By Stan Searfus
I would like to personally invite you to our once a year, LOCAL surf festival! It is called the Lorton Mitchell Memorial Surf Fest and is set for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This event will hopefully accomplish at least four things:
- It will be a surf contest open to all levels of surfing,
- it is a membership drive for our Coronado Surfing Association,
- it raises funds for the CSA which turns around and supports our mission,
- and it will be fun!!
If you are somewhat new to surfing here on the island here is what you need to know:
The Saturday after Thanksgiving has had a surf contest on our beach for more than 30 years!! It was called the JR and it was known for some amazing surfing and equally amazing fun times! Well the JR faded a few years ago and we are in the 2nd year with a new event. The “Lorton” came together to remember our incredible leader Lorton Mitchell, who pushed our entire community (including surfing) to greater achievements. Sadly we lost Lorton to cancer recently and after discussing the idea with his wife and family it was decided to name our yearly surf festival after him. If you did not know Lorton, you ought to enter this contest for no other reason than to learn about this great man! We old timers have some hilarious stories!
The day of the surf fest is November 26th. There will be lots of action that day! There will be six divisions of surfers, two female and four male. Ride whichever board you like! We will have food on the beach to share, raffle items to go after like boards, wetsuits, a room at the Del, a bike and lots of other cool things! Right before the finals we will hold an Expression Session (ES) where some of us who don’t like the pressure of competing can still paddle out and participate. The ES is cool because you surf with your pals and really feel the ALOHA of our little surfing tribe! After the contest is over we will clean up our mess and then meet at the VFW for a taco dinner, dancing to a cool band, and to hand out trophies. Also, the raffle items will be awarded out to the lucky winners. You don’t want to miss this fun day and night!
The only way to sign up is to go to our new fabulous website at coronadosurfingassociation.com and follow the simple directions. You will also see the great sponsors who have generously offered to help run this special event. Please feel free to pass this info to your pals; the more surfers the better! Again, this has been an incredibly memorable night in the past and and with lots of new blood in our surfing tribe, we should be able to match or surpass those good times. Please feel free to write back with any questions or just sign up at the website listed above.
Mahalo,
Stan
P.S. We will be asking for support with setting up the beach and breaking it down, maybe manning a booth for a bit during the contest or some other job that comes along. We need your help and it’s a good way to make some new friends!
