The Surftech Jailbreak Paddle Battle

Justin Cote

July 16 2009
1,196 views
20 comments

Cali Rally Checkpoint #5
Capitola Pier
Capitola Pier, Capitola
Wednesday, July 15

“Mate, you said junior lifeguards!” exclaimed Reef’s Paul Fisher upon spotting the Capitola Junior Lifeguards on a typically gray NorCal morning. “Those guys are huge!” he added.

Yes Paul, they were huge, mean, and threw tennis balls at you like Nolan Ryan.

I don’t know what they’re feeding junior lifeguards nowadays, but when we got to Capitola Pier for the final Cali Rally Checkpoint, I had this weird feeling of pity and sympathy for the boys because these “kids” were anything but junior.

Anyway, the theme of the challenge was to tie the teams together and have them paddle around the pier on Surftech longboards, hence the name, the Surftech Jailbreak Paddle Battle. One catch; the junior guards were given buckets of tennis balls and instructed to throw them at the teams as they raced. No big deal right? What’s the worst that could happen with a bunch of kids throwing tennis balls? Total carnage that’s what!

The first heat was the Analog team versus the Reef guys and it literally looked like December 7th at Pearl Harbor as tennis balls rained down upon the paddlers while they slowly made their way to the end of the pier. From all angles the Rally’ers were taking fire and at last count three of them had black eyes from getting beaned in the face.

The balls to the face weren’t the only hazards as we used shoelaces to tie the teams together. “Someone cut me free!” yelled …Lost’s Josh Stone as he lay on the ground while getting pulled from two different angles. Josh and his team were a tangled up mess as they struggled to get to their feet, attached and carrying nine-foot Surftech’s. Then it got ugly as other teams rushed into the water to try and disrupt the race by tackling the opposition. It was basically a free for all and the teams nearly came to blows, but alas, the semi-controlled chaos that is the Cali Rally won out and we moved onto the final race with Analog going against …Lost for all the marbles.

For the final heat we decided not to tie the teams together, it was just too gnarly otherwise (and we were out of shoe strings). In the final race, the Analog team opened a can of whoop ass on the …Lost crew despite a Herculean effort by Kauai boy Dylan Melamed.

Congrats to all the teams for your heroic efforts in the 2009 Cali Rally, and as Johnny Craft said after the Surftech Jailbreak Paddle Battle regarding the death defying challenges and checkpoints, “Chris, you are an evil, evil person and I don’t know what’s going on in your head!” Thanks for not dying you guys, see you next year?

Big thanks to Duke from Surftech and Kim from the Capitola Junior Lifeguards for their efforts in making the Surftech Jailbreak Paddle Battle the most painful and hazardous checkpoint ever!

With the Cali Rally now over, it’s all up to us, the judges, to see who will be crowned the 2009 Cali Rally Champions. We will make the announcement next Thursday so stay tuned. Thanks to all of our sponsors, too, without the help of Monster Energy, Casio Exilim Mobile, Sector 9, Hooters, Volcom, Surftech, Catch Surfboards, Electric Visual, Zinka, Ollie Pop Bubble Gum, Nixon, and Pac Sun the Cali Rally would not be possible!

19 Comments For This Post

stu Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

lame….

myerSC Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

funniest thing i’ve ever seen! hahahah

townboi Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 10:48 pm

look how embarrassed moody is.. doing this shit… head down in every photo

john Says:
July 18th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

cali rally is so gay. its just pro surfers being degraded and tortured for 10 days straight. it makes all of these respectful surfers look terrible. these guys are here to surf well and win comps and make me want to buy their companies clothes. this isnt the best marketing method

stu Says:
July 18th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

couldn’t have said it better myself, fake stu!

JOe Says:
July 18th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

Haha i gave the aussie guy the black eye

toby Says:
July 18th, 2009 at 10:18 pm

how could you not be entertained by this shit? cmon!

townboi Says:
July 19th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

besides Sean Moody… none of these surfers are “pro surfers”

john Says:
July 20th, 2009 at 11:26 am

im pretty sure that a lot of these guys are “pro surfers”. sean moody is one of them. josh hoyer makes a living off of surfing, that is his job(pro surfer). nick rosza has had a few covers, and seems to have a great pro career traveling and shooting photos and video. dane zaun just graduated from an amazing amateur career, national champ, us champ, etc… and looks like he is going to do just fine out in the pro world. paul fisher is from oz so we dont hear about him too much, but he has been in mags and it doesnt seem like he is too much of a working man. the only team who didnt really have a pro surfer was …lost. when you say sean moody is the only guy, he is actually pretty low on the list of talent on rally. he has a damn beer belly, try to get him out of the water to do an air…

townboi Says:
July 20th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

bullshit…

talent = shitty airs on shitty 2 ft waves?
moody isn’t one of the better pro surfers but he is at the top of this lame cali rally…
here is a clip… the same can’t be said for all these others…

http://www.surfline.com/surflinetv/sixty-seconds/sean-moodys-backdoor-slab_14198

john Says:
July 20th, 2009 at 9:51 pm

http://vimeo.com/5103964

this kid is only 18 and is going to be dangerous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLUPAVLIObM

this is reef’s A-Team in Oz. why didnt moody get invited??
dont get me wrong, i think sean moody rips, but there are definately other people that rip on the cali rally.