SUP - Stand Up Paddling

Maui has always been a steering pot for a lot of different surfing and windsurfing trends. Some of them grew up to be bigger, like kiting and some stayed in a niche. But all of them have something in common – they are fun. Stand Up Paddling combines traditional hawaiian canoe paddling with long board surfing. Being on the water, gettting a full body core work out and being social at the same time is not combined in too many sports nowadays but Stand Up Paddling is definitely making its way right in there.

Paddling on oversized longboards
The group around watermen like Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, Robby Naish, Buzzy Kerbox or Shaun Ordonez socialized paddle surfing and brought it to an extreme level. In the past years you were able to see people paddling down the coast on oversized longboards. Several major surfing publications also picked up the trend and by now you can see stand up surf boards on cars from Maui to California, South Africa, Australia, Japan and Europe’s coast line.

• The surfing part. Stand up surfing gives a new aspect not only to old time surfers but also to first timers. Standing up on the board to begin with you see the waves easier as you are higher up, You are faster to get to the right position in the lineup, earlier on the wave and last but not least it is easier to get to uncrowded spots.


• Core training and distance paddling


• And not to forget windsurfing. A lot of areas all around the world offer great surf but only light wind. Stick a rig on your stand up board and you will be able to catch waves and surf in conditions and places you have never imagined before. The almost lost tranquility of just gliding along and checking out whats going on around you was almost lost to the high strung performance of modern windsurfing. With stand up paddling the balance should be restored again. I am not saying it is the perfect travel item but Windsurfing has always been connected to a certain frustration whenever the wind fails to cooperate. Now I can be sure to have something to do that will definitely be fun. The fact that you catch waves not only helps your normal surfing but also improves your wavesailing and most importantly your wave judgment.