Young Barks Take a Big Bite

South Bay board shaper Joe Bark was already a legend in the paddling world when his son and daughter swept the Catalina Classic. What will the royal family of prone paddling do for an encore?

August 28, 2024, is a day Jack Bark and Emily Bark won’t soon forget. At 6 a.m., the siblings pushed off from Two Harbors in the 47th annual Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race—considered the iron man of prone paddleboarding. Chin up, knees tucked or lying flat on their bellies, using their hands as oars, the siblings hauled themselves across the channel on a 32-mile course from Isthmus Cove to the Manhattan Beach Pier.

Emily and Jack rode on custom boards designed by their father, legendary South Bay shaper Joe Bark. But so did nearly everyone in the 129-person race, which drew competitors from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Ireland. Bark Boards, the Torrance-based family business, famously makes the world’s fastest custom prone paddleboards.

When Emily and Jack emerged as the 2024 champions in both the men’s and women’s categories, it marked a milestone in Bark family history. An iconic photo captures the Bark men carrying a triumphant Emily and her lime-green Bark paddleboard on their shoulders onto the beach.

It was Jack’s 15th try at the Catalina Classic trophy and Emily’s fifth attempt at unseating reigning women’s champion Liz Hunter.

Jack, 31, left nothing to chance. He trained furiously for six months, seven days a week. He paddled in the dark before beginning his 6:30 a.m. shift at the firehouse in Paramount, then hightailed it back to the beach for a few more hours of evening paddling. On his days off, the Los Angeles firefighter trained even harder—wrapping morning and afternoon paddles around gym workouts and his regular workload at his dad’s factory in Torrance, where Jack has been shaping custom boards since he was 14.

He'd come close to winning before, but in 2024 Jack resolved “to leave no stone unturned. I wanted to make sure that if I didn't win, it wasn’t because someone had worked harder than me.”

Jack’s self-discipline entailed meeting strict nutritional targets and swearing off beer. A bit of spousal rivalry may have provided added incentive: his wife, Katie Hazelrigg, won the Catalina Classic women’s title in 2017.

In the end, the race wasn’t even close. By the halfway point, Jack enjoyed a commanding lead. The crew on his escort boat didn’t let up. The men’s record was in reach, so they goaded him to paddle harder.

No one had ever finished the 32-mile course in less than five hours. On that day, Jack finished in just 4:54:45, beating the previous record (5:02:12) by nearly eight minutes.

For Emily, 26, the race was a nail-biter from the get-go. Locked in an hours-long duel with four-time consecutive winner Liz Hunter, Emily defeated the defending champion in a photo finish. Her winning time was 6:12:13.86, only 1.35 seconds less than Hunter’s 6:12:15.21.

Emily Bark is triumphantly lifted up by her family after winning the 2024 Women's Catalina Classic. Photo courtesy Paddleboard.com.

Emily’s training regimen had been less brutal than Jack’s. All summer she’d paddled five to six days a week, at least an hour a day, before heading to dad’s shop on Western Avenue, where she works full time.

In addition to shaping boards, she handles everything from shipping and receiving to running the Bark Boards social media accounts and designing graphics for its branded merchandise. The company markets custom prone and stand-up paddleboards, surfboards and big-wave guns all over the world.

Emily and Jack have paddled the channel many times. “My dad got us out there young,” Jack says. “We were so blessed he was making boards. We all had our own by the time we were 10.”

As kids, all four Bark siblings—Gemma, Jack, Sam and Emily—participated in events up and down the coast from Santa Cruz to San Diego. Emily was a third grader when she paddled her first race, the 2-mile Pier-to-Pier from Manhattan to Hermosa. Growing up, the Bark children never missed the Rock 2 Rock race, founded by their dad in 1997. The 22-mile course runs from Two Harbors in Catalina to Cabrillo Beach and is open to relay teams.

Their dad had a hand in the revival of the Catalina Classic too. Established unofficially in the 1930s, the race had stalled out by 1960, but Joe’s fascination with paddleboards helped resuscitate it in the early ’80s.

He didn’t just build paddleboards. He evangelized for the sport. From 1983 to 2021, Joe competed in 38 Catalina Classics, winning the men’s trophy in 1988 and 1989.

By 1992, according to a Los Angeles Times article, Joe was building 80% of the boards used in the Catalina Classic. His shaping gig, he told the reporter at the time, was “just for a hobby—there’s no money in it.”

A Redondo Beach firefighter by profession, Joe had grown up in Palos Verdes deeply immersed “in waterman culture,” according to a 2019 feature in Men’s Journal. His father was a swim and water polo coach at Mira Costa High School, and Joe competed in both those sports.

But his passion was surfing. He started shaping boards in 1976, at age 16. In the early ’80s, paddleboards caught his attention. “Only a few old guys were doing it back then,” he recalls.

A lot has changed over the decades. Stand-up paddleboarding became a global phenomenon, and in California, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Tahiti, prone is taking over. “It used to be just people at the beach. Now it’s on every lake, river, reservoir. It’s everywhere,” Joe says.

Though the Catalina Classic is brutal, prone paddling in general, he says, “is really mellow. It’s a very social environment. Unlike surfing, which is ‘one person, one wave,’ you can have 50 people paddling in a group, just talking and heckling each other. Everybody’s welcome.”

To the Barks, paddleboarding is a way of life. Joe’s wife, Aimee, a retired schoolteacher, paddles recreationally. Their other two children paddle as time permits. Gemma Wood, 33, now works full time in software sales. Back in 2012, she finished the Catalina Classic with a time of 7:05.

Joe’s other son, Sam, 27, competed in his first Catalina Classic last summer, finishing with a time of 6:37. Unlike Jack and Emily, Sam doesn’t have the freedom to train aggressively. He is second mate on a container ship and work takes him out to sea for long stretches. When ashore, he helps out at the Bark factory. Joe taught all his children the shaper’s craft.

At 64, Joe isn’t focused on winning trophies anymore. He paddled his last Catalina Classic in 2021. Last summer, he helmed Emily’s escort boat. “I’m pretty much just paddling short distances now,” he says.

Bark Boards founder and paddleboard family patriarch Joe Bark competing in the Catalina Classic. Photo courtesy Bark family.

Emily feels lucky to have been born into this world. “My parents raised us in the best way possible,” she says. “To love the ocean. To appreciate the ability to move our bodies. To work hard and accomplish goals. To do the things we love with people we love. And to feel gratitude for life and not waste it. Winning the Catalina Classic was the embodiment of all of that for me. It was probably the most special moment of my life.”

For Joe, shaping stopped being a hobby long ago. Bark Boards has become a thriving family business. Emily and Jack are determined to keep the tradition alive when their dad retires.

Joe is optimistic they’ll succeed. He isn’t a grandfather yet, but both Gemma and Jack are married. Nothing would please Joe more than shaping child-sized boards for a new crop of seafaring little Barks.