Holy Buckets!…Maliko 6

So maybe you’re getting tired of hearing about Maliko runs, I think this is the last one I’ll write up for awhile. But this one was kind of special, and perhaps a little stupid. I called the usual suspects and no one seemed to want to go. Just about as i was about to give up, I got an email from Scott, saying he had managed to buy an F14 without waiting months for it, and he wanted to go for a run. This one would be his third.

So here we are, two newbies–Run 6 and Run 3. Off on our own, and the wind was howling. I don’t mean that figuratively, it was blowing so hard that the rack on my jeep was making a mournful howling sound as i pulled into the harbor parking lot, the traditional shuttle meeting spot. There was no one there. Usually there’s a selection of trucks with canoe racks on them–return shuttles for canoe downwinders, and perhaps a few obvious SUP shuttles. This time the parking lot was empty. Bad sign.

We decided to exit at Kite Beach instead of the Harbor, partly because we were getting kind of a late start (we met at 2:30), partly because the wind was swinging somewhat offshore in the harbor and it would be a slog for the last half mile, and partly because neither of us had tried a kite beach landing before. So we dropped off Scott’s truck at Kite beach and continued to Maliko.

No one was at Maliko either. the surf crashing on the rocks at the gulch exit looked hideous–it was filling the exit with foam and spray. We paddled out a good distance, turned left and committed to the run. ZOOM–I immediately caught a runner that took me what felt like a mile. As I angled in the swell to run outwards from the beach i saw why my ride was so powerful–the swell I was in was substantially over my head. I felt like I was down in a valley. Kinda cool, kinda NOT.

When that swell finally passed i realized I was huffing and puffing–i must not have been breathing. I looked ahead and inwards and saw Scott in pretty close to Ho’okipa. “Hmmm, pretty aggressive” I thought and continued to work my way out. I don’t really need to see the outer reefs of Baldwin Beach and Spartan’s reef again anytime soon. One bowel slacking incident per month is good enough for me. About that time Scott disappeared from view up ahead. After some time he reappeared, still ahead of me but closer to me and further out. I thought “either he saw Jesus or Spartan Reef, because something made him get the hell out of there”. Turns out he did more than just see it, he got inside of a couple of breaking waves. Got knocked around a little bit, and had to knee paddle out around them, but no harm, no foul except for a semi-permanent wide-eyed stare that should go away sometime next weekend. If he stays out of the water. Or drinks a lot.

The run was going really well, the wind was certainly hitting 35 mph, and the swells were easy to catch and hook up. Then we got close to Spreklesville and the ocean turned into some kind of crazed undulating waffle pattern with a bongo board under it. Big groundswell from the left, wind swell from behind, and the occasional huge thumping swell coming from the Northeast. I started having a little vertigo, probably from the light bouncing off the heavy waves, or maybe just from looking at he undulating surface under the nose of my board. I tried watching the horizon–no good, it was moving too much too. I tried taking off my sunglasses, but it just made it worse. I started falling a lot in the big swells.

Just before we got to Kanaha I decided to go closer to shore. the wind was shifting offshore a bit, and I didn’t want to have a long struggle once I turned the corner at Upper Kanaha. Bad idea. I moved a little too far inside, and suddenly I had overhead-and-a-half breaking waves outside of me. I was astonished at how fast I got into trouble. I tried to turn and paddle out past them but a monster rose up and started to break fifty feet outside. Just as the whitewater reached me I dove into the face, and then was snatched backwards violently by my leash. “Please hold, please hold” I thought. And then when the dragging continued far, far beyond the fifteen seconds I expected I thought “okay, got to do something or I’m NEVER going to get air.” So I doubled over against the rushing water and got my hand onto the leash and tried to pull the board towards me. It didn’t budge, but my less streamlined, doubled over body must have pulled my big, floaty board out of the whitewater, because i popped up and got a few breaths.

These are local windswells, so the period is really short. A few seconds behind the first wave was the next, even bigger. I flipped my board over and grabbed the edge saver on the leash and held on. I got worked awhile, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Got a couple more breaths and SLAM again. This time my feet brushed reef. I was well and truly screwed, Caught inside BIGTIME with no where to go, and being pushed onto the reef, with huge waves crashing on top of me every few seconds. And now that i was on the reef even the mid-sized waves were starting to break on me.

I pulled the board under my stomach, shoved my paddle between me and the board, and started paddling like hell to catch the wave bearing down on me. If my weight had been centered i would have pearled instantly in the steep, critical face, but in my boogie board position the nose was up high enough to clear the backside of the wave I was being hurled into, and the board surfed along. I pulled the board under me and got up to my knees, wobbling around and trying to get the paddle engaged–the board was trying to curve up and out of the wave. I got the board more or less under control, and rocketed over the reef on my knees. When the wave started to peter out I staggered to my feet and started paddling like mad for the lagoon.

As I approached the edge of the reef one last big wave nailed me and knocked me off my board. I went through the whole get-dragged-twice-as-long-as-usual routine again, and came up spluttering and completely out of breath. Fortunately i was inside the lagoon in relative calm. I really didn’t have much left.

I got up on the board and started catching swells and wind, running down on the inside of Lower Kanaha, past the lifeguard tower. Comfortable, familiar territory. Way ahead i could see Scott heading in. He took the turn in the right spot and stayed outside long enough to eliminate all the drama.

We both arrived at the beach within a few minutes of each other. We both had hair-raising stories to tell. We both shared long moments of silence as we drove back to my jeep in the gulch. When we arrived, the wind had dropped, the ocean looked inviting. I had this momentary, irrational, totally scary thought that we should do another run. This stuff is like Heroin. life threatening, dangerous and very addictive.

This GPS track tells the clearest story of any track I’ve recorded. Oh my God he got caught inside and went over the reef. Plain as day.

The speed track (the green squiggles) also tells a story. That’s a 19.5 MPH peak you see there where the Heads Up display box is. My, my, my. And then right where I went over the reef and managed to catch a wave to get my chubby ass out of there, you see a high speed blip that goes on for a long time. That’s me catching that long ride off the reef. Or maybe it’s me being dragged underwater.

Off Topic, But Fun

I hope readers don’t mind these totally off topic videos. I don’t go scouting youtube for this stuff, but I get a lot of email correspondence from fellow nutcases, and it seems lately that whacked videos, especially as related to race cars or doing extreme extreme (uberextreme?) stuff makes up a large portion. So, this isn’t about standup paddle surfing, or distance racing on SUP boards. Instead it’s about a couple of geeky guys playing around with a smartphone controlled toy car, and a result that exceeds the wildest expectations that the most fevered mind could imagine.

I’ve played around with youtube’s javascript and come up with a way of displaying videos that really suits the Ke Nalu layout.

If you don’t like these off topic forays, please leave a comment, either in the forum or as a post comment. For that matter if you do enjoy them, let me know also.

OMG

I NEVER say that. Never. But OMG. Watch this video and tremble. It’s not SUP, but so what. It’s certainly surfing of a kind. Perhaps terrain surfing?

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Whot’s it Like?

I’ve had a few people ask me what’s so special about a Maliko run. Hard to sum up. When it’s big and nasty it’s like nothing you’ve ever done before. Ten miles of hanging on for dear life. I was playing around with Animoto tonight and put this little slide show together. It gives some idea, but when you look at this realize that this is a pretty light day, at least it looks that way to me. I know heli shots can foreshorten the swell, but this looks pretty small.

