Six years ago, the plan wasn’t to build a business. It was just to get on the Bay.
I’d spent over a decade running adventure travel businesses across Southeast Asia and the Pacific: organizing trips, building communities, figuring out how to get people out of their ordinary lives and into something that felt real. When I landed in San Francisco, I looked out at the Bay every day and felt the same low-grade pull I’d always felt near water. There’s something right there. And almost nobody’s on it.
September 2020 was a strange time to start anything. But in another way, it made perfect sense. People needed to get outside. They needed to be somewhere that wasn’t a screen, wasn’t an apartment, wasn’t another video call. The Dogpatch neighborhood was right on the water, and the Bay was there: open, accessible, completely underused.
So I started a Facebook group. That’s the Dogpatch Paddle history in its most honest form: a Facebook group, some kayaks, and a neighborhood that needed to get outside.
It Started With a Facebook Group in September 2020
The idea was simple. Get neighbors together, get on the Bay, have a good time. No business plan. No vision deck. Just the instinct that if you put people near the water and give them a paddle, something good happens.
The group grew fast, because it turned out a lot of people in the neighborhood were feeling the same thing. People who’d walked past the waterfront a thousand times and never actually gotten on it. People who were screen-fatigued before anyone was using that word. Parents who wanted something real for their kids. It became a community before it became a business, and that order of operations matters a lot to how we’ve done everything since.
“We started as a Facebook group and now we have 1,300+ of you.” That’s still my favorite way to describe what happened. The community wasn’t built with marketing. It was built one paddle at a time, one good morning on the Bay at a time, by people who told their friends because they wanted their friends to have the same thing.
That’s still the engine. It always has been.
Four Years at a Temporary Home
From 2021 through February 2025, we operated out of a temporary location. Not the destination we imagined, not the full vision, just a place to launch from while we figured out what permanent could look like.
Those years taught us things you can’t learn any other way. We learned that the Bay itself was the draw, not the facility. People weren’t coming because of the infrastructure. They were coming because of the water, the instructors, the vibe, because they left feeling like they’d discovered something. The physical space was almost beside the point.
The reviews started piling up long before Crane Cove existed. Five stars, consistent and high-volume, built entirely on trust and the quality of what actually happened when people showed up. No perfect facility. No permanent home. Just a reputation earned the slow way, the real way, one good experience at a time.
That 5.0 star rating across every platform wasn’t manufactured. It was the community telling us what we were doing right, and it was the thing that made everything that came next possible.
Finding a Permanent Home at Crane Cove Park
In February 2025, we opened at Crane Cove Park as our permanent headquarters.
If you’ve been to Crane Cove, you know it. The park is one of the most beautiful pieces of waterfront in the city: restored shoreline, direct Bay access, and a building that lets us do everything we’d been imagining for years in one place. Paddle. Sauna. Market. A real home.
We operate in partnership with the YMCA of San Francisco as the exclusive waterfront stewards of the location. That partnership matters to us because it means we’re not just a business at this address. We’re taking care of it, investing in it, building something that belongs to the neighborhood.
The first year at Crane Cove exceeded everything we’d expected. More than 3,200 guests through the door. 2,419 activity bookings. Revenue that grew four to five times compared to our best year at the old location. Those numbers reflect something real: the community was ready for a permanent home, and they showed up when we opened one.
Stepping into that space for the first time and knowing it was ours, not temporary, not borrowed, was one of the better feelings I’ve had in six years of doing this.
What This Community Has Built
The number I’m most proud of isn’t a revenue number. It’s 1,300+ people in this community. And the roughly 1,000 kids who’ve come through summer camp. And the 40+ recurring members who show up every week because this place has become part of their rhythm.
We’re active members of the DBA, DABA, PDMA, Potrero Boosters, and DNA. We partner with local schools on fundraisers. We have scholarships available for families who want to send their kids to camp but need help making it work. The Bay isn’t a backdrop for us. It’s the whole point. And the community that’s formed around it is what makes this more than a business.
When I think about what six years has actually built, it’s not the facility or the booking numbers or the reviews. It’s the fact that there are families in this neighborhood who now have a waterfront spot they think of as theirs. Kids who grew up paddling on the Bay. People who found a sauna ritual they look forward to every week. A neighborhood that has a real outdoor anchor.
That’s the thing. That’s what we came here to build.
What We’re Building Next
The Mission Creek Boathouse at 401 Berry Street is now open, with regular weekend hours running through 2026. It’s our second location, positioned perfectly for Giants game-day kayak rentals and private events, ten to fifteen minutes from McCovey Cove by paddle, which is one of the great experiences this city offers if you haven’t done it yet.
Summer camp now runs at two locations. The Giants game-day paddle has become a real tradition. And the Bay, as always, keeps showing up: seals and herons and pelicans and the bridge in the background and that specific light in the morning that makes you feel genuinely lucky to live here.
The plan going forward isn’t complicated: be here, be good, be welcoming. Keep building the kind of place where people feel like they discovered something. The Bay is for everyone. No vision we have is bigger than the community that’s already here.
Come Be Part of It
If you’ve been meaning to come out. Come. Rent a kayak or a board. Try the sauna. Sign your kid up for camp. Paddle out to McCovey Cove on a game day and have the best story of the season. Whatever brings you to the waterfront, we’ll be here.
We’ve been at 5.0 stars across every platform for six years, but the stat that actually matters to us is simpler: people keep coming back, and they keep bringing their friends. That’s the whole thing.
Book a paddle, try the sauna, or just come say hi at Crane Cove. We love meeting new people. Grab a kayak or SUP at book.peek.com.
