Rocks, Surf, Race with Sea Sherpa

Event Date

Home to the awesome tide races of the Fishers Island Sound, surf beaches along the RI south coast and Narragansett Bay, and scenic rock gardening on the southern tip of Jamestown; we’ll go where conditions are best and paddler interest is highest.  The focus of this event is to increase comfort and expand capacities in open water.  This is a complex and varied set of venues, allowing a great opportunity for participants to hone their conditions forecasting skills.

New to this year, we’ll be joined by a couple of master kayak builders:

–  Renowned kayak designer/builder, Nick Schade of Guillemot Kayaks.  Nick and Gerry have been playing the local waterers to this area for years and have run a number of great events together.  Nick will make available a number of his finely designed active water wood boats and at least a couple of his new composite Petrel Plays.  Super light (40lbs), incredibly burly, crazy maneuverable yet stable and inexplicably, at just 14′ just as fast as the average 17′ expedition boat, these are true “quiver killers”.  All interested paddlers should have an opportunity to give one a go.

–  Joey Schott is a certified and experienced kayak instructor, super innovative builder and founder of Turning Point Boatworks, builder of the composite Petrel Plays.  Joey’s use of cutting edge materials results in a much stronger/lighter boat.  He is threatening to bring along a version of the boat that integrates materials never seen in any kayak before.  His builds also feature customizable design elements allowing him to offer truly one off, personalized product.

For non locals, this is a self housing event.  Pre season hotel/motel/Airbnb pricing is quite reasonable and there are a couple of good, centrally located camping options. Contact Gerry anytime if you could use some guidance with this.

Check out the following link to see a video by Luke Rovner the Kayak Hipster of what this fantastic area looks like.  It’s footage taken from and event using the same venues. 

Go to Sea Sherpa to download an event registration form