The other thing to remember is that Darrell Wong was in the heli shooting as fast as he could because they only had a half hour of time rented. What you’re seeing is a few minutes of each rider. What they are doing is not captured by waiting for a the perfect swell–it’s that way for the entire ten miles. You catch swells like this for an hour and twenty minutes if you’re Mark Raaphorst, or two hours if you’re me.

The boards shown are SIC F models. They, along with Foote boards pretty much rule Maliko. You can see why by pushing the play button. Enjoy, and I hope this inspires you to give this dance a try. There’s got to be some more Malikos. I’m going to be looking for some on the Oregon Coast this summer. Go find one, and take some pictures, eh?

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Awesome Pipeline SUP Video

One of our fine members posted this in the Forum section as a video link, and then helpfully moved it to Youtube so we could conviently move it to the magazine. So here you go–Ikaika Kalama & Kainoa McGee ripping up Pipeline on Stand Up Paddle Boards:

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Maliko V and Explanations

Wow, I thought conditions were wild yesterday. Today the mouth of the channel that leads out from Maliko Gulch looked like death and destruction. Waves smashing on the rocks on both sides of the channel, spray everywhere, huge chop in the channel and whitecaps with spindrift blowing off them outside.

Perfect.

There was even a whale on the upwind side of the channel, about fifty feet from the channel rocks, doing a strange body-flip tail slap that I’ve never seen before, along with pectoral slaps that I swear shook the water. At one point he (or she) looked like a freshly hooked steelhead making it’s first splashy, flashy, pissed off run–if a steelhead was 50 feet long and weighed 45 tons. I thought “you stay over there and I’ll stay over here” as I paddled out. Must have worked, she did.

I was paddling with Randy and Chan, Brian, the other Randy (Royse) and Scott. This was Scott’s first Maliko run, and he was on Tracy Dudley’s F16. While we were getting the boards off the car, Scott set Tracy’s board down and it promptly blew over and whacked it’s rudder. I should have told him how likely that was. People don’t expect a 16 foot board to blow around, but the wind in the gulch is very fluky, and F16s are very light.

Bad news, the rudder was damaged. It looked like it might still be okay, but there was a crack up the side. I might have taken this as God or perhaps Karma’s way of telling me to wait in the jeep. But Scott seems made of sterner stuff. So he and Brian wrapped a little duct pae around the rudder and off they went. As we were paddling out I thought “they should have made a few wraps of that tape, if the fin is cracked up the side it won’t be able to take side thrust”. I kept those cheery thoughts to myself.

I stayed relatively close to Scott for the first third of the paddle. We were going about the same speed, and I wanted to make sure he was OK. I remember my first run pretty clearly. That’s not too hard even for my crusty brain since it was only four runs ago. He seemed to be dong fine. Right about as we passed Kuau the swells got kind of sporty and big, I had to pay close attention to what I was doing. At about 1.5 miles I fell down (as you can see below) and when I got back on the board I looked for Scott–no sign. I waited a bit for him, but didn’t see him anywhere. I thought perhaps he go his sea legs and zoomed away on that F16. at any rate, there’s not much you can do for someone else on a Maliko run except give them encouragement.

Turns out Scott lost his rudder about a half mile earlier, and was knee paddling his board. About the furthest you can reliably see a kneeling person in those swells is a few hundred feet.

A little aside about GPS traces. The one above is a screen shot from Ascent, which is subscription software for GPS training. Ascent thinks I’m riding a bicycle, but that’s OK, Stand Up Paddle boards are the bicycles of the sea. The light blue trace is altitude. I’d like to ditch it, but I haven’t figured out how. The green trace is speed. Distance is the X axis and the green Y axis is in MPH, with the top number being 18 MPH. I know it’s hard to read, but I needed to fit it on the page. I’ll probably reinstall letterboxing capability just for GPS traces. I hit 16.2 MPH max speed on this run. Pretty fast for a little gumby board.

You can tell when I fell by the downward spikes that reach zero. the shorter downward spikes are checks–where I ran into the back of a swell and buried the nose. Doesn’t quite stop you, but close. Looks like I fell 19 times. That’s an improvement over the 30 times in Malko 4. Upward spikes are big swell rides. the shorter rides probably go nearly as fast, but the GPS doesn’t get enough time to record full speed. As you can see, Gumby is pretty much catching swells all the time, but it doesn’t get a lot of those great long rides. but when it does–hoo haw.

I got to the beach and everyone was there but Scott. Oops. About 15 minutes later we spotted him at the harbor mouth. good news. It took him a very long time to paddle in from there. The wind was almost straight on against him after he made the turn. When he finally made it, Randy Royse went down to the beach to help him, the rest of us hung around the cars. No swcott, no Randy. fifteen minutes passed and they finally showed up. Not only had Scott’s board lost it’s rudder, but he knocked the vent plug out when he fell in about Kanaha and the board filled with water. It was floating with about an inch of freeboard.  Randy and Scott had been all this time emptying the board out.

Shades of my first Maliko run with the Penetrator, when it got slammed in a closeout wave and buckled the bottom, incapacitating the steering mechanism and taking in water. Tough day for Scott, but he made it, and the next time will be a lot easier.

For me, I broke 2 hours, reaching the beach in 1:55 and the harbor mouth in 1:44. I stayed up on the board a lot more. My line down the coast still sucks–I did 10 miles even again. You can see on the map that I need to stay closer in at the beginning if I’m going to trim the distance to 9.5 miles. but it’s feeling a lot better.

My back is killing me, I think tomorrow is an off day. Maybe a nice sourthside run.

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Maliko Quattro

Maliko run number four is in my official record book. Last guy to the beach again, but I improved my time over the last run (the Maui Canoe and Kayak club race) by 15 minutes. If I keep improving at this rate by the time I have Maliko 10 under my belt I’ll be whipping Dave Kalama’s butt and be first in line for the beer. Nothing like an active fantasy life to keep up the old motivation.

It was a pretty good run for me. I fell thirty times–literally, you can count them on the GPS trace. But that’s down substantially from the 200+ of the last run. I got some great swell runs, and even linked up a couple, a phenomenon that I previously considered some kind of inept description by my fellow downwindpeople. It just didn’t make sense to me that you could shoot down one swell with such vigor that you could catch and ride over the swell in front of you and catch it. Seemed like some kind of perpetual motion nonsense. But it turns out that you can indeed do that, and it feels GREAT! I actually managed a triple, which i celebrated by falling in gripped in some kind of wild surfing frenzy while trying to get over the top of number four. You can see the event clearly at mile four on the trace.

Trust me, it was a lot more exciting on the waves than on the trace. The run was pretty wild. The wind was gusting well over thirty knots, blowing the tops off the swells, and some of the doubled-up swells were over ten feet. You DON’T want to look behind you in these kind of conditions, it’s pretty damned intimidating to see an well-overhead swell running up behind you.

