Sandy & Donny from Kitopia teach kitesurfing Surf Board Clinic at Coyote Point 5/3/2013

Sandy and Donny, owners of Delta based Kitopia kitesurfing school, teamed up with Boardsports School and Shop to offer an intro to riding a surf board clinic. Turn out was fantastic, we had 20 people join the clinic! The focus was to get first timers up and riding on a surfboard, but also included how to jibe and tack a surfboard.

Sandy and Donny from Kitopia Kiteboarding School in Rio Vista (the Delta)

Sandy, Donny, Bruce (F-One), Rebecca and Jane

Bruce came out to show us the full 2013 lineup of bamboo F-One surf boards

We have a full line of directionals in our demo fleet, including Naish, Nobile, North, F-One, and Jimmy Lewis. You can rent/demo these boards at our Alameda or San Mateo locations. We have a fully stocked retail shop with new boards too! 

Donny teaches attendees how to ride a directional surf style kiteboard

Attendees watch Donny make it all look too easy

Donny's jibes, tacks, and roll tacks were all butter smooth. He's my inspiration!

We had light wind, but enough to demonstrate the key skills and get everyone on the water

After the clinic we enjoyed burgers and beers til the park closed! Thank you Sandy and Donny for teaching an awesome clinic!

Summer Kids Camps - Windsurfing

Are you planning for your kids summer sports camps? How about windsurfing! We offer kids camps throughout the summer for ages 7-12 at both Alameda and San Mateo. You can also sign up your children for 1 on 1 private lessons. We recommend our private lessons for kids ages 4-6! http://boardsportsschool.com/windsurfing/lessons/kids-camps/

Boardsports Voted "Best Surf Shop" for 2013!

Thank you to all of our loyal customers for voting for us in the San Francisco City Voter Best of the Bay List. We are very grateful to earn this award and strive to continually deliver top notch service, lessons, retail choices, and overall fun at our Boardsports Windsurfing, Kiteboarding, and Stand Up Paddle School & Shop. Visit our testimonials page for more details on our recent win :)

BEST Surf Shop

Come check out all of the 2012 Naish Kites and Boards. Nick Stuart is in town with the mother load Naish RV!

He will be loaded up with all the goodies. Come try out anything and everything.

When: Fri/Sat/Sun 5/25-27

Where: Locations Announced HERE and on FaceBook, Twitter, and Forums (ikitesurf.com and Bay Area Kiteboarding) based on best wind but will include Alameda & 3rd Ave

What: 2012 Naish Kites (Torch, Bolt, Park) and Boards (all of 'em, twin tips and surf boards)

Come check out all of the new 2012 North Kites/Boards with rep Dan Schwarz. He is in town for the weekend and will be hosting a full demo with the entire 2012 lineup. Locations will be confirmed based on best wind/weather as we get closer to the date but for now we are planning>

Friday May 18th at COYOTE POINT San Mateo 2pm - 7pm w/ BBQ (Alternate location Alameda if wind looks better there)

Saturday May 19th at 3rd AVENUE Foster City 1pm-6pm

Sunday May 20th at ALAMEDA 2pm-6pm

Road trip to Santa Cruz to scope out our new SUP boards

Kipps and I hit the road last week for another "tough day on the job" to demo new stand up paddle boards in Santa Cruz. Our first stop was to the Surf Tech warehouse to pick up all of our new Bark Stand Up Paddle race boards we are adding to our retail and demo fleet.


Surf Tech is the distributor for a bunch of boards that we are adding to our line, including the Barks (fancy race boards, if you have to ask the price you may not have the dough for these puppies at over $2,000), Randy French soft top (retail $999), and Surf Tech Lahui Kai Bamboo ($1399). We now can get any boards in the Surf Tech line including Laird Hamilton, Robert August, Mickey Munoz, Gerry Lopez, Marisa Miller ladies specific SUPs, and Takayama. The guys at Surf Tech were super cool (isn't everyone in Santa Cruz super cool!?) and helped us gather up our order and strap all those huge boards onto our roof racks.

Our next stop was to visit Bob Miller and the Blue Coil Surf Shop.

Bob is John Miller's brother, and John and Bob owned and operated the ASD Windsurfing Shop that we took over at Coyote Point Park in San Mateo in 2007.

Bob has continued to shape surf boards and is now shaping stand up paddle boards. It was my first time meeting Bob (I see John all the time as he stops in to hang out and does board repair for our customers). Bob is handsome and super nice (just like John!). He spent time with Kipps and I reviewing their board line up.

We are looking at placing a custom board order with them for stand up paddle boards. They are famous for their shapes (Bob is an awesome board shaper) and their street cred (a.k.a. how cool the boards look) is off the charts. These boards will be priced very competitively and will be gorgeous to stare at (and 90% of most sports is about looking good, right?).

