Paddleboarding

Polynesia

A view of Karakokooa, in Owyhee by John Webber

Ships Artist, John Webber, accompanied Captain James Cook to The Sandwich Islands in 1778, and in the lower left foreground of his 1781 engraving is depicted a Paddleboarder/Surfer Rider.

Thomas Edward Blake

Thomas Edward Blake is credited as the pioneer in paddleboard construction in the early 1930s.^[2]

While restoring historic Hawaiian boards in 1926 for the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Blake built a replica of the previously ignored olo surfboard ridden by ancient Hawaiian aliʻi (kings). He lightened his redwood replica (olo were traditionally made from wiliwili wood) by drilling it full of holes, which he then covered, thus creating the first hollow board, which led to creation of the modern paddleboard. Two years later, using this same 16 ft (4.9 m), 120 lb (54 kg) board, Blake won the Pacific Coast Surfriding Championship, first Mainland event integrating both surfing and paddling. Blake then returned to Hawaii to break virtually every established paddling record available, setting ¹⁄₂ mi (800 m) and 100 yd (91 m) records that stood until 1955.

In 1932, using his drastically modified chambered hollow board, now weighing roughly 60 lb (27 kg), which over the next decade he would tirelessly promote as a lifeguarding rescue tool, Blake out-paddled top California watermen Pete Peterson and Wally Burton in the first Mainland to Catalina crossing race—29 mi (47 km) in 5 hours, 53 minutes. During the 1930s, Blake-influenced hollow boards (called “cigar boards” by reporters and later “kook boxes” by surfers) would be used in roughly equal proportion to solid plank boards for both paddling and surfing until the new Hot Curl boards led wave-riding in a new direction. For paddleboarding, however, the basic principles of Blake’s 1926 design remain relevant even today.

Renaissance

Paddleboarding experienced a renaissance in the early 1980s after Los Angeles County lifeguard Rabbi Norm Shifren’s “Waterman Race”—22 mi (35 km) from Point Dume to Malibu—inspired surf journalist Craig Lockwood to begin production on a high quality stock paddleboard—known as the "Waterman." Its design, that has arguably won more races than any other stock paddleboard, remains a popular choice today. Shortly after, L.A, surfboard shaper Joe Bark and San Diego shaper Mike Eaton began production, and soon with Brian Szymanski's North County Paddleboards (NCP) became three of the largest U.S. paddleboard makers, eventually producing nearly half of the estimated 3–400 paddleboards made each year in the U.S. today. L.A. lifeguards Gibby Gibson and Buddy Bohn revived the Catalina Classic event in 1982 for a field of 10 competitors. Concurrently in Hawaii, the annual Independence Day Paddleboard Race from Sunset to Waimea was drawing a few hundred competitors, many using surfboards due to lack of proper paddleboards on the Islands. As paddlers began ordering boards from the Mainland, local surfboard shapers like Dennis Pang (now one of Hawaii’s largest paddleboard makers) moved quickly to fill the local niche. On both fronts, paddleboarding has been consistently gaining momentum and popularity.

In 1996 the sport of paddleboarding was making a comeback. Once the domain of only dedicated watermen and big wave riders in the 50’s and 60’s, the sport found a new set of acolytes on the North Shore of Oahu and in Honolulu at the Outrigger Canoe Club. At that time Hawaii’s top paddler was Dawson Jones. After completing the 32 mi (51 km) Catalina Classic, from Catalina Island to Manhattan Beach, Jones returned to Hawaii inspired to establish a race across the Ka’iwi Channel. In 1997, the race that is now known as the Molokai-2-Oahu Paddleboard World Championships was born. Today the race sells out with both prone and stand up paddleboarders (SUP) from around the world who compete in solo and team divisions.

Standup Paddleboarding (SUP)

By the early 2000s, Archie Kalepa and the Hobie Dream Team gave the world a hint that stand-up paddleboarding had a potential far grander than waves. Kalepa began unofficially participating in cross-channel races between the islands of Hawaii, making him one of the forefathers of downwind stand up paddle racing. Meanwhile, in California, three exceptional athletes (Chuck Patterson, Colin McPhillips, and Byron Kurt) joined forces to represent the newly formed Hobie SUP Race Team. These three would show up at local prone paddle board races, which were just beginning to have SUP divisions, and put on a show of not only performance but also product R&D. Each would carefully pull his board in and out of board bags, trying to keep their edge in product development on the nascent race scene. Sensing and expanding on that flatwater movement, Ernie Brassard (together with Rick Thomas, Bob Pearson, Blane Chambers and a few others) organized the world’s first inland SUP event and race, hosted at King’s Beach on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, California. It was dubbed “Ta-hoe Nalu” and still runs to this day. That event back in 2007 was arguably the world’s first stand up paddle specific event. Around the same time, Nate Brouwer founded the inland-oriented stand up paddle company “Tahoe SUP,” making a bold departure from the sport’s surfing heritage and diving wholeheartedly into the flat water, inland market. With that SUP wave sweeping inland, river running came next. A bevy of core white water kayakers decided to start running rivers while stand up paddling. Dan Gavere (Oregon), Corran Addison (San Clemente), and Charlie MacArthur (Colorado) became the pioneers of SUP River Running and introduced the sport to a whole new demographic and exposed standup paddlers to entirely new possibilities, from slow running streams to class 4 and 5 rapids. From a less turbulent perspective, Nikki Gregg (Oregon), who was Dan Gavere’s girlfriend at the time, began doing fitness workouts and pilates on stand up boards. Sarah Tiefenthaler (Orange County, California) and Gillian Gibree (San Diego, California) added yet a slightly different spin by bringing their yoga classes to the water on SUP boards. And then came the ultimate emancipation of SUP from its roots: fishing. Among the first was the Lane family down in San Diego, later a few people off Cabo San Lucas, but it wasn’t till it reached Florida that SUP fishing became a certifiable chapter of SUP history. Corey and Magdalena Cooper, from Destin, Florida, launched a stand up paddle company primarily dedicated to fishing, BOTE SUP. Now, the SUP fishing industry has inflatable boards like the Fish Stalker Pro to be more easily transported. And with that, standup paddling became a highly diversified discipline and its core foundations were then in place.