About halfway to the harbor, right off Spreklesville, the swells got a lot steeper, and I started having some problems with Gumby pearling. It didn’t pitch me off, but the nose of the board was well underwater, and that made the tail feel very loose and weird. I tried stepping back, but that made it to hard to catch swells, so I tried taking off at more of an angle, and that seemed to help. It worked best on lefts rather than rights, so my track headed gently towards the beach, as you can see on the map. Right until I started seeing the breakers at upper Kanaha, at which point I went RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT. I need to get over my nervousness about getting caught inside on these reefs. This run is supposed to be 9.5 miles and even though I though I took what i thought was a more aggressive line this time, I actually did 10.1 miles. With a five MPH pace that extra .6 miles cost me at least six minutes. Hey, I could have been under two hours!

It’s really fun going on these runs with the Maui crew. This Sunday that was Randy and Chan Strome, Larry Risley, and Jack Dyson. a great bunch of people and fun paddle with, even if they do all leave me in the dust.

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Go! Gumby Go!

I turned the corner onto South Kihei Rd and saw whitecaps. Big, fluffy spraying-off-the-top whitecaps, and chunky swells even with the short fetch from Maalaea Bay. Perfect for a fast downwinder to the Four Seasons beach. Diane was dubious as usual, she considers anything beyond a gentle zephyr to be life-threatening, but I couldn’t wait to get the board off the car and into the water. Diane doesn’t mind being my shuttle driver, gives her and Sam some time for some nice south side walks.

I hopped on the board and paddled out a few hundred yards, and instantly regretted not starting at Haycraft Park on the other side of the bay. It makes for such a ripping run when the wind is slightly onshore, and this was, decidedly. I was going to have to work a bit to clear the reefs and that would slow me down. If I had started at Haycraft I’d be riding swells the whole way. It was Nukin’. You can pretty much see from the GPS speed trace that I wasn’t getting any good swell rides for about the first mile–I had to cut too tight an angle against them to get long rides, but once I turned the corner on the Shangri-La reef it was pure rock ‘n roll.

I was paddling Gumby, my Foote Maliko 12, since the Penetrator is back at the Ding King’s, drying out. I punched a small ding in it paddling on the North side the other day–no idea how, I didn’t feel a thing–and it was enough to cause a leak. So it’s getting pumped out to be ready for the next race. Gotta say, the Penetrator FLIES in flatwater. Now that I’ve learned how to get some muscle into my paddling, and i’m not doing balance checks all the time, it just rips.

Back to Gumby and the swells. What a friken rocket this thing is in a hefty swell. Glide after glide after glide. I was looking at my GPS and seeing seven to eight MPH most times. Never less than 5.5. what a hoot. Plus I’m learning to carve the swells to get more speed and better direction control. I’m also learning to get my paddle out further and pull hard in the beginning of the stroke. This pulls the nose up and gets the board into the swells quickly.

Once I’m in a swell I put my weight forward until the nose is just skimming the water, slide my back foot towards the rail I want to set, and give it steady pressure. As long as i keep the nose down the board just keeps accelerating and turns along the face of the swell. As you can see from the trace I got some pretty long rides this way, some of them in the 10MPH range, and one at the five mile point that hit about 11. Pretty fast for a goofy looking 12 foot board.

I don’t know how this software computes average speed, must be some kind of instantaneous value averaging. But I did 7.0 miles in 1:20:34 , that’s 5.83 mph average, not 5.2. What fun! And I’m sure I can go a lot faster in similar conditions next time. We’ll see.

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2009 Stand Up Paddle Race, Distance, and Downwinder Board Showcase–Part 3

Mark’s Big Idea

Mark (Kiwi) Jackson got sick just prior to the showcase, which upset him as much as it did me. Not only is he a fine SUP racer but he has a couple of very interesting boards and he’s a really nice guy who is always fun to be around. Sick though he was, he contributed a great idea.

We have always offered our readers the ability to contribute to the board showcases by filling out a form and uploading photos, but it’s a pretty low-key approach that focuses mostly on people reviewing the boards they already own. We’ve had a lot of good boards reviewed that way, but in many ways it makes sense to develop that further. Mark’s idea, and now mine, is to develop a group of reviewers who can approach designers, shapers and manufacturers offering to review their boards. This will be a useful endeavor both for surfboards and for racing, distance, and downwinder boards, but we’re going to launch it with racing boards, followed closely by surf boards.

Who Gets What
The reviewers will have to opportunity to try boards they otherwise might not have access to without purchase. The shapers and manufacturers can expect a thorough, if subjective review, and our readers will get to see more boards tested from more manufacturers. No one has to ship any boards anywhere, and no one has to give anything away except a little time and perhaps some wear and tear on a demo board. Reviewers get credit for their reviews and can have a link to their website if they have one. Other bloggers are welcome to participate, especially since they already have an interest and skill in writing about our sport.

I am developing a set of forms and examples of the kind of information we want to gather. All the reviewers will be working from the same playlist. We’re not going to elicit or publish unabashed praise, and we won’t let anyone trash a manufacturer. We don’t expect people to be unbiased, we assume bias, and so should the readers, but the information we gather will still help greatly in determining what board and in what configuration, will be most appropriate for you and your paddling venues. Manufacturers can nominate their own reviewers or even do their own reviews but we will provide full disclosure when that happens and readers will undoubtedly give more credibility to reviewers that are not directly employed by the company they review. We will support and display multiple reviews of the same board. Employees and owners of surf shops that sell multiple lines are particularly welcome.

We are also now able to start a forum thread for each review published. We hope to see a lively discussion and useful about board reviews.

Bottom line, we are looking for reviewers who live close to manufacturers or who have easy access to line(s) of boards. It will take you about half a day to review a board, given the kind of measurements we want to see, and the paddling you’ll need to do. The form will be printable and you can either send it to us or transfer your hand written notes and photos to the online version of the form.

This will be an iterative process–as people review boards I expect we’ll find new things to look at and consider. The reviewers will ultimately shape the review process. Should be fun.

Here’s the form to sign up as a reviewer. Once we’re reviewed your form we’ll provide private access to the reviewing materials.

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Maui Alarm Clock

The heavy lump resting against my leg leaped from the bed and ran straight into the screen door, barking viciously. “What the hell is that stupid dog barking at” thinks I. I had foolishly trusted Sam to stay in his own bed, but some time in the night he snuck into ours. I looked around to ensure there were no axe murderers lurking. Nada. It doesn’t take much to fire up Sam, he’s been known to go into a startled barking frenzy over his own flatulence. Barking at 1:37 was not the way to remain in his favorite place. “off to bed you lunatic”–I directed him to his bed, erected the baby gate that ensures uninterrupted sleep, and wobbled back to bed.

I laid back, closed my eyes, and heard it “Slap, slap…slap followed by a long deep breath. YIKES. My scalp tingled. Perhaps there IS an axe murderer. I felt Diane go stiff besides me. “what the hell is that” she said. Diane’s general set of spousal expectations include my taking care of dead things, bugs, and things that go slap, slap…slap whooosh in the night. So I got up and went to the screen door that still had Sam’s nose mark on it. I listened intently, and finally recognized the sound–whale. Out in Uao Bay a whale was slapping it’s tail and blowing through it’s blowhole.

Marvelous.

I told Diane that our axe murderer was safely at sea, apologized to Sam (but didn’t let him back on the bed) and laid back, enjoying the sounds until I drifted off.

