L.A. as Subject's latest contribution to the KCET SoCal Focus blog looks at the history of paddleboarding, a sport derived from surfing that was a popular pastime off Southern California shores from the 1930s through the 1950s:
This Saturday, a sport with deep Southern California roots returns to the Southland with the 2011 Santa Monica Pier Paddleboard Race and Ocean Festival. For decades, paddleboarding—a sport in which participants lie or kneel on a board and propel themselves forward with their hands—shared Southern California's coastal waters with the related sport of surfing before it vanished in the 1960s.
Paddleboarding began as an integral part of surfing. Unlike today's judged surfing competitions that emphasize skilled performance, early contests were organized as races, with surfers beginning on the beach, paddling to a buoy or marker, and then turning around to ride a wave back to a designated point on the shore. Speed in paddling, then, was a prized skill, and some of surfing's early legends were renowned for their paddling abilities in addition to their wave riding talents.
It wasn't until the early 1930s that paddleboarding emerged as a distinct sport. In 1926, legendary surfer Tom Blake—an itinerant who spent much of his time in Southern California—optimized the design of the traditional Hawaiian surf board for swift paddling. Drilling hundreds of holes into a redwood plank and then covering them with a thin layer of wood, Blake reduced the weight of the 15 foot-long board from 150 to 100 pounds.
Keep reading the full post on the KCET website.