Stand Up Paddle Surfing Magazine - 1st Stand Up Paddle Open Race Championship

Latest Event Reports

Day One Results: Duke Oceanfest Stand Up Paddle Competition

HONOLULU - As the Olympic games takes charge of the international sporting arena, Hawaii's most famous Olympian and ambassador of Hawaii's greatest gifts to the world -- aloha and surfing -- is at the center of celebrations in his birthplace of Waikiki: Duke Kahanamoku.

The Duke's OceanFest continued today with the C4 Waterman/Honolua Surf Stand-Up Paddle (SUP) Surfing competition - a sport Duke helped pioneer towards the end of his surfing days.

While the sport first surfaced in Waikiki more than half a century ago, it took a second wave of popularity for SUP to circle the globe and take center stage back where it all began.

Today, reflecting the international appeal and dynamic growth of SUP, the C4 Waterman/Honolua Surf event - part of Duke's annual birthday celebrations, attracted a record field of 84 entries from as far afield as Australia and Oregon for the opening day of competition

QuickSilverEdition Molokai to Oahu Race: A first-hand perspective. (Part 1 of 3)

To be perfectly honest as a life long surfer I never gave distance paddling or paddle races much thought. Oh sure, I always saw the occasional big wave charger paddle up and down the North Shore, training for the winter surf. However, since I was not going after such insanely big waves myself, I saw no need for such silliness, not to mention hard work. It certainly did not look like much fun. If I was going to surf some fairly large waves each winter, wasn’t surfing good enough training for….er….surfing?

Well, how wrong I was! Little did I know that this was truly a sport into itself and it took stand up paddle downwind racing for my eyes to be opened to this truly amazing and most challenging sport. Throughout the summer I watched with increasing interest many of the downwind races on Oahu. I attended several of these events and each time came away a little more stoked about what I saw. I listened with fascination and intrigue as many of my fellow SUP surfers talked excitedly about doing downwind runs all over the islands.