I had a conference call in the morning, so no reason to get up at 5:30 to go surf–as if there was any surf. I planned to sleep in, but at 6:30 the whale must have decided I’d slept enough. Wham, wham…wham, whooosh. Our axe murderer was still there and from the sound, either closer in or banging harder. I got up to see and there he was, directly below the house, very close in, banging away. When he or she paused in the banging I could see the whole body under the water. I decided I could probably sleep through this, headed back to bed.

And then the neighborhood rooster kicked in, with a francolin yammering back at him. I swear there’s some Coq au Vin in my future, perhaps accompanied by some delicious game birds. the whale i can’t do much about

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2009 Stand Up Paddle Race, Distance, and Downwinder Board Showcase–Part 2

In the last segment we revealed our high-tech weighing and measuring processes aided by a $39 scale, some home-made calipers, and a tape measure sacrificed to rapid corrosion after being submerged in the saltwater pool at Ponohouse. So now it’s on to the beach.

We had a few people who had conflicts arise and had to cancel–that was particularly unfortunate because we lost some boards to evaluate in the process. specifically, a C4 Vortice, a Starboard point, and an SIC F18. We also had one shop on Oahu pull out for economic reasons, leaving us short the Bark and Infinity boards.

I’ll explain why that is all perfectly OK due to Mark (Kiwi) Jackson’s brilliant idea in part 3, but for now, we’ll tell you a bit about the boards we tested and the people who tested them. People first:

Our morning session was intended as a BOP-style four leg around the buoys test, but with the prevailing wind we modified that to an up-and-back run between the canoe club flag buoys at Kihei Pier. Our testers were:

Jennifer Konohia, 142 pounds, 5′6″, age 37. Jennifer is a skilled paddler with both canoe and SUP experience. She races a SIC Ku Nalu and generally beats me. I was surprised at her weight, she looks much lighter, must be a lot of muscle on that slender frame.

Jack Dyson, 177 pounds, 5′10″, 50+. Jack is a very experienced paddler with many Maliko races and channel crossings under his belt on all kinds of paddle craft, including SUP.

Dave Schultz, 230 pounds, 6′5″, age 30. Dave is a relative newbie, but he paddles well (and hard) and has excellent balance.

Alan Sidlo, 180 pounds, 5′6″, age 48. Alan is a very experienced flatwater paddler from Chicago. He has extraordinary balance and flexibility, probably a result of his mis-spent youth as a pro skateboarder.

Bob Babcock, 279 pounds, 6′ 4″, age 51. Bob has been paddling SUP boards in all conditions on the east coast (Cape Cod) for about two years. He has some balance issues related to an inner ear tumor but was comfortable on all the boards and paddles hard and well.

Bill Babcock, 248 pounds, 6′3″, age 62. Been paddling SUP boards for about three years or so. I spend a lot of time in the water, SUP surfing, downwinding, cruising and fishing.

Also in this picture are Randy and Chan Strome (founders and administrators of the Standup Zone), Frank Forbes (owner of Lightning Bolt Maui) and Randy Royce. The came about noon for the downwind session and brought some additional boards, but we had to cancel the downwinder due to very unfavorable winds. It would be hard to write this article while on a board drifting towards Tahiti.

The boards on the beach are:

Penetrator 572 by Stu Campbell–Australia 18′ 8″ X 26.5″

F16 MKII by Sandwich Island Composites, designer Mark Raaphorst 16′ X 26″

Foote Maliko 12 by Bill Foote 12′6″ X 28.5″

F14 Productionby Sandwich Island Composites, designer Mark Raaphorst 16′ X 26 3/4″

Naish Glide 12 by Naish, designer: Iggy 12′ X 29.5″

F16 MKI by Sandwich Island Composites, designer Mark Raaphorst 16′ X 26″

Foote Maliko 14 by Bill Foote 13′11.5″ X 27.5″

Starboard 12′6″ Starboard 12′6″ X 30″

The Starboard 12′6″ was included as a sort of standard representing a stock SUP board. It’s a board with a lot of stability and good glide.

Where did everyone go? It didn’t take long for folks to grab a board and get in the water. the only board I hadn’t ridden that remained on the beach was the F14, which I assumed would be slow with my bulk on it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though Mark Raaphorst recommends it for riders under 200 pounds, it was fast and maneuverable with my 248 pounds weighing it down.

Jenn and Jack hit the water. Not sure what Jenn is on, but Jack is taking the Foote Maliko 14. He wound up taking this board out numerous times. He was as puzzled by it as I was

Bob on the new F16 MkII. This board is more stable, but seems perhaps a little slower than the F16 MKI. Fortunately SIC is making both style of boards, so customers have a choice. Strong paddlers sometimes will sacrifice a little board speed to gain stability if it means they don’t need to take balancing strokes–keeping the power on can be more important. Conversely, people with extraordinary balance don’t mind sacrificing balance to gain efficiency. It’s remarkable that the board that is the gold standard for open ocean racing now gives it’s users that fine tuning choice.

The Penetrator sits hull up. That’s a little seaweed on the edge. You can see what a radical board the Penetrator is. The displacement hull, nose rocker, tail rocker, and curved rails means the waterline length and width of the board is a function of weight. As the board tips it gains stability because the width from the centerline in the Tipping direction gets greater. And as the nose plunges into the back of a swell the nose buoyancy increases quickly, causing the nose to rise in a straight line.

A challenging but very exciting high-performance board.

Jenn on the new production molded F14. This board is very agile and fast. The rudder response is immediate and proportional. I was amazed at how well I could control it. It’s also a very light board at 29 pounds, ready for the water with rudder, pad and steering mechanism.

Taking the F16 MKI out. It’s immediately obvious why this board wins so many races. Fair stability, easy steering, great acceleration and super glide.

Jenn brings the production F14 back. There are a lot of custom F14’s around Maui, it’s a size that offers a lot of advantages in some racing organizations. If you remove the rudder and put a fixed fin in the box (it has both a rudder mechanism and a fin box) it qualifies for the Stock class. Any organization that doesn’t allow 14 foot boards to run in stock generally has a specific 14 foot class separate from the unlimited class. So the 14 foot board has competitive advantages virtually everywhere.

Jenn takes the Foote Malko 14 out. This is a VERY surprising board. it was built for high wind, big swell conditions, and it excels at swell riding. Jeremy Riggs has an ultra-narrow 12′6″ version of this board that he’s used to win every Maliko stock class race he’s entered. I thought it was just the Jeremy factor until I paddled this board. The surprise is that it’s smoking fast in flatwater. It weighs 27.5 pounds, accelerates like crazy (which certainly helps to catch swells) but it also glides amazingly well. Everyone in the showcase that paddled it remarked on how amazingly fast it was.

More on that later.

Jack Dyson sticks the wood to the Foote Maliko 14. I think this was the third time he had taken it out. He liked it.

I return the F16 MKI while Bob paddles the F16 MKII. Bob liked both of them, but said the MKII would be the one for him. He loved the stability and thought it was just as fast.

Jenn on the Foote Maliko 14 and Jack on the Penetrator. Jack said what he liked best about the Penetrator was the speed thrills and the incredible glide, but he didn’t like the rudder control because it threw his balance off during right turns.

Jenn wanted to take the Foote Maliko 14 to the North Shore and play. She didn’t like the mid-mounted leash.

Jack, coming in fast on the Penetrator. Sometimes it seems like the thing could use some brakes. It will coast right up onto the beach if you don’t jump off and grab it.

