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The lure of the ocean: River waves were never as big as Boulder Creek’s Rogerson wanted

By JULIE JAG
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

Two years ago, Teresa Rogerson found herself holed up in her room while a New England winter howled outside. The cold, snow and general dreariness had settled in a couple months earlier, making it too miserable even to kayak the nearby rivers. So the Massachusetts graduate student had to settle on studying, and daydreaming about spring break somewhere warm.

"I was thinking, all right, there must be more to life than this," Rogerson, 30, said.

Then, while surfing the Web, she came across a picture of a kayaker paddling in big ocean waves under the sun’s warm glow. It had been taken at the Santa Cruz Surf Kayak Festival, an internationally-renowned contest held each March at Steamer Lane. Rogerson, a river kayaker, had never paddled out in the ocean. She decided then that she had to go.

Today, Rogerson will be one of about 120 kayakers competing in the 19th annual Santa Cruz Surf Kayak Festival, which runs through Sunday.

This will be her second time competing at the contest, but Rogerson won’t be entered as an amateur. In the two years since she moved from Massachusetts to Boulder Creek, she has managed to make the U.S. National Surf Kayak Team as an alternate in the high performance class.
High performance is one of five classes the festival offers for expert, intermediate and novice surf kayakers. Competitors in that class use shorter boats that bear more resemblance to river kayaks than the longer, international class surf kayaks. The short boats — similar to shortboards in surfing — suit Rogerson because of her experience in rafting the rivers around the Appalachian Mountains, where she grew up. They hardly fit her 6-foot-3 frame, however, and she almost ditched kayaking for surfing because of it.

"Finding a surf boat is a pain in the butt, which is why I bought a surf board," Rogerson said. "Then I realized I already have all these skills and I should put them to use."

Still, Rogerson struggled at first. She had a hard time adjusting to the power of the ocean waves and reading the breaks. As a result, last year she finished last out of 11 surfers in the women’s high performance competition at the kayak festival.

"The wave in the ocean is constantly changing," she said. "It’s cresting, breaking, fizzling out. You have to deal with all that."

This year, she expects better results. The competition will still be tough: Her U.S. National Team teammates will be there, as well as a strong field of international kayakers looking to get practice in before the 2005 World Championships, which will be held in Costa Rica in October. But Rogerson has been pushing her limits, and she’s been doing it in some of the best wave conditions in the world.

Consider that the Santa Cruz festival is the largest surf kayak competition in the world, yet it offers no monetary prizes. The kayakers come for the waves and the camaraderie.

"Surfing Steamer Lane with two other people, even if it’s just for 20 minutes, is something you just have to do," said Alvaro Gonzalez, an expert kayaker from Costa Rica.

And this year, Steamers shouldn’t disappoint. After flat water foiled many kayakers last year, the waves this weekend are predicted to be big — very big. Contest organizer Dennis Judson of Adventure Sports Unlimited said he’s heard reports of 8- to 10-foot waves and much bigger faces.

Judson said those conditions favor locals like Dave Johnston, a former world and national champion from Santa Cruz, and Rick Starr of La Selva Beach, who took second last year in the expert men’s international class. They deal with big waves daily. Yet for their guests, who tend to stick to the rivers, 10-foot waves can be a little intimidating.

"I’m scared about it being too big," Gonzalez said. "I can handle 8- to 10-foot and down, but I would rather do a medium-size wave. I’m more comfortable in that. ... We’re not used to the big ones."

Rogerson, who said she gets nothing more than a fleece and the right to compete at the world championships for making the national team, used to feel that way. Not anymore.

"It’s big enough for me," she said of the predicted conditions. "In other words, 10 feet is big enough to feel like you’re really surfing."

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