Last December the owner of Rainbow Sandals in San Clemente CA , Jay “Sparky” Longley, reached out to our K-Coast Surf Shop in Cape Charles wanting to make a $5,000 donation in their name to the charity of the shop’s choice.
K-Coast co-owner Mark Pugh contacted the Mirror and talked about the donation, making a difference at the local level, and the real benefits of surf culture….
We have been a large account with Rainbow for over thirty years and they are our number one selling brand of sandals. We always appreciated the great working relationship we had with them over the many years but were blown away with their generosity. We began to research the many options of how we could best use the money Rainbow was making available and also decided to add another $1,000 from K-Coast.
Our goal was to not simply support a “cause”, but rather to impact real people in need in the communities where we served our customers. We especially wanted to impact folks that more than likely would never set foot in our surf shop… touch those that live near us, yet we would not see in the course of our business. We also wanted to find an organization that had boots on the ground to help those in need at arm’s length.
Whenever our family has the good fortune to stay a Saturday evening in Cape Charles, we attend CC Baptist on Sunday so thought they would have a good suggestion to accomplish our goals. We found Adopt-A-Block Northampton to meet everything we were hoping to accomplish. The real heroes are the folks that tirelessly meet, regardless of weather, to help the great residents of Myrtle Landing with the distribution of food and household needs. We are amazed at how God can crisscross the country to use a surf industry manufacturer steps from the Pacific Ocean and a surf retailer steps from the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay to somehow make an impact right here in our own backyard.
Cape Charles may not have waves everyday, but surfing makes a difference regardless.
On a personal note, my youngest graduates from HS in May and my wife Sara and I plan to split our time between Cape Charles and fifty minutes north in Gargatha. I am hoping to start a Paddle and Surf Club ( regular old style prone paddle not SUP ) where we can paddle longboards around Cape Charles as often as convenient and take a crew to surf Metompkin Island in front of our house every two weeks or so. It’s an easy boat ride from our backyard to Gargathy Inlet and killer surf with zero crowds. Zero people actually. We have extra softboards at the shop if folks need a longboard to paddle. Great way to stay in shape, get on the water and have a coffee afterwards in the off season or a beer in the summer. Thanks again for being so helpful to Spencer for the Day on the Bay. Hopefully we will be able to expand it. Spencer actually has us making some cool tees with the line “Suring Capital of the Chesapeake Bay” on them! We think they will do pretty well.
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cowabunga
You got to be kidding!