Come sit on a log at Locarno Beach and watch sailboats, skimboards, canoes, kayaks, and standup paddleboards parade on English Bay. That’s where the Georgia Straight recently spent time with board builder Andy Lambrecht.

The Pemberton-based woodworker had just returned from conducting a weeklong standup-paddleboard-building workshop on the shores of Ontario’s Lake of the Woods.

“I built my first surfboard eight years ago. Custom orders keep me busy year-round now, both here and in Sayulita, north of Puerto Vallarta, where my wife, Allison, and our two daughters, Rio and Dahlia, live part-time,” he said. “Over the past three years I’ve begun to put on workshops every five to six weeks all over North America. The demand is incredible. People fly in from as far away as Germany to participate. It’s really helped my business take off.”

What sets Lambrecht’s creations apart is his use of recycled wood—primarily western red cedar and white pine—in place of more commonly used foam-and-fibreglass construction. “Wood lasts longer than foam and is less liable to snap,” observed the 40-year-old former Whistler Blackcomb ski patroller. “This helps keep plastic out of the landfill and makes for a tiny carbon footprint. The tradeoff is that wood construction is 30 percent heavier than conventional foam boards, but that won’t stop you from doing anything you want on a wave.”

Reflecting on the rise in popularity of standup paddleboards, or SUPs, Lambrecht expressed surprise at how the versatile planks have caught paddlers’ imaginations and continue to gain popularity. “SUPs have certainly revitalized the surfboard industry. Many shapers who were struggling have reinvested and retooled to make them. You can see the immediate attraction: just hop on with a paddle in hand and get going. It helps that SUPs are wider and thicker than surfboards, and much easier to balance on. Some are as big as battleships, with room enough for anglers to load coolers and fishing rods on top or for long-distance paddlers to lash on dry bags for extended trips on the Central Coast.”

What Vancouver lacks in the way of big surf has been more than compensated for by creative minds such as Peter “PD” Ducommun of Skull Skates. In the past decade, his efforts to foster skimboarding locally have made it blossom into a mainstream summer activity, particularly on West Side beaches bounded by the Jericho Sailing Centre and Spanish Banks.

The new kid on the block this summer is surf skiing, originally conceived for surf lifesaving in Australia in the 1920s and more recently introduced to local waters by North Vancouver designer Daryl Remmler, a former member of the Canadian Wildwater Team.

On the line from Berkeley, California, where he and Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre owner Bob Putnam were preparing to compete in the U.S. Surf Ski Championships earlier this month, Remmler told the Straight that he developed his first surf-ski model in 2006.

“It was frustrating for me because I’d had a lot of paddling experience but surf skis at that time were too difficult, too advanced, for even my most accomplished friends, like Dave Norona, to deal with. They spent a lot of time swimming,” he recalled. “I really wanted to bring a boat to the market that would be easier to handle and welcome more paddlers. Unlike sea kayaks, where you can start in a tub—no disrespect intended—on a scale of one to 10 the entry level for a surf ski is still a seven.”

According to Remmler, surf skis are performance boats designed for people looking for speed, whether they want to enjoy nature as he does on his regular paddle route between West Vancouver’s Whytecliff Park and his family’s cabin on Gambier Island in Howe Sound, or simply get some adrenaline-boosting exercise.

“It took me another year or so, but by 2012 I came up with a broader-beam design that was less tippy. Building surf skis wasn’t supposed to become a career but I ended up selling more than I expected, as well as a line of SUPs. I was not formally schooled but I grew up around small boats in Ontario, so designing them comes naturally to me. I can look at a boat and tell if it works or not.” Remmler’s company, Think Kayak, hit the jackpot last year when its sponsored paddler, South African Sean Rice, won the International Canoeing Federation’s inaugural World Surf Ski Championships, held in Portugal.

For his part, Bob Putnam thinks that Howe Sound is as good a location to surf ski as anywhere. He organized the CMW Canadian Surf Ski Championship on August 23 between Porteau Cove Provincial Park and the Squamish waterfront. “Surf skis are so much more efficient than SUPs,” he said. “When you stop paddling they continue to glide. With the wind at your back you can catch a wave and enjoy the ride. Plus they’re half the weight of a sea kayak—as light as 20 pounds—which means anyone can throw it on the roof of their car.”

No matter what paddling approach you take, as Lambrecht said: “Anything getting people outdoors and enjoying water is a positive thing.”

ACCESS: For information on local surfboard-building workshops, see lambrechtsurfboards.com/. To view Daryl Remmler’s boats, visit www.thinkkayak.com/. For surf-ski rentals, contact Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre at www.deepcovekayak.com/.