The world professional surfers website has posted a great SUP video of Taj Burrows and Jake Patterson stand up paddle boarding for the first time.

Apparently it was at a reef break in 6ft onshore surf.  The footage is funny and well worth checking out, here is the blurb from the website :

In footage reminiscent of a wild old Bruce Brown movie, Taj and Snake’s introduction to stand-up paddle surfing could only be described as complete carnage. But then again there probably wouldn’t be that many people who’d give it a shot at a solid reef break in a blustery devil wind.

There are also some great pictures of Richard Lovett stand up paddle surfing at Manly

First off – don’t take you brand new Jimmy Lewis 11ft out in a 20 knot onshore blow.  I did and I managed to put some scrapes on the side of the rail.  The board was only 2 days old, I was seriously gutted.

 I got back into the house and decided to google repairing expoy boards, but did not get anywhere with that, so I found my self on the Jimmy Lewis website . There was an email address jimmy@jimmylewis.com so I fired off an email as below :

to jimmy@jimmylewis.com
date 12-Aug-2007 19:51
subject JL 11ft stand up paddle board
mailed-by gmail.com

Hi there,

I have just purchased one of these boards and I foolishly went for a session in 20knot winds. I managed to dink the rails with the paddle – they have taken off a very thin layer of white finish exposing glass cloth. Do I need to repair this ? is it letting water in ? If so what is the construction and how do I repair it.

Cheers,

Matt.

I then got a beer out the fridge and sat there feeling upset about dinging my board and three minutes later…..

from jimmy@jimmylewis.com
date 12-Aug-2007 19:54
subject Re: JL 11ft stand up paddle board

Hi Matt, First of all, THANK YOU for getting one of MY boards. That 11′er
IS possible the nicest board on the market right now. You know, ALL stand
up boards are going to get beat up on the rails a bit. The way to see if
it’s leaking is to put your mouth over the chip and suck. If you can feel
air coming out, then you’d need to seal it. The board is EPS (styrofoam)
and epoxy. So you’d want to use epoxy resin to fis anything. If those
chips AREN’T leaking, you could just get some paint and touch them up. Let
me know if you need anything else from me. Thanks and aloha, Jimmy

Now from the South Coast of the UK all the way to Hawaii in three minutes. Now that is customer service. If anyone out there is interested you can respray your Jimmy Lewis stand up paddle boards with car paint, as that is what the factory uses.

Welcome to the first entry of the stand up paddle boarding UK blog.

I hope to bring you reviews of the best of whats around in SUP technology, hints, tips, rants and raves thats all SUP related.

First off I thought I would save everybody sometime by posting some of the best SUP video action on the web.  For those of you who have no idea what SUP in the UK is all about check this out :

Of course like all things surfing its origins are in the Pacific and it would be remiss of me not to post some fantastic Hawaii SUP action:

SUP is really taking off in the UK, but the equipment can be thin on the ground because the demand is so high. I will be keeping you up to date with what the UK shops have in stock and where is a good place to shop. Well thats it for now, more soon !