Westbound Boarder

Weather forecast?  Freezing.  Swell?  EPIC!!! The Mavericks Surf Contest, presented by Sony Ericsson, will be going on throughout the day today near Half Moon Bay, CA, and in case you can’t catch the action live … no worries!  Ustream (one of my clients) will be streaming the event live all day long.  The stream is below!  The first heat will begin around 8:00a.m. PT, with the finals anticipated to conclude at 2:45p.m. PT.  You can also check out live event updates via their Facebook Fan page.

Online video chat by Ustream

Though it’s Skate Week here at Westbound Boarder (Danielle has done an awesome job of giving you all the 123 of skating; so good that I won’t even attempt to pretend like I’m a pro skater ) it’s Surf Week in the Real World as the best surfers from around the globe are congregating in Huntington Beach this week for the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing.  The event kicked off last Saturday, and brought big named surfers such as Kelly Slater (returning to the comp. after a five-year hiatus), Stephanie Gilmore, and Rob Machado to SoCal to compete for the biggest prize purse offered in any one surf competition – $100,000.

The first few days of the competition remained relatively calm, but the real fun starts today.  Of course, the surfing competition will continue, but there will also be numerous activities for spectators, including concerts (Tim Curren and Mat Kearney are a couple of the headliners), BMX biking, a Fashion Show, and numerous booths, so there are more ways than one to join the fun.  You can find a full schedule of events here.

In case you can’t make it to SoCal this weekend but still want to check out the event, thanks to modern Internet technology, you can!  The event will be streaming live on Ustream all weekend long, so either check out the stream below, or head on over to Hurley’s Ustream page to check out 24 hour live footage and tweets from the event.

*Photo Credit: Transworld Surf