Dogpatch Paddle Camp

My 10 and 13 year old both said this was their favorite camp all summer.

My 11-year old son attended the Kayak camp in the middle of April and had a great time! The group size was small and the camp leader made sure the kids were appropriately dressed and reapplying sunscreen. On some days there was a bit of afternoon wind but DP always played it safe and adjusted the activities to the weather level. The kids saw various Bay wildlife. It was a great experience and we hope to be back in the summer for an intermediate camp. Before the camp, Adam provided detailed info on what to bring, and after camp he shared photos and videos of the kids, we loved that! Highly recommend!

My kiddo loves this well organised and professional camp. He can’t wait for summer to start so that he can go back.
Thanks for making such a fun all season camp and teaching my water loving kid some new skills

I signed my son up for Dogpatch Paddle summer camp last summer because some of his friends from school were attending the camp. He had just attended a sailing camp at Treasure Island that was less than half the cost of this SUP camp and I wondered why Dogpatch Paddle camp was so much more expensive. I figured maybe they had more instructors per camper or more adult instructors, but that is definitely not the case which we found out the hard way.
My son attended the camp for a few days and it was fine. Then one day while they were paddleboarding in the morning his backpack was stolen as they just leave all of the kids' backpacks in unprotected cubbies while everyone is on the water.
Having a backpack stolen sucks, but that is city living I guess. However, the way that they handled this incident insured that we would never send our son back to this camp.
The backpack contained both his lunch and his sunscreen. When I picked him up he told me he was really hungry because he didn't have any lunch because his backpack was stolen. I was shocked. I asked him if any of the counselors had tried to give him any lunch and he said that one of them had offered him half of his sandwich which my son had declined because he doesn't like sandwiches. When he declined the sandwich, that was it. No one tried to find him any food to eat for the rest of the camp and he went hungry!
To make matters worse, my son was also missing his sunscreen and was not provided any sunscreen from any of the counselors so he ended up getting a really bad sunburn. The sunburn was so bad that we didn't want him to go back to the camp for the rest of the week to risk it getting any worse.
To be fair, I left a message at the camp and the owner Adam did call me back and apologized when I explained what happened (he had no idea because he wasn't there and none of the counselors even told him what happened before I left the message). I told him I would never be sending my son back to his camp and would recommended everyone I knew not to attend the camp in the future.
We had a talk with my son about how he needs to be a better advocate for himself in the future and let the counselors know that he needs food and sunscreen, but really he was only 11 years old and we put him in summer camp so that he can be looked after. Unfortunately that doesn't happen at this camp.
Adam, the owner, seems to be the only adult involved in the camp and he always takes the "travel" campers offsite to places like Sausalito and Half Moon Bay to paddleboard and leaves a bunch of teenagers who don't know how to properly supervise children in charge of everyone else. And somehow he charges more than any other summer camp my son has ever attended for this.
Luckily the worst that happened to my son was missing lunch and a sunburn. With the lack of adults in charge it at this camp could have been much worse. Also, you would think they could afford to buy some lockers to lock up the kid's backpacks with the amount of money they charge.