Extreme Sports

The Hawaiians are credited with being the fathers of surfing, and are known to have practiced the sport as early as the 15th century AD. The Hawaiian name for surfing “He’enalu” – can be translated as wave sliding. During its early history, surfing was taken as a sacred practice and only those with a high social status could take part; in other words – Hawaiian kings and queens were surfers. Ironically, today, surfing is seen by the general population as a sport for those who have dropped out of society, the very opposite to how it began.

As a people living on a cluster of small islands in a very big sea, the Hawaiians were not surprisingly fascinated by the ocean, and attached great meaning to its moods and forms. In a similar way to which the Inuit are said to have many names for snow, the Hawaiians also have hundreds of words to describe the various forms of the ever changing sea.

Just as modern day surf bums insist on surfing as a lifestyle rather than just a sport and thus devote great portions of time and money to the pursuit of the waves, Hawaiians also found unfathomable bounds with the practise, as the writings of Kepelino Keauokalani, a 19th Century Hawaiian Scholar, shows in his observations of the local Hawaiian surfers:

“All thought of work is at the end, only that of sport is left. The wife may go hungry, the children, the whole family, but the head of the house does not care. He is all for sport, that is his food. All day there is nothing but surfing. Many go out surfing as early as four in the morning: men, women, children.”

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The Ladies Surf in Style in this year’s Duke Kahanamoku OceanFest Stand-Up Paddle Surfing held August 22nd and 23rd at Queens surf spot in Waikiki.

C4 Waterman, Honolua Surf and Blue Planet hosted the Stand-Up events for the men, children (juniors) and women.

The sport has grown leaps and bounds. This year’s event had 80 SUP surfers.

“I’m not surprised at all, to be honest” said Todd Bradley, one of the founders of the C4 Waterman company. “From the start, everybody we turned on to the sport got hooked.  So to see all these kids and women and new-comers to the sport … I think its just the beginning.”

Stand-Up Paddle Surfing- also known as SUP is the latest and fastest growing ocean sport. It combines the basic elements of two ocean sports canoe paddling and long-board surfing.

Women surf the SUP with style

In 2007 C4 Waterman’s first year hosting an open SUP event and only one women who surfed along side the men was Maui’s Tiare Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence was of the first female to try SUP surfing. Ms. Lawrence as an outrigger canoe paddler and, short boarder, and Tiare was hand picked as the first top acrobatic performer in the Hawaiian version of Cirque de Soleil at the Ulalena Theatre. When I first saw her surf her C4 SUP surfing in big waves at Makaha, I was like whoa!  I had ridden big waves for years, but this was a new angle of riding waves and Tiare was charging full on with a classic style in big waves with the boys.

Ms. Lawrence said “The fitness aspect is so rewarding.”  When you go surfing you are lying down most of the time, so you work two times more muscles than surfing when you are doing SUP.”  Read more...

The Hawaiians are credited with being the fathers of surfing, and are known to have practiced the sport as early as the 15th century AD. The Hawaiian name for surfing “He’enalu” – can be translated as wave sliding. During its early history, surfing was taken as a sacred practice and only those with a high social status could take part; in other words – Hawaiian kings and queens were surfers. Ironically, today, surfing is seen by the general population as a sport for those who have dropped out of society, the very opposite to how it began.

As a people living on a cluster of small islands in a very big sea, the Hawaiians were not surprisingly fascinated by the ocean, and attached great meaning to its moods and forms. In a similar way to which the Inuit are said to have many names for snow, the Hawaiians also have hundreds of words to describe the various forms of the ever changing sea.

Just as modern day surf bums insist on surfing as a lifestyle rather than just a sport and thus devote great portions of time and money to the pursuit of the waves, Hawaiians also found unfathomable bounds with the practise, as the writings of Kepelino Keauokalani, a 19th Century Hawaiian Scholar, shows in his observations of the local Hawaiian surfers:

“All thought of work is at the end, only that of sport is left. The wife may go hungry, the children, the whole family, but the head of the house does not care. He is all for sport, that is his food. All day there is nothing but surfing. Many go out surfing as early as four in the morning: men, women, children.”

 Read more...

The Ladies Surf in Style in this year’s Duke Kahanamoku OceanFest Stand-Up Paddle Surfing held August 22nd and 23rd at Queens surf spot in Waikiki.

C4 Waterman, Honolua Surf and Blue Planet hosted the Stand-Up events for the men, children (juniors) and women.

The sport has grown leaps and bounds. This year’s event had 80 SUP surfers.

“I’m not surprised at all, to be honest” said Todd Bradley, one of the founders of the C4 Waterman company. “From the start, everybody we turned on to the sport got hooked.  So to see all these kids and women and new-comers to the sport … I think its just the beginning.”

Stand-Up Paddle Surfing- also known as SUP is the latest and fastest growing ocean sport. It combines the basic elements of two ocean sports canoe paddling and long-board surfing.

Women surf the SUP with style

In 2007 C4 Waterman’s first year hosting an open SUP event and only one women who surfed along side the men was Maui’s Tiare Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence was of the first female to try SUP surfing. Ms. Lawrence as an outrigger canoe paddler and, short boarder, and Tiare was hand picked as the first top acrobatic performer in the Hawaiian version of Cirque de Soleil at the Ulalena Theatre. When I first saw her surf her C4 SUP surfing in big waves at Makaha, I was like whoa!  I had ridden big waves for years, but this was a new angle of riding waves and Tiare was charging full on with a classic style in big waves with the boys.

Ms. Lawrence said “The fitness aspect is so rewarding.”  When you go surfing you are lying down most of the time, so you work two times more muscles than surfing when you are doing SUP.”  Read more...