Stand-Up Paddle Board Races
The races will take place from Noon to 1:00 PM
between Marine Park and the Les Davis Pier.
At 12 Noon on July 4th, a flotilla of standup paddleboards (SUPs) will launch from the beach next to Mariners Park and race around the pier.
Why, you ask, would a sport becoming popular in Hawaii be featured at Tacoma’s biggest outdoor event?
The answer lies in the trend of water sports enthusiasts starting to work hard to save the Puget Sound. Take for example, Mike Webb, Volunteer Coordinator of Surfrider Foundation’s South Sound Chapter, pictured here at Nisqually Reach Nature Center.
Mike organizes beach cleanups in Tacoma and Olympia and is frequently out on the Sound on his paddleboard enjoying the sport he calls “tai chi on water” and keeping an eye on the health of the Sound. “The view down into the water from a standing position is incredible.”
The South Sound Chapter is one of the sponsors of the SUP race on the 4th. The Surfrider Foundation was founded in 1984 by a handful of visionary surfers. The Surfrider Foundation now maintains over 50,000 members and 60 chapters across the United States and Puerto Rico, with international affiliates in Australia, Europe, Japan, Canada, and Argentina, and Brazil. For more information on the Surfrider Foundation visit www.surfrider.org.
Stand up paddle surfing (SUP), or in the Hawaiian language Hoe he'e nalu, is an emerging global sport with a Hawaiian heritage. It can be traced back to the early days of Polynesia. The sport is an ancient form of surfing, and began as a way for surfing instructors to manage their large groups of learner surfers, as standing on the board gave them a higher viewpoint, increasing visibility of what was going on around them - such as incoming swell. To begin with, this started with using a one-bladed paddle, whilst standing on a normal length surfboard. The popularity of the modern sport of SUP has its origination in the Hawaiian Islands. In the early 1960s, the Beach Boys of Waikiki would stand on their long boards, and paddle out with outrigger paddles to take pictures of the tourists learning to surf. This is where the term "Beach Boy Surfing", another name for Stand Up Paddle Surfing, originates.