Battle of the Paddle 2013. Four days and counting…

Holy crap. How did that sneak up?

Feels like it was only yesterday that we announced Tiki Racing Month, relived the carnage of the infamous Hammer Buoy, took a trip down memory lane, had some fun with numbers, announced a massive new addition to this year’s event and… well, you get the point. We’ve been giving you daily BOP updates all month long in anticipation of the year’s biggest event, but now, suddenly, the race is about to be ON!

At 9am on Saturday morning, on the fabled shores of Doheny State Beach (its name already etched into SUP racing folklore) the 2013 Battle of the Paddle – the sixth edition of the California BOP – will hit the water for two days of insanely competitive and, hopefully, extremely FUN Stand Up Paddling action.

Four days to go…

So it’s a good time to reveal exactly what we’ll be giving you with this whole “LIVE COVERAGE OF THE BOP” thing that we’ve been trumpeting all month.

In case you’ve been living under a rock (Mars/cave/fingers-in-ear), you’ll know that we partnered with the good ship Starboard to deliver live coverage of the 2013 Battle of the Paddle.

There will be no official webcast this year, which is a huge bummer for the international Battle fans who got accustomed to the slick online streams a few years back, but while that’s gone we’re going to give you live updates all weekend to make sure you know exactly what’s happening at Dana Point.

(…we’ll also try and get a basic video stream up and running, so you can get a feel for what it looks like on the beach, however our main feature is going to be the live blog updates all day Saturday and Sunday)

We’ll be roaming the beach with live updates all weekend long, including play-by-play, second-by-second coverage of the Elite Race Heats and Finals (we’ll also have similar coverage of the Distance Race). This’ll be one of those cruisey “live blog” things, where you just open up the page and it auto-refreshes for you every 10 seconds or so with a new race update, race photo or other insight into what’s happening at the BOP.

The action starts at 9am Saturday with the first of the Elite Race qualifying hats, though we’ll be live blogging from about 7am so tune in early as the anticipation ramps up throughout the day, leading to the main event in the afternoon – the Women’s Elite Race Final @ 1:30pm and then the Men’s Elite Race Final @ approximately 2:30 or 3:00pm.

You can see the full Battle of the Paddle Event Schedule for more details, but the vital times are:

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH

Elite Race Heat #1
— 9:00am local California time (that’s 6am in Hawaii, 12 noon Florida, 6pm Central European Time and 2am Sunday on the East Coast of Australia)

Elite Race Heat #2
— 10:00am local California time (that’s 7am in Hawaii, 1pm Florida, 7pm Central European Time and 3am Sunday on the East Coast of Australia)

Elite Race Women’s FINAL
— 1:30pm local California time (that’s 10:30am in Hawaii, 4:30pm Florida, 10:30pm Central European Time and 6:30am Sunday on the East Coast of Australia)

Elite Race Men’s FINAL
— 2:30pm local California time (that’s 11:30am in Hawaii, 5:30pm Florida, 11:30pm Central European Time and 7:30am Sunday on the East Coast of Australia)
* The men’s final is scheduled for 2:30pm but probably won’t start until closer to 3:00pm, as the women’s race has to completely finish first.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH

Distance Race
— 9:00am local California time (that’s 6am in Hawaii, 12 noon Florida, 6pm Central European Time and 2am Sunday on the East Coast of Australia)
* Finishers are expected to cross the line after approximately 1 hour 30 minutes, though we’ll be out on the course following the lead pack and will have play-by-play updates right throughout the Distance Race

So there you go. Four days and counting ’til the big one.

No official webcast but we’re going to try and make up for it as best we can with the most comprehensive live coverage we can possibly deliver. Play-by-play updates and pics of the Elite Race (both the heats and the finals) as well as rolling updates right throughout the distance event.

Plus we’ll bring you interviews and insights from on the beach as the world’s best paddlers gather for the world’s biggest SUP race.

It’s gonna be epic. Don’t miss it.