Don’t let the images of sun, sand and surf fool you. As the fastest growing watersport in North America, standup paddleboards are being used to push limits and defy what the flatwater paddler thought possible. If you’ve only seen them in calm water and yoga sessions, it’ll surprise you what else SUPs are up to.
On Your Mark
For a sport popularized by images of relaxing days on the water, paddleboarding has a fiercely competitive side. Competitions have taken place everywhere from the foot of glaciers in Chile to the Middle East for the Abu Dhabi All Stars. The Super Bowl of the SUP race world is the Battle of the Paddle, which attracts the best paddlers from around the world. In 2013, more than 1,000 participants competed for $25,000 worth of prize money, traversing five miles of Californian coast.
That distance is nothing compared to the longest paddleboard race, the SUP 11 City Tour, which covers nearly 140 miles in stages, Tour de France style. This year, long-distance legend Bart de Zwart completed it nonstop in 28 hours and 21 minutes.
Big Water
A $13,000 purse prize in the SUP category—the biggest yet for a whitewater SUP race—at the Payette River Games this past summer proved that paddleboards have found a permanent home on the river. Pushing whitewater limits is Dan Gavere. He’s challenged American classics like the White Salmon River and the Hood, is responsible for many SUP first descents and is the go-to source for neophytes looking to take their river game to the next level.
No one’s river stunts are more impressive than Erik Boomer’s. Boomer launched himself off a 60-foot waterfall in Mexico last year. The trick is not to land on the rocks or board, he said after. Big water paddling isn’t limited to just the river, as ocean boarders continue to paddle 50- to 60-foot waves.
The Coldest Journey
Distance-king de Zwart was set to embark on one of his biggest challenges in July—a 280-mile crossing from Canada to Greenland, dubbed The Arctic Crossing. Unfortunately, sea ice conditions forced him to change his route and he instead paddled 250 miles along the coast of Greenland—still no easy feat.
Putting it in Miles
With the increasing popularity of SUP, the records associated with it are a murky, ever-changing business. However, just this past summer, British adventurer Dave Cornthwaite completed a self-supported source-to-sea journey of the Mississippi River. Starting from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, he completed his 2,400-mile journey 82 days later in Louisiana. His paddle was the fourth of 25 planned trips in Expedition 1000, a project in which he travels long distances using non-motorized transportation raising money for charity.
As for paddling at top speed, in 2012 Ben Friberg set out on the Yukon River in Canada’s Yukon Territory to paddle as far as he could in 24 hours. He set a distance record for 238 miles.
Not to be outdone by either man, this December Chris Bertish will take on what most thought impossible—a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean y SUP. Bertish estimates that his supported journey will take 65 to 70 days, paddling a marathon a day.
This article originally appeared in the 2014 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.
