workshop. Cheers Tim

Deception Pass Dash

This years Deception Pass Dash this winter I took the photos from another post Thank you Inge Watson, great photos. The temperature was just below freezing but once we got going it was fine.

I raced in my little 14' Coyote sit on top and averaged 5 miles per hour! Which was at the top 40% of the Sea Kayaks which should be faster because they are longer!

Brandon Nelson is an animal and averaged 6 MPH on an illusion kayak made by Sterling. The range of speeds for the Sea Kayaks was 6 MPH to 4 MPH and I was ahead of the average of about 4.6 MPH with 5 MPH

The SUPs were slower than me but not by much. Their shirts read " If it were any easier they would call it kayaking" Beau won that class with a short 12' board. The fins and rudders had to go around the kelp.

The lay down paddleboarders were faster than me which surprised me.

There was one rower that luckily didn't win. There is a rivalry with paddlers and rowers

I think this is Greg Barton who finished first and put the rower in second place. If the water is calm the rowers have a chance but if it is rough the paddlers have the advantage. I think he was closer to 8 MPH with the total race boat. Wow.

Randy buys new Coyote

Randy lives in California and has flown helicopters much of his life. He likes adventure. Randy just bought a new Coyote kayak to use up on the west (wet) coast of British Columbia this summer. He had paddled a scupper pro and really liked it because it was a blem because it was too light. The poly skin was very flexible but light. The new Coyote is the same weight but very stiff like fiberglass but even better because it doesn't grind itself of when dragged up the beach on the sand.

Randy is I think 6'4" and fits in the pro just fine. I am in this boat and the leg room allows for Randy's longer legs

Heres to Randy's next adventure this summer!!

Kayak Diving in the 70's

Growing up in Malibu was a bit of a tease because there was all this great diving to be done but no way to get there except to swim. I dove with free divers and their long paddleboards but there was no place for tanks. My sit on top kayak was a bridge between kayaks and paddleboards. With these S.O.T.'S one could straddle the craft like a horse and get into the large hatches.

The kelp beds were hundreds of yards off shore and fairly deep. My friend Dan DeVault and I finally went to a garage sale and got some scuba tanks but the tank was used up by the time we got to the good diving.

Here is one of the first editions of the fiberglass kayak with a tank in the back and probably another in the front. These boats didn't have a lot of flotation in the back but just enough. These boats were sluggish in the surf but once they were moving they would plow through anything.

The kayakmobile was an 59 VW with a truck bed on the back that I built from plywood. It had 1200 cc's and only 36 horsepower but would go anywhere and get 40 mpg for $200 dollars.

When we got back it was fat city. There was plenty of room to put lobster of "bugs" inside and fish. There was private beach in Malibu we had to paddle into that had a rock with abalone stacked on top of one another 4 deep. One tank in the back and as many as two more in the front. We did free diving also.

This was Dan and I with a large sheepshead fish that tasted like crab. Also lots of scallops and other fish. Nowadays most people just take pictures which is much easier on the wildlife. There is a sustainable way of fishing that allows for some harvesting. The otters which used to inhabit the whole pacific coast took any thing that wasn't in the cracks. The beds of abalone that we do have in places will go away when the otters come back like they have around sea otter island.

Now Pacifikayaks. The new kayaks will have a choice of a hatch in the back or tank well or fishing well. The wells in the back were good on the old kayaks because when coming in through the surf the back would fill up with the wave that just broke in back of us and help the kayak go straight in with the bow up.

The 80's kayak that never happend, YET

In the 70's I made about 1500 fiberglass kayaks out of fiberglass. Some I made myself and then got fiberglass shops to make the parts that I put together. My friend Jerry Hurst added up the figures and said that if we worked real hard and everything went just right we might make poverty wages so I gave the boat building business a rest for a while.

Around that time I was sailing a Malibu Outrigger off the beach. This one is in my back yard getting worked on. There was another guy on the beach named Hoyle Schwitzer who made the windsurfer or sailboard popular around the world and was selling tons of them.

I thought maybe I could make a sailboard that would paddle then people might buy them so I made this hybrid board that could do both. The only hassle was that you could do one or the other but not both.

What's funny is this board is a lot like the new SUP's, Hummmm.....

The board was foam and fiberglass and I still have it in my present backyard and it has a nice shape. Bob Jensen used to shape a lot of the boards for Hoyle's Windsurfer International and really liked the shape. It was a lot like old Pan Am boards that were for light and heavy air before the boards got small and fast for heavy winds

The board surfed ok and you can see how floaty it was. I chopped off about 18 inches off the back and it went better especially sailing. This would make a great cruising SUP with a different sail because it paddled well and surfed well.

After a litte while I came to my senses and started Ocean Kayak with the Scupper kayak which was the first really popular sit on top. The timing was perfect because the Sailboard market peaked then crashed and I got all of the sales reps that could sell a product with next to no learning curve and our sales took off. We put a totally new flavor to kayaks. Before Ocean Kayak the kayaks were all whitewater with helmets or uptight Sea Kayakers.
I was always in awe of Hoyle making 1200 windsurfers a week. We actually made more than that making over 200 a day. After I sold the company Larry Schonemacher I think said he did over 300 in a day. The pink one is a fiberglass prototype that never worked that well and the one on the left is one of the first roto molded Scuppers without a hatch.

DVD for Micronesian Outrigger Navigator Mau

New DVD on the original sailing outrigger and Mau who is the grand master navigator. Mau can navigate with out a compass or GPS! This DVD was being made on this tiny island in Micronesia (between Japan and Australia) where it is like Hawaii but 150 years ago only with Mac computers and email.

These outriggers made the old fashion way from wood are still all over the beaches and they really use them for getting their food. Gas is about $7.00 a gallon and wages are $1.50 and hour.

When I was there they were celebrating. When we arrived at the island they sang to us.

This is Allen Rosen who made the DVD on Mau. Here he is with a villager next to a Japanese cannon from the war. Some of the villagers speak native and Japanese but no english. These were some of the first islands Japan invaded

This is a little outrigger setting sail

Here is the DVD and I emailed Allen and he said all the rights to this DVD are with Na Kalai Wa'a Moku o Hawai'i group. If anyone hears about how to get one tell me and I will repost this blog. Maybe there will be more adventures in Paradise in the future.

The Coyote 14 Sit-on-top, Olympic Peninsula, WA

Our Coyote 14 Sit-on-top can also be a SUP