Paddleboarding

For a few hours Saturday it was the 1930s again at the beach, as scores of men and women standing atop paddleboards glided across the calm waters outside the shore break. The second annual Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race & Ocean Festival was a celebration of a sport that faded from view in the 1960s but has been revived in recent years by new technologies and star-powered marketing. "With the evolution of the short board and leashes, it was the La Brea Tar Pits for any kind of long board — you're dinosaurs, throw 'em in the tar pits!"

Some tips for stand-up paddleboarding, from top pro Danny Ching: The paddle: Generally, it should be your height plus 8 to 10 inches. Too short a paddle will make you hunch over and hurt your back. Too long can hurt your shoulders. Stability: Stand in the center of the board with feet shoulder width apart, using the handle as a reference point. Look forward and keep an erect torso and a slight bend in the knees. Think of the paddle as a third leg of a tripod and a stabilizing tool.

One of the first lessons Armando Berriz learned about paddleboard racing was that he needed to wear a shirt. "When I don't wear one, I'll come home with blood trickling out of my nipples," he said. Such are the rigors of a sport in which men and women spend hours prone on sleek fiberglass boards, scratching their way across ocean waters. These seafarers are recognizable by their determined nature, their wide shoulders and muscled arms.

Admittedly, I am in the 50th percentile of everything - looks, intelligence, sex appeal, strength. My core muscle group is mostly pudding. I have the muscle tone of $1.99-a-pound sirloin. When I exercise vigorously, I emit the faint aroma of fresh-baked muffins. If it's a summer morning, you might also get a whiff of the previous evening's margarita mix. You could hang me on a tree to attract hummingbirds. I don't say that to brag. I say that so that you'll know what a well-sunscreened physical specimen I've become.

The sky was dark, the sea cold and, off in the far distance, the lights of the mainland twinkling apparitions. A cannon boomed. Cheers rang out--and nearly six dozen hardy souls flopped Sunday morning onto long, skinny paddleboards. Building to a full sprint, they edged out of the protected cove of a Santa Catalina Island harbor and into the restless sea, accompanied by the gurgling of escort boats and the steady slap-slap-slap of the waves beating on their boards.

For Andrew Thieme, it must have seemed like a bad dream. There he was in the middle of the ocean, paddling frantically on a needle-thin board while a towering ship bore down on him at 30 knots. Nowhere to hide. Nothing to do but paddle. Thieme scratched at the sea until the huge freighter was upon him. Thieme seemed doomed. Fortunately for him, though, the ship roared on by, barely missing him but swamping him in its massive wake.

Tommy Duryea had been paddling atop his 12-foot board for five hours, through the San Pedro Channel, past the buoy off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, past the Redondo and Hermosa beach piers. And now, with Manhattan Beach Pier in the foreground and his competition in the background, Duryea's shoulders suddenly stopped churning. "My sister was yelling from the escort boat, 'Don't stop now, Tommy, only a mile to go,' " he said. "I'm thinking in the back of my mind, 'Shut up, give me a break.'

Twenty-six miles across the sea, Long Beach glows on the horizon, while in Isthmus Cove on Santa Catalina Island, mast lights on moored sailboats sway like an uncoordinated chorus line. Bad signs. A clear San Pedro Channel means a windy channel, so rough that even after dark, swells roll into the protected anchorage. The 1992 LA Sound Catalina Classic Paddleboard Marathon is less than eagerly awaited by the record number of 38 competitors.

It's been more than a month since their historic crossing of the English Channel, but the seven members of the South Bay Paddleboard Club say the memories will last a lifetime. "It was overcast and cold, really cold," said Craig Welday, 43, an engineer with the Redondo Beach Fire Department. "The air was cold. The water was cold. It rained on us going across. It never got warm." Yes, but there were the sights along the way. "Lots of boats, big boats. A lot of ferries.

When Bob Hogan steps into the ocean early Sunday morning to begin the journey from Catalina Island to the mainland, he will, in a sense, be stepping back in time. It was 36 years ago that Hogan last attempted the 32-mile crossing from the isthmus at the island to the Manhattan Beach pier, on an overgrown surfboard powered by the strong arms of the young lifeguard.

Paddleboarding has found its way to the fresh, sparkling waters of Big Bear Lake . Ready to give it a whirl? Beginners clinics will be part of the fourth annual Big Bear PaddleFest, July 9 and 10, at the resort community in the San Bernardino Mountains, about a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles . Last year was the first time that paddleboarding had been part of the festival, which also offers two days of canoeing and kayaking....

For a few hours Saturday it was the 1930s again at the beach, as scores of men and women standing atop paddleboards glided across the calm waters outside the shore break. The second annual Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race & Ocean Festival was a celebration of a sport that faded from view in the 1960s but has been revived in recent years by new technologies and star-powered marketing. "With the evolution of the short board and leashes, it was the La Brea Tar Pits for any kind of long board — you're dinosaurs, throw 'em in the tar pits!"

Everything old is new again, and that's good news for the surf industry, which is finding new markets — and new product categories — in a decidedly retro version of surfing. "The biggest thing in surf right now has got to be stand-up paddling," said Doug Palladini, president of the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn. trade group and vice president of marketing for Vans. "It's becoming a major force in surfing — which is interesting because it's one of the oldest forms of surfing there is."

When Tom Blake developed wooden paddleboards to rescue distressed swimmers in the 1920s, the Santa Monica waterman had no idea he was creating a sport for the ages. Six decades after paddleboard racers last propelled themselves through the choppy waters off the Santa Monica Pier, scores of competitors took to the waves Saturday and demonstrated that the once-popular sport still has legs. "When those racers took off, I actually had tears in my eyes," said Ben Franz-Knight, executive director of the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corp.

Larry Capune, a legendary long-distance paddleboarder who made aquatic history by logging a total of 16,063 miles along the nation's coastlines during eight epic solo paddling trips between 1964 and 1987, has died. He was 61. Capune, a private-beach lifeguard and recreational director, died Tuesday at his home in Newport Beach of cancer, said his twin brother, Marty.

Tommy Duryea had been paddling atop his 12-foot board for five hours, through the San Pedro Channel, past the buoy off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, past the Redondo and Hermosa beach piers. And now, with Manhattan Beach Pier in the foreground and his competition in the background, Duryea's shoulders suddenly stopped churning. "My sister was yelling from the escort boat, 'Don't stop now, Tommy, only a mile to go,' " he said. "I'm thinking in the back of my mind, 'Shut up, give me a break.'

Not many people had heard of stand-up paddleboarding until 10 years ago, when surfing star Laird Hamilton started catching gigantic waves standing on an oversized surfboard that he propelled with a long outrigger kayak paddle. But SUP, as it's known, didn't become today's hottest aquatic sport until average folk like Jeff Golden and Tracy Hartman started doing it out of the surf zone. Golden, a San Juan Capistrano home builder, was overweight, hobbled by knee and shoulder injuries, suffering from insomnia and dragging himself to the health club to swim a couple of times a week.

Larry Capune, as far as anyone seems to know, is the only long-distance paddleboarder around. His exploits over the last 23 years have included paddleboarding journeys from Portland, Me., to Corpus Christi, Tex., and from Vancouver, Canada, to San Diego. A San Francisco-to-Newport Beach jaunt nearly 20 years ago was one of his shorter hops. Next month, the 44-year-old Balboa Island lifeguard will be at it again.