Get Some North Shore Style Stand Up Paddle Hats!

Our New Hats our flying out of our Rainbow Van on to people’s heads faster than you can say “SUP?!” Our favorite rainbow-colored logo’d hats are now accompanied by our new hat with the design by our friends at North Shore Embroidery (http://www.northshoreembroidery.com/)! We now have lots of hats for Mom, Dad, the kids, and all our paddling friends! Not only are they designed differently, but the shape of these hats are more stylish than you have ever seen. Want to see your friends green with envy? Oh just kidding, want to share these wonderful hats with your friends?

Everybody should come to the Haleiwa Bay to check out these hats and see our stylish design while keeping the sun rays out of your eyes! Especially when you are Paddling out on the water;)
Hat Girls

New Head Instructors: Tina and Mariah

Tina Cohen

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Let’s welcome Tina and Mariah as the newest Stand-Up Paddleboard Instructors! They have been trained by Rainbow Watersports Instructor, Jodi, with emphasize on safety and family fun. Both have been stand-up paddling for years on the North Shore and absolutely love it, so they are super eager to share it with all of you this summer!!

Tina specializes in not only SUP instructing, but also speaking Japanese. She was born and raised on the North Shore and her dad is a pro photographer and her mom is a pro body boarder.. and when we say pro we mean #1 IN THE WORLD!!! Wow, no wonder Tina is so good at all the water sports including body board, SUP, short board, and long board, Tina does it all!
Mariah loves surfing and body boarding, and loves life even more! She moved to Hawaii 2 years ago to challenge her sport abilities and to meet as many wonderful people as possible. She started out as a swim instructor after competing in the top 10 girls in a State- wide competition for the event Butterfly. She has been coaching and instructing since and loves to share her knowledge. You won’t stop smiling when you have Mariah as an instructor on the Anahulu River

 

We are so happy to have these two wonderful girls join our team for Summer FUN at the Haleiwa Bay!!

Come Work Out on the Water

How about having some fun in the sun while putting your muscles into high gear for a rewarding 1 hour workout!!

Come join SUP FIT!

SUP FIT stands for Stand-Up Paddleboard Fitness. It is an excellent, FUN, low-impact cross training workout that is challenging and improves cardio.  Core toning is definitely King, and a keen focus on balance. It is led by one of our favorite head instructors, Jodi Kealoha, who happens to be a certified personal trainer!

Jodi has created a SUP FIT DVD to help us all have more access to this workout everywhere! The DVD is fun to watch, and also leads you in an upbeat 1 hour workout that you can practice at home and then take to the water. The DVD comes with a waterproof guide (for those of us who just need those little hints to get us back on track.)

Buy the DVD or sign up for a Live SUP Fit class with us in Haleiwa anytime.

Oh!! And here’s an awesome teaser to the SUP FIT video:

Stand Up Paddle Lessons in Haleiwa are the Best!

Haleiwa truly is the best place on the island to learn to stand up paddle. It’s beautiful and uncrowded; the water is clean; and where we teach there are no waves. Arrive early and spend time walking through Haleiwa town visiting the surf shops and boutiques. Then stop shave ice at either Aoki’s or Matsumotos. After your paddleboard lesson, lounge on on of many beaches in Haleiwa before getting lunch or dinner at one of many restaurants in town. You can easily make a full day of your visit to Haleiwa and return another day for some more. Haleiwa is the surf capital of the world and we look forward to teaching you to stand up paddle is this beautiful location year round. Aloha.

Stand Up Paddling Fin-less

It’s summertime, time to take the family on the road on the mainland! We have cruised through some beautiful countryside, and most significantly, been around the most important people in the world: Family. However, every day Nate and I are reminiscing of stand up paddling, something much more rare on this western desert land. As it is now race season, our muscles are aching to get back in the water!

Besides “mind-paddling”, we’ve had our tease of paddling, from happening upon a river stand up paddle school in the middle of Southern Colorado on the Colorado river, and a lone paddler stroking the waters of the Natoma river in Sacramento. But after weeks of not doing what we love to do, we just HAD to get on a board.

We were stoked to find out that the Aquatics center at the lake in Sacramento rented stand up paddle boards, so we went out to check them out. “Just pick one up from behind the building,” I was told by the lady behind the counter. Sounded easy enough, and my eager heart began dancing and I hummed to myself, “I’m going paaadling, I’m going paaadling!” The music in my head stopped suddenly when I pulled out the longest aluminum paddle (you know, the ones that make your hands black?) with a straight blades, measuring no more than 5 feet tall. “Okay, I thought. Wierd, but doable.” But then I found that all the “stand up paddle boards” they had available were windsurfing boards with no fins –no fins!! Where were the fins?

Fins make the board steady and stable and also cause the board to turn when needed, so I knew this must have been a mistake. I looked around the bay area, and there were no fins or boards with fins to be found, or even anyone there to help. In my overzealousness to get paddling, I decided to at least set the board in the water anyway, and off I went like a drunkard on a helter-skelter course toward our family on the shore.

Once I got to shore, Nate took one of the kids’ beach shovel and shoved it right through the hole for the wind sail, which at least made it better than no fin at all. Perhaps a good moral to the story is, “When life don’t give you a fin, make one.” We made the best of what we had and had a good time anyway. When I returned the poor excuse for a stand up paddle board later, I was told “that’s just the way (their) boards are: a few have fins but most don’t. Besides, they’re unsteady anyway”. Seriously. It was good to be out on the water again, but boy, I am all the more grateful for Rainbow Watersports’ commitment to high quality instruction, and proper equipment. And I’ll bet you are too.

Can Pregnant Women Stand Up Paddle?

“I am pregnant.  Can I stand up paddle?”

We get this question quite a bit from large bellied stand up paddle hopefuls, and the answer is YES!

In fact, stand up paddling is an excellent choice of fitness for women who are expecting.  If you are just looking at coming out for a one-time experience, rest assured that stand up paddling is a low-impact sport, eliiminating the bumps and jostles that could be bothersome to that growing body.  If you do fall (as a low percentage of our paddlers sometimes do) you splash into water, so risk of injury is very slim.

If you are pregnant and thinking of stand up paddling as your long-term sport,  it is an excellent choice.  There are so few choices for tightening those core muscles when you are pregnant (so few, that I can’t even think of any other!), and stand up paddling does the trick — and does it well.  Stand up paddling also strengthens virtually every other muscle in your body, from your feet to your hands, with legs, butt, abs and arms in between!

 Rainbow Watersports owner Heidi finishing 7 mile race at 5 months pregnant 7-4-11

Rainbow Watersports owner Heidi finishing 7 mile race at 5 months pregnant 7-4-11