Perhaps you’ve noticed a lot of confused people down at the waterfront lately—the poor fools think they’re supposed to surf standing on flat water with a big canoe paddle in hand. What’s their deal? Fortunately, before you look silly pointing out their folly, someone straightens you out: those folks are bobbing around on stand-up paddleboards, and they’re actually having a great time doing it.
We were confused too at first, but once the sport caught our attention, we set out to do some learnin’ and figure out what stand-up paddleboarding is all about.
The Basics
Stand-up paddleboarding (SUPing, as those in the know call it) has been around for a while—like traditional surfing did, standup paddleboarding originated in Hawaii. Legend has it that it just started out as an easy way for surf instructors and photographers to stand up and survey the folks in the water, and the board makes a great vantage point for spotting wave sets too. But by the beginning of this decade, standup paddleboarding was quickly emerging as its own sport. Since you don’t need good surf waves or even an ocean, SUPing is great for just cruising around lakes and mellow rivers. And if you’re on the coast, it’s a great way to bide your time on flat surf days. The paddling and balancing motions give you a great core workout, and you can casually explore waterways, race across open water, or surf full-sized waves with a neat-o paddle to steer with.
Paddleboards tend to be long (much like longboards) and they have fins on bottom for stability and tracking. Some boards also have cushy, grippy surfaces for your feet. And, of course, a paddle is important too—a nice, long one that will reach down into the water from your standing position (it’ll be several inches higher than your head). Beginners and intrepid risk-takers alike may appreciate a PFD (life jacket), and if there’s any chance of you being separated from your board, you’ll want a leash as well.
A Smorgas-Board on the Water
To get a more extensive down-low on the sport’s basics and the types of boards available, we cruised to our local reservoir with Mike Fox, a founder of paddleboard manufacturer C4 Waterman (which is, in turn, part of the Boardworks paddling company). Mike spends the better part of each year on the water in Hawaii, where he gets an excellent first-hand feel for everything going on in the sport of paddleboarding—what the best athletes are up to, what beginners are up to (essentially, attempting not to get dunked), new innovations in board design, and what design needs and niches need to be filled.
Mike brought along a 10’ C4 Pohaku, a 12’6” Holoholo, an 11’6” C4 Stand’em (a.k.a. the C4 Classic), and a 10’ Boardworks ShuBu inflatable. To the uninitiated, the boards appear very similar, but once we were out on the water, we were able to distinguish huge differences between their speed, stability, and handling.
The 10’ Pohaku, for instance, is an excellent “soft deck” (dense foam) board suitable for beginners. It won’t cost you an arm and a leg (maybe just a forearm) and it’s on the wide side, so a beginner is less likely to tip it over. Naturally, anyone just learning to balance upright on a floating board is going to take a few unplanned swims, but this board’s hearty, 32-inch underfoot width will nudge the odds more in your favor. A sleek plastic bottom helps the board glide smoothly, and interior fiberglass stringers give the foam outer a solid structure. Plastic tri-keel fins underneath help you glide straight, and slightly rockered (raised) ends make turning easier. While the Pohaku isn’t the fastest cruiser, it does enable the rider to more safely mock people on narrower boards who are having a hard time not tipping over. (A writer on another board did take a dunk in the ice-cold water; he laughed it off and, three days later, he can talk again.)
The Holoholo is an intermediate/advanced board for fast flatwater cruising and dabbling in small surf. Narrower and longer than the Pohaku, the Holoholo glides quickly with minimal effort. The board’s tough fiberglass shell resists dings, a foam core makes it nice and floaty, and a spectacular foam deck pad feels cushy underfoot. We found that the cushy foam was easy to grip with our bare feet and it was comfortable to stand on for more extended periods, which is great, because with a board that cruises like this one, you’ll want to stay out for hours and see just how many times you can make laps up and down the river.
The 10’6” Stand ‘Em suits the intermediate and advanced paddlesurfer. This board, hailed as the Cadillac of paddleboards, balances speed with stability. It’s something a solid surfer could take out to charge all afternoon in the waves. The board is sleek and glides easily, yet it isn’t so narrow and tippy that it’s only functional for straight-line cruising. We were able to paddle around on the Stand ‘Em without tipping, and in spite of a gnarly crosswind, it wasn’t overly-difficult to turn.
Our favorite board was the inflatable Boardworks ShuBu, and it’s our favorite for selfish reasons as well as practical ones. ShuBu stands for “show up and blow up,” which is exactly what you can do with it. The board deflates, rolls up, and packs into a backpack you can easily hike with (or toss in the trunk of your car—who needs a rack?), and a pump fits right into the backpack with the board. We had reservations about spending half our day inflating the sucker, but it inflated in four minutes flat, and once it was ready, it felt impressively solid. Boardworks gave the ShuBu a good all-around design, since versatility is its main selling point. It’s moderately wide and not overly long, with three molded keels, making it a good jack-of-all-trades. It turns easily and cruises reasonably well, and its military-grade rubber keels feel bombproof and sustained nary a scuff, even after we dragged it over the reservoir’s rocky shore. But hey, we were already sold on this one as soon as we realized you could throw it in the back of a Subaru or check it on an airplane.
The Learning Curve: Is it Your Friend or Foe?
Many folks assume that you need the balance of an advanced yogi to even stand on a paddleboard, let alone navigate it in choppy water or ocean waves. And while there are certainly athletes who defy normal human ability by cruising enormous ocean waves with a steering paddle trailing behind them, it’s not terribly difficult to play around on a beginner/intermediate board at the local lake. In our small posse, three reasonably athletic people with limited or no paddleboarding experience managed perfectly well for an afternoon on a reservoir full of frigid Utah snowmelt. (The stakes were high enough that we had extra motivation to learn quickly.)
Whether your aim is to toy around a calm harbor on your next beach vacation, to join races on the river, or to high-five Laird Hamilton as you paddle into a giant North Shore swell, the wide array of paddleboards available makes it easy to find one suited for your purposes. It’s incredibly exciting to watch a sport that is still in its early days of innovation. Ten years ago, SUP’ers were just on big surfboards, and now new companies and athletes are emerging everywhere—each with something to contribute to stand-up board design.
On the sites below, you’ll find info on renting a board to try for the first time, making your first board and paddle purchase, where to find new pals to paddle with, and where to watch or participate in competitions.
For a full selection of paddleboards and accessories, check out our Paddling section here on Backcountry.com.
I kind of thought the stand up paddle boarding was surfing’s roller bladers untill I saw this
Plus I hear it is easier to catch waves If you happen to live some where with waves.
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here is the website of the video incase the embeded video dosn’t work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Ul9F13vXE&feature=related
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Great article on the versatility of options for SUPing. Avid watergirl and believe this is the new sport to bring all levels of athletes out on the water. I, too, thought, ‘how dorky” the first time I saw it but now I’m loving it MORE than traditional paddling! Thanks Again Beth for your funny and informative articles:)
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I like paddle boarding and I’m so thrilled to have found your blog. I look forward to more great reading here.
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