Stand-up paddlesurfing: the ‘wave’ of the future?

• Surfers ride the waves at a slower pace
By Sean Pearson
Homer Tribune

HOMER TRIBUNE/Sean Pearson

Anymore, spotting a number of wet-suited surfers riding ice-encrusted waves off the Homer Spit is fairly commonplace. After a few hours, they often head back to shore, exhausted, wearing ice crystals for eyebrows. But storm swells that bring surfable waves don’t really show up in the Homer area until mid October.
Faced with a summer surf session between May and September that is bleak at best, Scott Dickerson started looking for something different to introduce to Homer’s water-friendly folk.
He found paddlesurfing.
And, just for the record, it’s all pretty much the same thing.
“Some people call it paddlesurfing, others call it paddleboarding,” Dickerson explained. “ It’s kind of a new sport, so no one knows what to call it yet. Most people just refer to it as SUP, or stand-up paddlesurfing.”
The concept sounds relatively simple: You stand on a long, flat surfboard and ride it atop the water’s surface. It even comes with a cute paddle of your very own.
“I really just kinda swam into it,” Dickerson said. “I like to surf a lot, and was hanging out with Matt James. He has a long board, and I just got on and stood up. I fell off about 20 times in five minutes, but I eventually got it down. I thought, this is pretty cool.”
While it looks it might require an extraordinary sense of balance, Dickerson said it’s not so hard to learn.
“I’ve got some beginner-friendly boards.” he said. “We tell people, if you can stand up in a hallway, you can do this. A lot of people never fall. It’s not a mandatory thing.”
And SUP is easy to pick up — unlike surfing, which Dickerson said is very difficult to learn — especially in Homer.
“Homer is really a phenomenal surfing spot because we’re not exposed to the open ocean,” he explained. “The waves are very localized, and there is a very short span between each one. That can make paddling out to a wave very exhausting.”
With SUP, boarders ride shallower surf and calmer waters, but still wear wetsuits that are approximately 2-3 mil thick. Dickerson said in the winter, when storm swells bring larger waves, surfers generally don around 5-6 mil wetsuits.
“I like to let people practice on nice, calm water,” Dickerson said. “I took seven teenage girls out paddlesurfing the other day, and within a half-hour, they were all standing up and catching waves coming in. Trust me, anyone can do it.”
To prove his point, Dickerson is willing to let anyone try it out.
“I’m offering free demos with the paddleboards,” he said. “No wetsuit, no problem, we got those too.”
Dickerson’s website, surfalaska.net, gives updated information on wave action off the Homer Spit, as well as photos of surfers and contact information.
And, “a new motto we repeat with great satisfaction as we look out at the shin high wind chop breaking on the Homer Spit — ‘We could surf that.’”

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