Surf, sail, sun and sand
Vibrant Santa Cruz is the funky surf mecca of Northern California
SANTA CRUZ, CALIF.— It’s always been about the surf. White sand, blue Pacific and 300 days of sunshine a year — Hollywood couldn’t invent a better spot for the birthplace of mainland surfing. Hawaii reigns as its true home, yet three Hawaiian princes introduced surfing to the mainland in 1885, when they rode redwood plank boards here. To prove it, Hawaiian royals told the story on a bronze plaque; it’s at the “world’s first” surfing museum, overlooking historic Steamer Lane. “I’ve been everywhere and Santa Cruz has the best waves,” says professional surfer Jason (Rat Boy) Collins. Collins, famous for “big fat airs,” was on his first board at age 4.
“It was a hippie town then,” he shrugs. “My dad surfed; my mom was a seamstress — she sewed my first wetsuit because they didn’t have one my size.” Pleasure Point draws surfers of all ages, including youngsters in pint-sized wetsuits pioneered by surfing legend Jack O’Neill.
At 89, O’Neill isn’t surfing anymore, but his name is on the surfing museum and on several shops in town.
Headquarters for the family’s international business — R&D capital for surf gear — is only blocks from Pleasure Point, where O’Neill lives in a cliffside home.
O’Neill started the world’s first surf shop in a garage off Ocean Beach in San Francisco in 1952, then moved here in 1959 to develop his wetsuits.
His famous explanation for that venture: “I just wanted to surf longer.”
The original O’Neill Surf Shop is a California “point of historical interest” at Cowells Beach, which Collins advises is good for novice surfers.
Still surfing professionally at 38, youthful Collins offers a Santa Cruz secret with another shrug: “Surfing keeps you young.”
When O’Neill opened his first surf shop here, Santa Cruz was a small beach town, known for its seaside amusement park.
That 1907 Beach Boardwalk is a national historic landmark.
Hand-carved wooden horses on the 1911 Looff Carousel still circle indoors. The 1924 Giant Dipper is surrounded by more modern rides, but is still cranking. The wooden roller coaster is estimated to have had more than 59 million riders.
Carny games dating to 1910, carny food, 300 video and pinball games, and a two-storey minigolf course are a big draw at the Boardwalk.
Part of the 1.6-kilometre beach is staked off for volleyball nets, busy with players — and fans in their own lawn chairs — long before the Olympics.
Other gawkers hang off the municipal wharf nearby, photographing sea lions and their pups snoozing on a wooden platform below.
Kayakers paddle under the wharf, too, spotting seals, jellies and other ocean life. You can kayak in Santa Cruz under a full moon and see bioluminescence in the surf. Or slip past yachts in the harbour after dawn — with pelicans for company — and enjoy a quiet paddle through the kelp beds.
Paddling with long-time guide Katrina Wagner, 28, and surfer-turned-kayaker Dave Grigsby, 39, we stopped just in time to watch a mother sea otter waking, with a pup still asleep on her chest.
The pair rolled in their kelp blanket a little, and each lifted a paw, tentatively.
“It’s almost like they’re waving to us,” whispered Grigsby, an ex-surfer who says he grew “tired of sitting on a board waiting for waves.”
Grigsby turned to kayak surfing — it makes Olympic whitewater canoeing look tame — and liked being on the water so much, he left a full-time job as an insurance broker to buy a kayak business with his wife, Jessica, a 34year-old attorney.
“We have 22 miles of open sea” along the Santa Cruz shoreline, he says. “We’re out 364 days a year, from warm-ups to serious paddles.”
Hard-core check: Grigsby’s idea of a serious paddle is a 61⁄ 2- hour trek to Monterey, about 42 kilometres south.
Even tranquil Santa Cruz paddles can go viral. A kayaker posing for a tourism promotion got the thrill of a lifetime when two humpbacks lunged out of the waves beside him.
The photo went all over the world, because the whales were so close to shore that visitors snagged cellphone shots from the beach, and from balconies of the Dream Inn.
We saw so many spouts, flukes, fins, and whale backs during a three-hour trip aboard the Velocity that I stopped counting. I missed a humpback breach because I was on the other side of the boat, counting humpback spouts by the dozen.
And then, a blue whale rose out of the water like a surfacing submarine.
“That’s the biggest animal on the face of the planet!” naturalist Maureen Gilbert shouted. She estimated its length at six metres, and said some days, she has logged 10 blues.
“This is the largest gathering of blue whales in the world,” said Gilbert, 60, a retired teacher.
Experts estimate as many as 2,000 are migrating from the Bering Sea, she added. Hundreds of humpbacks have been spotted.
“It’s been good for the last three years, day in, day out, but today was exceptional,” said Capt. Ken Stagnaro, 50, whose family owns Santa Cruz Whale Watching. “We have people fly in from Europe just to see blue whales.”
Stagnaro is so matter-of-fact about what he sees in Santa Cruz waters that he has devised a marine definition for grand slam: orcas, humpbacks, blue whales, dolphins and porpoises, all in one day.
Minutes before docking, three dolphins swam by, almost on cue. Kathleen Kenna is an Oregon-based freelance writer who blogs at www.tripsfor2.wordpress.com. Her trip was subsidized by the Santa Cruz County Conference & Visitors Council.