Jenn looking tiny on the Penetrator while Dave puts some heat into the F16 MKII

A pair of F16s–Bob on the MKI, which he struggled with due to it’s substantially lower stability and Dave on the MKII, which both of them loved. I fact Dave said “I will be saving up for this one”.

Dave heads out on the Penetrator while I bring Gumby, the Foote Malkio 12 back. Dave called the Penetrator “unforgiving, fast, great glide and very responsive for it’s size, but very, very tippy.”

Gumby is just a pleasure. It glides pretty well, it’s very stable, but it’s character only comes out in good sized swells, where it starts to really perform.

Jack preps the Naish Glide 12. Jack called this a good intermediate board, with fair glide and good stability–perfect for cruising

conferring on the best course to take since the wind has switched–again.

Dave prepares to take the Foote Maliko 14 for a spin. Note the tail-down attitude of the board, even with just Dave’s hands pressing on it. It’s more like this board has rake instead of rocker.

I paddle the Foote Maliko 14 past the piers of old Kihei pier.

jack and I decided to race the Foote Maliko 14 vs. the F16 MKII on some downwind legs. Amazingly, the Foote was able to keep up with the F16 in this little sprint.

We swapped boards and tried again–same result, Jack beat me by a small margin in both cases.

One of the local canoe paddlers that Jack knows came by and tried a few boards. Sue took a lot of pictures of this guy–no idea why.

Alan Sidlo on the Penetrator. Alan loved this board, I’m sure his excellent balance had a lot to do with it. He called it “exciting from the word go”, and said he particularly liked the self-righting nature of the board, the way it catches itself when it rolls.

About this time Randy and Chan showed up to do the downwind segment. Chan brought her custom F14, so I had to try it. I think this thing is 24″ wide or less. That’s it underwater beneath my feet. I was very pleased to be able to remain on top of this thing, I guess all this time on the Penetrator is paying off. This board had all the stability of a telephone pole.

Here’s Chan’s F14 compared to a production F14

Chan on the Naish Glide 12. She called it “very fun, stable, great all-around stock class board. Fun glides, easy to carry.”

Randy Strome on the Penetrator. That board even just LOOKS fast.

Randy Royse, Jack, Jen, Chan and Alan. At this point the downwinder is looking kind of questionable. the wind keeps switching directions. by switching I don’t mean changing a few degrees, I mean switching from east to west. That’s something I’ve only experienced in mountain weather or on Maui. in both cases it’s caused by wind sweeping around a mountain from both sides. The wind direction on the leeward side of the mountain changes radically when the actual wind direction moves a few degrees.

Randy carries in the Penetrator. Looks huge.

I carry in Chan’s micro F14. Weighs nothing. I’m struggling to keep it from blowing away

“Let’s go guys, the wind’s fine!” Randy is always up for it. One word of advice–don’t follow him. At that point the winds were pointed straight at Tahiti.

We canceled the downwind section. I didn’t even FEED these guys. we planned to do a little lunch on the beach before the downwinder, but then there were so few people I thought I’d just take them to a restaurant on the beach near Sorrentos when we pulled out from the downwinder. But then we canceled the downwinder. Yikes. So I just moved the time for the party up to 4:00 pm and told Diane everyone would be VERY hungry. We had a nice party, even though only the North shore contingent came. Ponohouse is a long haul from the south or west side. especially after a day on the water and a party, the drive home can be very, very long.

The next segment summarizes our learnings and announces our new board testing program. I’ll also be setting up a review section for racing boards. All coming soon (though the surf is looking pretty good for the next few days, and that always spells trouble for the schedule).

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Amazing Dedication

I know a lot of you aren’t really car folks, but this video isn’t really about cars. It’s about what someone can accomplish by themselves, and the extraordinary focus and determination that some people can muster. I found it uplifting.

Any Penetration, However Slight…

…is sufficient to complete the offense. Any other current or ex-servicemen out there will recognize these words from the Uniform code of Military Justice regarding sexual offenses. Always made me snicker. So it’s just simple karma that now I own a board called the Penetrator. Today I got the Penetrator out in what i suspect will ultimately be perfect conditions for it–a rocking tailwind and some smooth six-foot swells. Not the cross chop and twenty footers of Malko (though I know think the board may eventually do well there in the right hands) but a relatively clean south side downwinder in a powerful, wrapping, somewhat onshore wind.

For intermediate level paddlers the Penetrator 572 may be the fastest board they’ll ever be on, but it may not get them to the end of a race the quickest. I should have known this might be the case. It exactly parallels my experience in racing cars.

Here’s the deal with racing cars. A great driver can’t overcome the disadvantage of having a slow car. But a mediocre driver will not win races just because he buys the fastest car. You need all the elements to come together to really be fast. You need a car that has the potential to win, and a driver that can drive to that potential. A mediocre driver can actually be slowed by a car that’s too fast, because he gets in over his head and has to back off.

That’s how the Penetrator is. When you get into a swell, the acceleration is sudden and hard to manage. It feels like there’s a motor in the thing, and someone just downshifted and stepped on the gas. But it wasn’t you–you’re just a passenger. Exhilarating, but hard to get used to. Sometimes it catches a swell and just smoothly rides it, typically for a hundred yards or so. Sometimes it mashes the throttle and careens down the swell to slam into the wave in front, burying the nose in the back of the wave. It doesn’t pearl–it just punches through. The nose will eventually come back up all by itself and you may find yourself riding the swell that used to be ahead.

All of this can be overcome with native skill or a lot of practice. There’s no question this board is fast. The only question is do you have the skill to ride it, and/or are you willing to pay your dues to learn. For myself, I remain committed to this board. I’ve really never felt anything quite like that wild rush when it slots into a good sized swell. But if you’re going to try one of these things you’d better either be good, or be committed. Because this thing is like a Formula 1 car, and that’s what it demands.

Top speed shown is around 9 MPH. I suspect I was going faster but the GPS didn’t get a chance to measure it because I fell so quickly. Most of the falls (many) were during the wild acceleration. I recommend a very sturdy leash for this board. when you fall the board is going 10 MPH and it’s in a wave. Not only can it get a long way away from you quickly if it’s unleashed, but if you have a wimpy leash it might snap it. It gives a heck of a tug. Towards the end of this run I was doing everything I could to grab the board in a fall. I figured the leash had already been close to the breaking point several times.

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2009 Stand Up Paddle Race/Distance/Downwinder Showcase Part 1

We chose an odd day for our showcase–a Tuesday–but we were running out of time and Maui Canoe and Kayak Club had a race scheduled for the weekend that included Stand Up Paddle boards. We assumed most paddlers and some of the boards we wanted to test would be committed for the weekend. Alan (shapeshifter) Sidlo was here from Chicago to participate, and my brother Bob (stoneaxe) Babcock was here from Boston. So we went with Tuesday.

