Since moving to Santa Cruz, I’ve often noticed people standing on surfboards and paddling around just offshore. That seems like fun, I’d think to myself. How lovely their silhouettes look at sunset as they glide across the water, and just imagine the photos you could get from that perspective.
Little did I know I’d be spending one Valentine’s Day at the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor, jumping in and out of a car with a camera, as we drove up and down the length of the channel photographing paddleboarders in action for the website of a new SUP shop called Covewater Paddle Surf.
SUP means Standup Paddleboarding, and it’s become quite a popular pastime; this must be true, because The New York Times said so. Scott and Leslie Ruble are so passionate about sharing this sport that they opened the only dedicated Standup Paddleboarding shop on the West Coast north of Santa Barbara, and are busily purveying SUP equipment, accessories, classes and rentals.
It was Scott who drove me to and fro in the harbor that day, stopping at good vantage points to let me out for a minute or so to shoot SUP class groups as they made their way along the channel. Meanwhile, Leslie was in the water, teaching the art of SUP and looking like its best advertisement. I could tell that watching other people out in the water was making Scott want to get on his paddleboard, and the feeling was contagious. I totally want to try it, and of course I know exactly where I can rent equipment and take lessons now (that’s Covewater Paddle Surf, in case you didn’t catch it the first time).
SUP seems to inspire a strong reverence for the ocean (or lake, or even river- people use all of these for paddleboarding). It’s a slightly different spirituality than that of wave surfing, which focuses on the swell and the tides. SUP can make use of water in all states, calm or otherwise, and is devoted to exploring, observing, or just being there, out on the water.
As I picked out my favorite photos from that day to share with you, I was reminded of this poem by Philip Larkin, called Water:
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
The only person who got a “furious devout drench” that day was Jeffrey Kongslie, who was a great sport about it, and who really deserves his own category on this blog. In fact, I’m going to give him one right now.
Enjoy the photos, and don’t forget to try Standup Paddleboarding!
