Good morning Wrightsville Beach…

After more than 26 hours sitting on planes, we finally made it to Wrightsville Beach late last night. For those who are somehow unaware: Wrightsville Beach in Wilmington, North Carolina is the home of the Carolina Cup. It’s basically a long, narrow, sandy island with the ocean on one side and the intercoastal on the other. From first impressions it seems like a nice sleepy little seaside town; however this weekend it’s going to fire up as hundreds of paddlers descend on the beach from all across the States and around the world.

I woke up this morning (at 4.30am… thanks jet lag…) and was soon greeted by an epic sunrise right from my hotel room here at the Blockade Runner Resort (the official HQ of the Carolina Cup). This place is pretty rad. Should be a fun race. Beautiful beach. Water looks freezing cold though, but hopefully we won’t be spending too much time in it on Saturday.

Went for a jog with Jamie Mitchell. Had breakfast with Jimmy Terrell. Ran into John and Katie from DistressedMullet.com in the lobby. And it’s only Tuesday… Dave Kalama gets in tonight. Georges Cronsteadt tomorrow. Travis Grant, Connor, Bart are landing on Thursday. Danny is on his way. Slater will be hipster-ing it up any moment now. Annabel is already here, somewhere, and they’ll be joined by a about three dozen of the world’s quickest paddlers and well over 300-400 stoked out weekend warriors who make this event what it is.

It’s gonna be a big week and a crazy-competitive race, so stick around as the Countdown To Carolina continues.

p.s. don’t forget our Carolina Cup Fantasy SUP game on Thursday, where you can win some cool Starboard schwag if you can guess the top finishers.

p.p.s. we’re working on doing some live play-by-play coverage of the race on Saturday (just like we did for the BOP last year). Stay tuned for more on that in the next day or two. Could be big. Might even have a celebrity guest commentator…

p.p.p.s. thanks again to Starboard for making this possible. You guys rock.

 

>>> Full event coverage: SUPracer.com/carolina