EL SALVADOR 2019 – Meeting the President and race heat

by | Nov 24, 2019 | El Salvador World Championships, ISA, South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Surfing South Africa

What an eventful Saturday it turned out to be. With breath taking waves all morning long (leading to not only one session but two), a new burrito place for lunch (not only veggies but chicken, beans and avocado) and a visit to the president’s palace made for a great pre-Champs day.

It is evident that we are closer to game day with how crowded the beaches have become over the last two days. Race boards doing ins-and-outs, catching waves and getting distance rides on the back line and SUP surfs shredding incredible waves at point break – it is definitely not a surfers paradise at the moment. SUPs have been ruling it – especially today

Outside the water…

Migael, Tyra and Ethan was invited to the President’s palace for an official welcome to all teams. Nayib Bukele welcomed them to El Salvador and explained to them his love for the sport and how he believes that water sports have the power to educate and empower children and communities. See the great images below.

Dave and myself (Anja) attended the Managers Meeting at Hotel Acantilado, where a conference room was setup and awaited the 27 countries participating at the ISA World SUP Championships. There was some upset about the sprint not being a straight 200m race this year but a 100m-bouy turn-100m sprint, with a beach start and end. But ISA was set to keep all race-courses as planned. Dave did raise a question about the safety of the athletes and their boards – riding through the shore break and having the rocks on the beach to run over – but they are sticking to the inclusion of a surf element to all races and assured the beach to be cleaned of all rocks before and throughout the course of the races.

The race heat are available, here. We definitely did not come for an easy ride. Here we go – time to race. Catch Dylan and Khara on the Sprints by watching the ISA Live Streaming at 23:00, Sunday evening, SA time.

EL SALVADOR 2019 – Our last two days before World Champs

by | Nov 23, 2019 | El Salvador World Championships, ISA, Prone, South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Surfing South Africa, Uncategorized

We are getting more and more on El Salvador’s pace. Morning surf, fruit bowls for breakfast (beans and rice for Matt and chocolate brownies for Dylan), late morning surf, burrito lunches with smoothie’s, midday siestas [an afternoon rest or nap, especially one taken during the hottest hours of the day in a hot climate], sunset surfs and burgers and pesto pasta dinners.

The surf here is incredible with Migael smashing the waves one after the other with great guidance from Dylan and Matt landing on the ISA photo’s page on a daily. We, the SA SUP Team, registered for the ISA World Championships after a boiling midday walk through high tide. A huge thanks to ISA Surfing for all of the arrangements and gift bags as well as to El Salvador for the great service, kindness and help so far.

We also got the 14’ All Star out of its bulletproof (times two) board bag and into the shore break, which Khara, Migael and Dylan will take on in the sprints and technical races. We’ve had some problems with getting the prone board to El Salvador and still trying different ways in getting it here. This might mean that we’ll only get the board tomorrow or Monday or we’ll have to find a board between the other teams. We are, however, not giving up on the new Bark board being delivered bright and early tomorrow morning.

From a sunny El Salvador to all our South African family and friends – we are happy, healthy and excited for World Champs starting on Sunday.

EL SALVADOR 2019 – We found paradise

by | Nov 22, 2019 | El Salvador World Championships, ISA, South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Uncategorized

We found paradise. Beachfront room views, fun breaks, fresh coconut water and burritos. We found paradise.

Our last flight was a quick one. Hoping, praying and trusting that our boards had a safe flight, we met them 6/7 alive. Evette’s Surf SUP experienced a nose and tail trimming on the last flight. We strapped 7 boards on top of an 11-seater Toyato, and there we went.

Closer to El Tunco, San Salvador, meant closer to the ocean, and you can be sure that we are really close to the ocean.

See here the schedule for the next few days and enjoy some more photos.

EL SALVADOR 2019 – En route

by | Nov 21, 2019 | El Salvador World Championships, ISA, Prone, South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Surfing South Africa, Uncategorized

Tired eyes, bottoms and necks. 12 hours from Cape Town to London and 10 hours from London to Miami. After running around between terminals and passport controls, we made it to the Miami International Airport Hotel and after a shower and new set of clothes, we made our way to South Beach… well we tried making two not-so-English, Spanish uber drivers understand where we’d like to go, which ended up making 4 of us parade up-and-down and up-and-down along Lincoln Road and the other 5 visit the brightly lit up Ocean Drive with crowds of tourists. 

We eventually made it all to the top of Lincoln Road and like a hungry pride of lions stalking a little springbokkie in the Kruger, we hunted down Mexican Restaurant, a (you guessed it) Mexican restaurant in Lincoln Road, Miami. Veggie tacos, steak tacos and chicken burrito’s made a bunch of hungry South Africans very happy. 

We are departing for El Salvador at 10:45 am (17:45 pm, South African time) and looking forward to meeting up with Dylan and Camila. See you on that side.

Have a great day!

SA SUP Team 

 

EL SALVADOR 2019 – And we’re off

by | Nov 19, 2019 | El Salvador World Championships, ISA, Prone, South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Uncategorized

The day has come that the SA SUP Team will be traveling 12495 km to El Salvador. Boards, paddles, boardies and bikinis are packed for a two-week Central American trip to compete against countries all around the world. Dylan Frick has been checking out the waves for the last two days and the rest of the team will meet them in El Salvador on Thursday.

You can stay in touch with the team by following them on Instagram (@supsouthafrica and @sasupteam), Facebook (@Stand Up Paddling South Africa) and the news page on the SUPSA website for daily updates. There will also be a live video share on all the action on the official ISA event page.

SA SUP Wave Champs

by | Jun 27, 2019 | South African Surfing Championships, Stand Up Paddle, SUP Events, SUP Racing, SUP Surfing, Surfing South Africa, Uncategorized

The SA SUP Wave Champs is upon us, and this year we are at a fixed venue – Surfers Corner Muizenberg, which is celebrating 100 years of surfing.

It was in 1919 that Heather Price was recorded as the first South African to ride a wave. Since then, millions of waves have been riden by hundreds of thousands of surfers from all over the world. So, we thought it very appropriate to stage our 2019 SA SUP Wave Championships at the world famous Surfer Corner.

This event will see athletes from around the country compete for glory as well as to gain points towards 2020 SA team selection. Watch out for the likes of World SUP Sprint Champion, Tarryn King as well as her husband Tom King, who is yet to be beaten in a wave event in Cape Town waters. Durban is sure to send down their best to join Jethro Johnson from East London. Others to watch will be twins, Tammy & Penny as well as Khara Doyle, Matt Maxwell and Hence Scholtz. On the foil side, will the sensational Nathan van Vuuren be in town to state his claim or will Tom King walk away with the title? On the social paddling front, the Wahines will once again be out in full force!

Thanks to sponsors:
SURFERS CORNER CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES, XPRESSION ON THE BEACH, PLAKKIES, JOELENB SUNGLASSES, PEPPER TREE AND WINE TIME.