The plan was to do some Battle Of The Paddle-style loops around the flags at the canoe beach in Kihei. Have lunch on the beach and then do a downwinder with a lot of board swapping. On the beach we had some of the most interesting race and downwinder boards available. the weather wasn’t cooperating, and some of our testers had conflicts arise. Ah, well, we wanted to make this small, it looked like we were getting our wish. But we’re getting ahead of the story…

Monday: Weight and Measures and Freezing in the Pool

But first, the weighing and measuring. We decided we wanted to see how these boards measured in the water. The Penetrator was the impetus for this craziness, since as soon as you look at it you can see that it’s critical measurements vary with the amount of weight it has on it. We decided to put a standard weight on each board and measure it in the swimming pool at Ponohouse. I have to say that it was a bit of torture–the pool is only heated by the sun, and it’s been cloudy and cold lately. Bob assiduously avoided getting wet, Alan and I did all the in-the-water work.

This video shows our highly technical process. weighing boards by weighing ourselves on a highly accurate genuine Weight Watcher ™ scale from Costco, then picking up the board and doing it again. Note to Mark Raaphorst, the banging of your lovely F14 on walls and such sounds a lot worse than it is–it hit the hose of the outdoor shower handle. Bob also shows his true colors and admits he has no intention of getting in the pool. This from a guy who paddles with icebergs on the east coast. Gets to Maui and turns wuss.

Here’s more fooling around and some underwater shots of the molded F14 race board from Sandwich Island Composites (SIC). Notice how the planing hull has a flat entry across the nose of the board. Notice also that the full width of the board provides stability. Compare this to the Penetrator 572 pictures later.

Penetrator in the pool. the board has a completely different profile when it’s unweighted vs. weighted. This board was made specifically for my weight (250) and even the 185 pounds we placed on it (Bob’s wife Sue plus a bag full of dive weights) left quite a bit of the nose standing clear of the water.

Measuring the Penetrators waterline. It looks in the video as if we didn’t pull the tape tight, but we actually did, the video shows the tape after the measurement was made.

Measuring wetted width. the Penetrator has deck width of 26.5″, an unladen wetted width of 22″, at 185 pounds it’s 24″ and with 250 pounds it’s 24.5″.

Bob, figuring out the scale–a slow process. Michi, I swear, all those bumps and bangs sound MUCH worse than they were.

Next time, we hit the beach and discover some startling things about racing boards.

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Advanced SUP Techniques

Written by Tom English
www.AlohaWealth.com

When people ask me why I surf with a paddle, my response is usually, “because it’s fun”. But when I think about it, it is really about the speed and power that a high performance board and paddle make possible. The paddle allows you to lean into turns harder and gives you more control. I think of the Rolling Stones classic, Let it Bleed, “We all need someone to lean on, and baby you can lean on me”, when I’m leaning into a turn that wouldn’t be possible with out the paddle.

You will find some advanced Stand Up Paddle surfers doing certain turns without the paddle, but in Stand Up Paddle Surfing, the spectacular, ripping, slashing stuff is all about the paddle, and rightly so. Not only is the paddle the key to extreme lean angles, it’s also a tool for tuning your turns, recovery, and either slowing or speeding your board–abilities that traditional surfers largely do without. The richness and radical capabilities that a paddle adds to standard longboard repertoire is already making the best SUP surfers stand out. And it’s really just early days–there’s so much more to come.

Here are a few techniques that I have learned by talking to and watching some of the best surfers in the world. Some were discovered the hard way, by trial and error. I will attempt to tell you the dynamics of these techniques, but you should understand that the key to these maneuvers is time in the waves, working to perfect them. I can give you some idea of where to put your feet, where the paddle goes, and when to turn, but muscle memory, coordination and experience is the only way that you will really own advanced maneuvers.

Don’t neglect the “working to perfect” part of that statement. Getting into waves and surfing for fun will improve your abilities but it takes a very long period of time. You have to have some idea of what you are trying to accomplish, and at least SOME of the time work towards perfecting particular moves in order to make rapid progress. The pioneers of surfing invented all this stuff without knowing what was possible, or perhaps more importantly, what was impossible. But that took decades. We can learn from them quickly if we pay attention to what and how they are doing their dance.

Take off Fade

A fade is a turn that starts off softer and higher in the wave than a true bottom turn. Paddle with your feet in your surfing stance, not parallel stance. Set your board up to glide towards the peak of the wave. As the curl approaches, pressure the inside rail hard, swing your shoulders into the wave, and change directions leaning on your paddle. Notice the flex of the paddle in this picture. Note also that the turn is well underway before the board reaches the bottom of the drop.

When you fall in a fade it will almost always be on the inside of the turn. There are three likely flaws:

• You didn’t maintain pressure on the rail, and the board straightened out while your body was still extended into the turn
• You leaned too far for the sharpness of your turn
• You didn’t swing your shoulders and press on the paddle hard enough.

When you do this turn right, the board will come up under your feet as the turn finishes. Keep your ankles and knees soft at the end of the turn to allow the board to come back under you.

Bottom Turn

The paddle can be used as a pivot point so you can compound the speed generated from the drop into more speed. This allows you to make sections that would be impossible without the paddle. You can also use the speed to propel yourself straight up to the lip. Drop into the wave with your knees bent, hips and shoulders level, looking down the face. At the bottom of the wave set your inside edge, place the paddle into the wave and lean on it. The harder you lean on the paddle, the sharper you will turn, leading to more speed. Trial and error will help you develop a great bottom turn combining power and style.

Notice that the turn is being initiated at the bottom of the wave, the board is trimmed somewhat flat to maintain speed but the inside rail is carving. the paddle is digging at the face, providing a pivot point that slings the board around. You enter the turn with your body centered, and as you set the rail to turn and plant your paddle you bend your knees and ankles to power into the turn. as the board reaches the tightest part of the turn, your shoulders should be facing the wave and the rail should be evenly weighted between your front and back foot. As the board starts to climb the face the wave will add power and increase board speed quickly. It’s the tightness of the turn around the pivot that adds speed. The more gentle bottom turn done without a paddle lets the board track further from the base of the wave, which means the board slows before the wave catches up and the face starts adding power.

Typical flaws for bottom turns are:

• Placing too much weight on the back of the board, which pushes water and slows the board.
• Keeping the upper body pointed down the line at the apex of the turn, which ends the turn too soon and compromises balance.
• Not leaning hard into the paddle, which opens the turn, allowing the board to get too far from the wave face, causing the board to lose speed.

Note in the picture above that the rider is nearly at the apex of the turn. His shoulders are turning to face the wave. when he reaches the apex they will be squared to the wave. His paddle is firmly planted, digging hard in the wave face. His speed is maintained because he is very close to the base of the wave, the board hasn’t swooped away from the wave before the turn was initiated.

Cutbacks

The cutback is where you redirect the speed generated by a proper bottom turn. Proper use of paddle allows you to carve cutbacks with grace and power. My favorite cutbacks are the “Butter the Muffin”, “Layback Carve”, and the “The Snap”. All turns rely heavily on the paddle. The techniques are similar, but use different amounts of speed and torque.

All cutbacks tend to lose speed, both because of the direction reversal and because the bottom of the turn is executed past the base of the wave. The more aggressive the cutback, the less speed is lost.

Butter the Muffin – A hot muffin that melts butter as you effortlessly glide the knife over it is the inspiration of our first cutback. Think about that while performing this turn. You will need a fast, down the line wave and a proper bottom turn to set up this turn. Place the paddle into the water behind you and gently lean on it as you place your board on its rail. This turn is the most gradual of cutbacks and looks and feels great when performed properly. Keep the image of the knife (your paddle) gliding across the muffin in your mind as you lean into this cutback. This turn takes up a lot of real estate, sometimes 20 yards onto the shoulder of the wave and another 20 yards back to the curl.

