Always ALWAYS wear a leash with stand up paddling!

Key Biscayne in Florida is the perfect place for to rent a SUP and go for a paddle, so heaps of SUP rental companies have popped up along the beach there offering lessons and rental. It's shallow, flat water, with generally calm wind. So what could go wrong?

In this situation, a lot of little things combined to spell disaster. The major one being that he wasn't wearing a leg rope, or leash. Some are reporting that he didn't know how to swim, and he certainly wasn't wearing a life jacket. The facts are that a guy hired a stand up paddle board, paddled out past his depth and fell off. One of the staff members at the rental agency was alerted by people on the beach, who paddled out to assist, but could not locate the man. Only his board.

We've written articles before about the importance of leashes, so if you're reading this then you most likely know that you ALWAYS wear a leash when out on the water. Falling off a board can scoot it several meters away, and with any kind of wind - your board will blow away faster than you can swim.

That famous video of not one, but TWO paddlers losing their boards in Australia has been taken down, but you can read our previous article (and horror story about a father watching his son blow away on his board) here.