The Santa Catalina Island Company hosted the Catalina Stand Up Paddle (SUP) Festival this past weekend, marking the final stop of the developing SUP tour. The three-day long event featured two days of races at the Descanso Beach Club, SUP demos, and the screening of the first ever SUP film.

The festival—deemed the largest event in the short history of the sport— brought world-class paddlers from as far as New Zealand and Hawaii to compete for a chance at $15,000. Recognizing the rapid growth of the SUP industry, sponsor REVO Sunglasses—a Luxottica-owned eyewear company under the Oakley umbrella, along with Tahoe SUP,  jumped at the opportunity to host the final event Saturday, October 1, contribute to the hefty prize purse, and donate new shades for the winners circle.

C4 Waterman, Inc. is excited to announce that it has completed negotiations to have all its SUP models manufactured at a new factory in Asia. Three weeks after canceling its exclusive licensing agreement with Boardworks Surf, C4 has entered into a joint venture with the factory, an innovative, molded-composite builder that will be the exclusive manufacturer of the company’s 12 radical new SUP models as well as its substantial legacy line.

C4 Waterman CEO Todd Bradley and shaper/designer Dave Parmenter have collaborated with the technicians at the new factory to develop C4′s new FeatherCore Composite™ fabrication technique, an advanced form of composite sandwich construction based on the engineering principles related to the unique core-to-skin ratio of stand-up paddleboards. The FeatherCore Composite™ process achieves lighter, friskier SUPs, possesses enhanced molecular and mechanical bonds of all the laminants/facings to the lightweight core, and delivers it all inexpensively and with ‘greener’ materials than the norm.

“I am very pleased with our new factory and partners,” said C4 CEO Todd Bradley after his recent visit to the new factory. “They’re young, eager, highly-educated individuals, and they are all VERY talented in composite technology systems. They’ve already got most of our molds on the floor and will begin to ship product immediately, allowing us to be ready for full global distribution by Spring 2012 season, and at a very competitive price.”