Once we had our Blue Coil SUP in tow, Kipps and I drove over to Santa Cruz harbor to demo both the brand new Bark 12'6" Competitor race board, and the 11' Blue Coil SUP. We unpacked the Bark board and just stared at it for a while. It comes with a carbon fin and the deck is so damn pretty that we sat in silence for a moment.



We grabbed our paddles and headed for the boat ramp. Once in the water, I was amazed at how stable the Bark board was. And despite my endless teaching of students to not stare down (look up! look where you are going!), I simply could not keep my eyes off the new beautiful Bark race board. Not only was it super stable and gorgeous, it also glides through the water like a ginsu knife!


Kipps did a good job keeping up on the very different 11' Blue Coil. This board has great glide as well for it's size, and has impressive rocker (curve like a surf board) so we know it will handle the waves like a charm.




We paddled out into the harbor and saw lots of cool birds, a sea otter (so cute!), kayakers, and a few other SUPers.

After our tough day, I think we both decided that the Bark board is our new favorite for speed and glide. This is a race board in its' own class. If you are interested in recreational or competitive racing, this is the board for you! We have demos at both Alameda and San Mateo, and they are offered on a demo to buy for racers or advanced SUP paddlers. Come try one and fall in love!

Bonaire: An Island Watersports Playground!

If you’re looking for a warm-water destination in the winter – particularly in the months of January-March, look no further than Bonaire. We just got back from a 9-day trip to this small, Caribbean island just off the coast of Venezuela and we wanted to share our experience.

Ultimately, this a great island to escape to if you’re looking for a diversity of things to do in the water. This island is mainly renowned for two thing: sensational SCUBA as the island is surrounded by a coral reef and a place called Lac Bay, an intermediate and freestyle windsurfer’s dream. However, there is a kite boarding beach, amazing snorkeling, powerboat rentals, wakeboarding/waterskiing and sailboat excursions.

Let’s start with Lac Bay, the windsurfing area.

The winds speeds in Lac Bay were fairly light compared to our wind conditions. The average wind speed was probably about 14-16 knots but we had some lighter and some strong wind days.

The bay is divided into two sections. One section is a huge area of thigh-high, flattish water. This area is amazing for intermediates to practice all of their skills and a great place to work on freestyle moves because if you mess up you can easily just hop right back onto the board. This is a perfect place to work on any intermediate skills or non-looping freestyle moves.

If you do want to practice looping or go for longer runs or even get into less crowded deeper blue waters, just sail a longer distance into the deeper section of the bay. You may even see lots of sea turtles and other fish (there are flying fish all around the island).

Just as fun, and sometime more fun than sailing, is watching the unbelievable freestylers on the island. 3 of the world’s top 5 windsurfing freestyle champions are from Bonaire. The moves these guys can pull will blow your mind. Even the light wind freestylers are hard to take your eyes off.

Caesar Finies is just ridiculous in light winds. If you think light winds are boring, let’s see if you can do some of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYLUBr4tzq4&feature=related Do not miss the end of this video for him taking the sail off, throwing it into the air and catching it to sail back onto the beach. This is him below.

For rentals and/or lessons there are two beach side equipment rental concessions to help you out: Jibe City and Bonaire.

Jibe City rentals are very nice and consist of mostly new JP and Neil Pryde equipment.

Bonaire Windsurfing Place has a stellar selection of Starboard, RRD and some Naish Boards. They also carry a full spectrum of Hot Sails Maui Sails including the DD for those who want the lightest weight rig possible.

Both locations also have restaurants and bars right on the beach so you can eat, drink and watch the action – or have a place to relax after a long session.

On the kiteboarding front, there is a smaller, offshore wind beach about 10 minutes away from Lac Bay. If you’re an experienced kiter confidently going up wind, you’ll do just fine. The local kiteboarding school has rescue boats and for $20 you can catch a ride back home if you get stranded down wind. As this site is on the ocean side, you can see lots of flying fish in this area. There is really nice swell on the outside and the area closer to the launch can be relatively flat.

We did take some down time from all of the windsurfing and kiteboarding to rent a powerboat and cruise around Klein Bonaire, a little islet about a half mile off the western side of the island. The snorkeling and diving there are absolutely amazing: Lots of coral, fish, crabs and things to see.

Bonaire is a little quite on the nightlife side, but the food on the island is the best that we have had in the Caribbean. Try the ceviche at New Peruvian Restaurant, the mussels with spinach and gouda at It Rains Fishes, the grilled shrimp and Mona Lisa and just about anything at Unbelievable Restaurant.

For accommodations, I’d recommend contacting Ann Phelan the master of Bonaire travel info: ann@bonairecaribbean.com