The new Naish glide range just hit our shores and we got a chance to give them a go. With 40knots at our backs and Table bay offering a 12km run it was a great introduction to the boards.
Chris Bertish was riding the 14ft and did it in a time of 48min. So we are hoping to start giving the local surf ski guys a run for their money ;)
I hope you enjoy the little vid I made:
We do the exact run the surfskis have been doing for years - their record for a double is 33min and for a single is 35min. That was done in 65knot SE! The run is 11.5km
Chris Bertish did sub 50min in 35knots and he has only done 3 downwinders (which was on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday - and he would have gone again except he had to go to a wedding yesterday....).
So Chris is pretty hooked and it will be interesting to see where it all goes - looking at how young the sport of downwind stand up paddling is and how little time the guys have spent practising, we might see some vast improvements in time.
But yes, 3 skis overtook me as well, and they were flying, we'd need to be on runners 90% of the time to keep up.......
Cape Town is unreal for downwinders as we have the Cape Dr blowing hard virtually every evening - often 35-40knots so watch this space
Hopefully Jason Ribbink will soon be able to start making local DW boards over there soon. That way you can make them to suit your own varying conditions. South Africa has plenty of excellent DW potential that is just waiting to be tapped.
There are also many excellent ski paddlers over there who you should learn the art of catching runs from. I did the PE - East London ski marathon many years ago on a double ski. Hopefully one day I will get an opportunity to do it on a LD SUP. Maybe some of you guys would also be keen.
that sounds insane for downwinders....keep us posted with pics and info