Notice the back foot planted firmly on the inner rail, and lots of heel pressure making the rail carve. The paddle is steadying the turn, and providing a dragging pivot. Pressing outward with the rear foot will tighten the turn, but can drop you into the inside.

Butter the Muffin doesn’t require the commitment of the next two cutbacks, and so it’s the first backside paddle move you’ll be likely to learn.

Layback Carve – Leleo Kinimaka demonstrates this classic turn which allows you to carve hard on a fast moving wave using the paddle and your body as leverage to redirect your speed back into the curl. This turn uses much less real estate than the “Butter the Muffin”. Place the paddle sharply into the wave behind you set your board on its edge. Bend your knees and place your body over the edge of the board and lean on your paddle. A low center of gravity is critical here. Increase the pressure on your paddle and get your body as low as possible to create a pivot point at the top of the wave. Your butt, back and paddle can actually be partially submerged in the breaking wave. Turn your head back to admire the spray. Trial and error is really required here to teach you the proper amount of speed and torque that is possible.

You will generally fall to the inside on this turn, mostly from simply not committing fully to the turn. You need a lot of rail pressure, and you need to maintain it until the board comes back under your body. Bending your knees deeply is also critical. The momentum of this turn will not return your body to vertical, the board has to come around. If it doesn’t swing sharply enough you’ll be left hanging out over the wave–briefly. Note how Leleo bends his knees to gather the board back underneath him.

The Snap – A snap is a 180 turn executed on the wave face. Here Kevin Coffman executes this tighter version of the Layback Carve. Approach the steep part of the wave and lean hard on your paddle with your body over the edge of your board. Put as much weight over the fins as possible. This can also lead to a fin drift if you crank the turn hard enough.

This turn is executed mostly in the tail. The forward section of the inner rail is free of the wave, waving in the air, as in this photo.

Your back foot drives the board through the turn, spinning it around your front foot. The rail angle needs to be extreme. This is not a great turn for single fin boards, though they can certainly execute it in the right hands. Thrusters or a quad setup will help you by keeping a fin buried in the water at even an extreme lean angle.

The snap is executed with full commitment. You don’t lean into the turn and carve the rails, you dig back and pull the nose around.

All Together

All these turns get linked together into a sequence on the wave. Here’s a full sequence of turns on a nice wave. No shortboard surfers were injured in the filming of this sequence. The first turn looks a bit reckless due to foreshortening by the telephoto lens.

Take Off Fade

Setting up–notice the surfer stance, knees bent, shoulders and hips level, board trimmed flat to accelerate down the face

Changing trim–the board is still trimmed mostly flat and weight is even front to back feet, but he’s starting to bring some weght to the inside rail

Down the line–shoulders squared to the wave, look down the line, bringing the paddle forward

Toe pressure–flex the knees and ankles, applying more pressure to the rail, continue bringing the paddle forward

Picking up speed–rail pressure continues, weight balanced front to back, Shoulders facing forward in preparation to swing

Oops–He’s flattened out the board in preparation to swing. A natural reaction, like swinging your car a little right to turn left. Perhaps not necesary, but no big deal. On the plus side he has brought the board squarely under his hips, and he poised to put power into the turn

Leaning in–Preparing to plan the paddle, toes pressing the rail, knees soft

Plant and push–the paddle is starting to dig, providing focus for the turn. shoulder are swinging into the turn, knees and ankles pressing the rail down, the board is trimmed to carve with weight still largely equal on front and back feet

Dig and push–this body angle would be unlikely for such a relatively soft turn on a longboard. The paddle is enabling the weight to be hard on the rails, head and shoulders extended well over the rail

Recovering–Paddle is still planted hard with lots of pressure, knees and ankles soft but keeping the rail planted and carving. Weight is still fairly evenly distributed, making the board turn on the rails rather than swing on the tail

Recovered–the board is back under his hips, paddle still planted to stabilize. Shoulders pointed into the wave, the board is almost completely under his hips.

Butter the Muffin

Preparing to buttah–board trimmed mostly flat, running up the face

Drag and shift–plant the paddle, rotate weight to the heels. For a tighter turn, step the rear foot to the backside rail

Backside paddle–allow the paddle to track behind the board to the back side, dig hard. Lean back against the rail and the paddle. the knike starts to butter the muffin. Weight is fairly even front to back–this turn is also on the rail.

Recovering–soft knees and ankles combined with paddle pressure allow the board to slide under the hips and recover balance. Board trimmed flat and gaining speed

Bottom Turn

Gain speed–the board is trimmed mostly flat, accelerating down the face. Hips and shoulders flat, Weight centered on front and back feet

Still accelerating–board trimmed flat, even weight, swinging paddle forward to plant it.

At the bottom–board is at maximum speed for this angle, paddle ready to plant, weight even front and back

Stuff and go–paddle planted hard, press hard on the inner rail with toes, knees forward, ankles forcing the inner rail down. Shoulders and head starting to swing into the face

Digging the pit–Max pressure on the paddle to pivot around it, The board is clear of the face of the wave, running on momentum. Shoulders have swung towards the face, maintaining pressure on the rail. Weight slightly favors back foot

Recovering–starts relaxing rail pressure, the board is coming under the hips

Recovered–board is trimmed flat, gaining power from the wave face. You’ve gotta wonder–does he have enough speed to clear that section

Running–faded turn to gain some speed in front of the foam

Swing and drive–another soft turn to chase the shoulder

Almost there

Traversing whitewater–pressing the paddle back into the whitewater adds stability and keeps the tail of the board light to maintain speed. Whitewater pushing the tail down is what usually dumps surfers in the soup

Reaching to plant–with the shoulder near, he starts to pull up into the face in preparation for a snap.

Paddle Snap

Boiingg–The snap is done on the steepest section of the face of the wave, shoving the nose around with the back foot. Here the paddle is planted, he has stepped back in preparation to get weight on the tail, and is ready to shift weight back. At this point the board is still mostly flat because his weight is still distributed front and back.

Whang–leaning back hard into the paddle and shoving hard with the rear foot, weight heavily on the rear foot, allowing the board to pivot on the front foot.

Recovering–paddle still bracing, the board is starting to come under the hip. at this point the knees and ankles must go soft to let the board slide under your hips

Almost there–residual rail pressure start the board carving and lets the rails dig, where before they were sliding. Still bracing on the paddle because the board is not fully under the hips.

Recovered–the board is trimmed almost flat and is accelerating in the steep face of the wave

Turning Out
Turning out is just a bottom turn that doesn’t end. You simply keep the rail planted until you are facing out of the wave and drive over the lip.

Bounce to reverse–as the board comes fully under the hips he starts to pull the paddle forward and shift weight towards the toes to start another bottom turn. The board is trimmed flat and accelerating down the face

Leaning and digging–the paddle has swung forward, pressure hard on the rails from the ankles, shoulders squared to the hips and pointed down the line

Accelerating down the face–weight slightly back, pivoting around the planted paddle

Maintain the turn–instead of flattening the board at the base of the turn, you simply keep the rail carving until the board is facing out of the wave

Over da lip–as the board comes over, the board will unweight and try to shed you. Planting your paddle to the inside is a good plan

Adios

Have fun with this stuff, but practice moves too. The rapid improvement in your surfing will make it all much more fun and enable you to take on tougher condition

Summary

All advanced moves require time and effort to perfect, and they all are just starting points. As you perfect your own style you’ll add personal characteristics to each manuver that will not only make your results more consistent, they will lead to new ideas to try. SUP surfing is a new sport, as good as the top level SUP surfers are today, understand that there is a very long way to go.

