Oxbow Surf Festival La Cicer, Gran Canaria

[Eric]

There will be Surf, Longboard and SUP !! it will actually be the very first SUP event held in the Canary Islands !

it's March 20-21 and 22 with waiting period for  March 27-28-29 in case of bad weather

The location (La Cicer beach) is an awesome sandy beach, a perfect place to organize a contest, it is consistant, has diferent kind of waves suitable for all level of practice from flat water cruising in front of "Las canteras" to dumpy beachbreak in "La Cicer" and slow longboard reef break en "Los Muellitos", it's in one of the biggest spanish city, not talking about crazy night life en "Las terrazas" !!

From what I understood there will be prize money for surf and longboard and gifts for SUPs

Apparently they'd organise for us wave expression sessions as well as races along "Las Canteras" beach (gonna be hard not to be distracted by all the hot girls sunbathing !) , all depending on how many SUPers we will be ...

Requirements : Licencia Federativa from the Spanish (or Canarian) surfing federation

I'll be there, and I hope that lot of Canarian, Spanish and "wherever they 're from" SUP riders will as well, everyone's welcome.

here's the flyer :

[sylvano]

Hope there will be goodconditions!
Unfortunatly, I cannot come (organization problems with kids and family, + reduced budget due to unumployment ).
Gran Canaria is close but far away!
If they do something in Lanzarote or Fuerteventura, I'll be there.
I spoke with eduardo from 2nd Reef (organization). He told me that the primary project was in Fuerte, but could not be because the local institutionnal did not want to support the event!
Maybe during the year, we find people (a comercial SUP brand) interested in developing Stad Up in the Canary!
It should be allready known as a good location, as we have conditions the whole year!
As I know, there is only 1 place to learn and rent (Michel in Fuerteventura).
If the locals are not so involved, sure the tourists are asking for SUP.
So, there is a market here for schools and rental...

Have some good waves in la Cicer!

[cloclo]

Looks like a good event (good waves+hot girls= lots of fun )

[Paddle-Plappe]

Surely better than Perros Guirec 

[sylvano]

In la cicer you cannot eat good "crèpes" as in Perros!

[Eric]

Wow ! that was good !

3 days of event, free sessions on friday and comps on saturday and sunday.

I didn't know what to expect from the mix of longboard, shortboard and SUP in the same contest... It was actually great !!

The vibes around the contest were really good, over the 3 days, the only negative words I've  heard were about the weather !! (it was raining... it almost never rains in Canary Islands !), shortboarders, longboarders and SUPriders were all enjoying the performances of each other in the water, applauding and encouraging every one, whatever they ride

In SUP we had a race (1,5k that we all raced on our waveboards, from 9'6 for the smallest to 10'6 for the biggest), and a 20 mn wave expression session

I'll try to post pics and video soon

[sylvano]

Glad you had good time.
Who won?
Hopefully the next time I can go and we share the stoke!

[Eric]

Sylvano, What I saw this week end is a bunch of SUP riders really motivated to promote the sport in the Islands, less by interest than passion and lot of people wishing to get a board and try it out.
I'm sure there will be more surfing events incorporating a SUP division with at least a short race and a wave expression session, it's fun for us and for the spectators as well.

I hope that next time, you, Russel and other SUPriders from Lanzarote and Tenerife will be able to join us.

There's already some pics up on the "lovers" blog, you can check it out following the link :

http://www.snloversvision.com/

[sylvano]

I hope we could do something in summer here.
What we need is also one board provider to let some boards for the public to try and participate...
I have no idea of the budget needed for such an event.
At least, we could do it privatly only as a concentration.

Just an idea.

[Eric]

yeah, doing a few concentrations over summer would be great, at least to share experience.

here's the video from the SUP race and the SUP wave expression session :

[sylvano]

Yeah man!
I can feel the good vibes!
Is this the usual conditions in la Cicer?

As I saw on the video, you will now paddle with a B paddle of Abel...
Super paddles!

[Eric]

there's several breaks in "La Cicer", the comp was on the beachbreak, as all beachbreaks it has good and bad days depending on how the sand bar is
Usually in winter there's less wind and bigger waves, this weekend it was closer to "summer" conditions (in summer it doesn't rain though)

here's a link to another vid of the race :

http://www.navegandoporlasislas.com/visorMgr.php?media=1081