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Race/Distance/Downwind Board Showcase

The showcase test day is complete, we tested two SIC F16’s (the MkI and Mk II boards), the new SIC molded F14, A Bill Foote 14 Maliko, the Bill Foote 12 Maliko, the Penetrator 572, and Naish Glide 12, with a Starboard 12′6″ tossed in as a baseline standard board. That’s a lot fewer boards than we intended to test, but we had some companies withdraw at the last minute due to financial constraints, and we had some participants that simply couldn’t make it. The weather didn’t help either–the downwinder leg had to be canceled. But we got some solid baseline data, had some big surprises, and our friend Mark (Kiwi) Jackson has come up with a brilliant idea for how to add to the knowledgebase without shipping boards all over the place. We’ll explain it later. In the meantime, the test will be up in a few days.

The Perfect Paddle

So you are ready to buy a high-zoot carbon fiber paddle and tweak it to make it all yours. Please don’t tell me you already bought one and it’s precut. If you did, skip way down to the taping section. This part will just make you uneasy. If you’re considering a wood paddle you’ll have to order it precut. In that case you need to borrow a paddle to make the measurements and the decisions we’re going to go through.

What’s the likelihood that you’re going to get a paddle that just right for you? A lot better than it used to be, when you had mostly brand choices and everyone said to cut the paddle shaft so the tip of the handle was one shaka over your head. Now you can get a lot more variation on paddle blade width, angle, length, shape and material as well as choices in shaft flex, shape, diameter, material and handle style. But with all those choices you need more than just a guess as to what’s going to work for you.

Let’s get you into the ballpark. Feel free to ask questions in the forum discussion on the this article as well, if I don’t have the answers I’ll go to the same industry sources that I drew the information for this article from. What? You thought I know all this stuff?

Paddle length is critical to a number of factors, and getting it right isn’t easy. Most people I know who have been doing SUP more than a year or two have been through several paddles, mostly experimenting with length, though blade size and shape, and shaft flexibility are actually just as important. We’ll focus on those four factors and toss in the other parameters when necessary. Then we’ll tell you how to get, cut, and modify a paddle to fit your intended use and your personal characteristics.

You’ll need a helper to make the shaft measurements. the easiest and most accurate way is to prop your board (the board you plan to use the paddle with the most frequently) up on some milk crates or some other stand that will hold it higher off the ground than your paddle blade. You can also do it in the water, but it’s likely to be a bit tippy and difficult.

First issue has to do with your intended use. That falls into three broad categories: Surf, cruise and race.

Surfing demands several kinds of paddling–explosive power to get you into a wave, precise paddle placement and angle to help you execute turns, and pulling power to help you punch out through whitewater and peaking waves. The shaft has to be particularly strong to withstand the demands of surfing and the occasional fall across the paddle. Experienced SUP surfers tend to not pay too much attention to paddle choices, but they generally have a “favorite” paddle that they’ve gravitated to, in other words they chose a paddle by using a lot of them, and now there’s probably $900 worth of carbon fiber sitting unused in the garage. Big, powerful surfers tend to have somewhat larger blades. The most powerful sometimes like the huge blades like the Quickblade Peahi. But you’ll also see some powerful surfers with very small blades. It comes down to their preference for pulling into a wave. Some like to make a few powerful strokes. Some prefer a higher cadence. A higher cadence makes it easier to catch more marginal waves, while those that wait for the big, perfect faces can enter the wave with one or two hugely powerful strokes.

If you are a beginning SUP surfer, even if you’re experienced at surfing, you will probably prefer a smaller blade, something in the range of 8.5″ wide by 17-18″ long–100 to 105 square inches). You may even prefer one of the super-small blades like the Kialoa Methane (8″X16.5″ — 97 square inches).

The length of surf paddle shafts tends to be shorter than cruising or racing paddles. You always want to get power into the blade, and that means you want your arm no higher than your shoulder to get early power. You’re not looking to extend the stroke, in fact all strokes should be short, from the shoulder of the board to your feet. Most surfers do not use a punching stroke common to racers (explained below) so a longer shaft is not required.

So measure the paddle based on having your fist at the same level as your shoulder with the blade under the board and the paddle shaft straight down from your extended arms. You can even go a little shorter than that, with your hand down an inch or so below the level of your shoulder. Have your helper measure the distance from your hand to the bottom of the rail of your board. You want the beginning of the upper curve of the paddle to be right at the rail. Mark the point on the shaft to be cut by measuring the distance your helper got (from the bottom of the rail to your fist) from the upper curve of the paddle blade. You might want to check your work by doing a test cut a few inches higher than your actual measurement.

Racing is a completely different animal. Most racers use one of two strokes: Either a stiff-armed press down for the blade from a point a little forward of the shoulder of the nose, or a punching stroke, where the upper hand is initially close to your chin. The paddle is pushed in the water close to the nose, and then the upper fist is pushed out and down, rotating the body to put shoulders and trunk into play. Both of these strokes require a somewhat longer paddle to fully engage the blade in a further forward position. To measure length you should be on your race board, which is often a thicker board than a surf SUP, and you make the measurement to the rail with the paddle in the forward position of your typical stroke. This will generally add 6 to 10 inches to the length of the paddle over a similar surfing paddle. It is a wise precaution to tape the handle onto the shaft with several wraps of helicopter tape (aluminum tape) to ensure that this added length is comfortable and you are not raising your arm substantially above the level of your shoulder to use it.

Racing blades tend to be small to enable a fast cadence. The stroke is from the nose to the toes. extending your stroke back past the legs doesn’t do very much to help your times. Many racing paddlers use a “chicken wing” paddle raise where you rotate your upper arm down to your waist to raise the blade out of the water. Blade control is important in a racing paddle, for that reason they tend to be T handles which give a more positive sense of blade angle than the ergonomic grips.

Shaft flex for a racing paddle can be stiff to medium. If you are doing longer races you’ll want some flex to save your shoulders. If you mostly do four- to five-mile sprints you might want a stiffer shaft. You get more power into the beginning of the paddle stroke with a stiffer shaft. A softer shaft spreads the power out more. If you are trying to lift the nose a bit to get maximum acceleration then you need instant power at the grab.

Cruising paddles are roughly between these two extremes, with the determining factor being the kind of paddling you prefer. You never want to be bending at the waist to stroke your cruising paddle–your body should be comfortably erect. You also shouldn’t extend your upper arm above your shoulder. The stroke for cruising tends to be shorter than a racing stroke, from slightly behind the shoulder to the feet. The retrieve is often done by letting the paddle drift back and up, since the “chicken wing” retrieve takes more concentration. Shaft flex is good, and ergonomic handles work very well.

We’ll add some pictures to this article ASAP, just got to get it done. but for now it should give you a good idea of how to cut your paddle for the kind of SUP you do. a well-fitted paddle isn’t a requirement, it’s just a pleasure.