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Stability is important. If you can’t stand on the board you’re trying
to paddle you can’t paddle it fast. Put
another way, if you can’t string a couple of really good, fully loaded strokes
together on flat water then the board you’re testing is too unstable for
you. Go for something more stable, even if you
think it is a slower board. You’ll be
faster on that slower board because you’re more stable than you will be on the
tippy board that is supposed to be faster. I 100% guarantee that. Even if you can paddle with those fully loaded
strokes on flat water there is no guarantee you’ll be able to handle it on the
ocean. For example I can handle the 14’
x 23” Starboard Sprint very well on flat water. In fact I love it. But I know it is probably beyond me in anything but the tamest rough water conditions.
The reality is that you can develop better balance and become more stable on a board but you can only do that so much.This is especially true the older you are. If you can’t string a couple of fully loaded strokes together on flat water, I honestly can’t see you developing the ability to paddle that board well in the ocean without first spending a considerable amount of time (read years) on a more stable board. In this instance I would strongly recommend you buy a more stable board and use it for a few years until you develop better SUP balance and skills. Then you can try a more unstable board again and, if you can paddle effectively on it, you can buy it then. - Generally a narrower board is faster. Of course there are exceptions
and this isn’t a hard and fast rule. As explained in the point above, if you can’t stand on the narrower board it isn’t going to be faster. And there are other design features that can make a slightly wider board faster than a narrower one. That said, generally, narrower boards are faster. If you’re looking for
a faster board in all likelihood you’ll need to consider something narrower.
- One of the reasons that a
narrower board might not be faster for you is that it doesn’t float you
properly. If you do your research you’ll
see that most narrower boards have less volume. If you’re heavy, there’s going to be a point where a narrower board is too narrow for you and doesn’t have the volume to float you properly. When this happens the board sits deeper in the water than it is designed to and it won’t perform as intended.
You need to consider the volume of the board you’re looking at purchasing very carefully, especially if you are a heavier paddler. I tested a few different boards. The one I chose was the narrowest, but because it had substantially more volume than the other boards it actually floated me the best. I think the fact it was the fastest one for me is attributable to both. It accelerates more quickly, sits on top of the water better and therefore maintains speed more easily. It was considerably better in chop and downwind conditions where a buoyant board is important. Some of the boards I tried that were slightly wider were underwater more in chop, particularly going upwind, and that makes the board a lot slower.
Some of the lower volume boards I tried sank back down into the water as I got tired and my stroke became a little less dynamic. They were less forgiving, demanding I maintain a dynamic stroke all the time. I don’t care who you are, eventually you’ll get tired and your stroke will lose some of its zip. When that happened to me, the lower volume boards sank into the water, probably deeper than they were designed to and that resulted in a dramatic loss of speed. That loss of speed that comes with fatigue was much less pronounced on the higher volume board.
Take home point: Don’t forget to consider volume when you are choosing your board. At some point if you’re a heavier paddler, there is a balancing point between width and volume that you don’t want to pass. If you do you’re asking for trouble and the rocket you think you just bought might not be as fast for you as you’re hoping it will be. - It’s not just a paddler’s weight that affects the balancing point between width and volume, but also the paddler’s technique. In “Stroke Rate in SUP Paddling” ,
I introduced the concept of gears in paddling. If you’re a paddler that prefers a lighter gear with a higher stroke rate, then you can probably get away with a narrower or lower volume board. You’ll be taking more strokes and your board will have less time to sit back down in the water between strokes.
I tend to prefer a more heavily loaded gear and a lower stroke rate. When testing boards I found that the narrow, lower volume boards (and even some of the wider ones) sank back into the water quite quickly, and in some instances too quickly. On those boards I often felt like I was constantly trying to lift my board back out of the water. Even on the better of the lower volume boards, when I got fatigued it became increasingly more difficult to keep that board on top of the water. If I adjusted my technique and paddled in a lighter gear it felt easier to keep the board on top of the water when I was tired. The problem is, I’ve been paddling in my preferred, slightly heavier gear my entire life. I can adjust my gearing a little but I’m never going to paddle efficiently in an extremely low load, high cadence gear like some paddlers do. My muscles and physiology are just too adapted to the more heavily loaded, slower stroke.
Take home point #1: Recognize the nature of your stroke.Do you paddle in a light or heavy gear? Most older SUP paddlers that I’ve seen prefer a slower, slightly more heavily loaded stroke, as most just don’t have the cardiovascular fitness to paddle at low load, high rate for very long. They should be considering a little more volume in their boards.
Take home point #2: You should always be playing with your gears and expanding the range of gears in which you feel comfortable paddling. Since switching to a narrower board I’ve found it easier to paddle with a somewhat lighter, higher cadence stroke and that stroke has been especially useful in keeping that narrower board on top of the water when I’m fatigued. - This point builds on the last one. The faster you can make your new board go, the more dynamic you need to be with your blade against the water to keep up with the board (see article ).
This can be fatiguing. If you can’t do it for a long time your board will eventually slow down, and if it is a narrow, low volume board it might sink deeper in the water that it was designed to (especially
if you’re a heavy paddler) and this will cause you to slow down even more. In this instance the board isn’t being asked to perform as it was designed to and there is a good chance you’d be faster on
a wider or higher volume board.
You can train yourself to paddle with a more dynamic stroke for a longer period of time without getting tired. I pretty quickly made that adaptation while paddling on the Starboard Sprint for a few weeks. It is a considerably faster flat-water board than anything else I’ve ever tested. I’m also a little heavy for it. The top of the recommended paddler weight range is 80 kg and I weigh 83 kg. Initially I noticed a marked loss of speed once I got tired and was unable to keep up with the board. As I trained myself into keeping up with the board better for a longer period of time that speed drop didn’t occur. Take home point: The board alone isn’t going to make you faster and a “faster board” actually puts greater demands on you. If you’re a heavy paddler make sure you’re fit enough to meet those greater demands. If you’re not and you’re heavy for the board you’re on, you run the risk of tiring yourself out quickly and then that fast board won’t be performing the way it was designed to and it might even become a slow board for you. - In general lighter boards are faster than heavier boards. They certainly accelerate more quickly. While there is a theory I’ve heard that a slightly heavier board carries its speed
better between waves I don’t think I subscribe to that theory. Since I had the opportunity to test boards of varying weight I’ve concluded that lighter boards are faster in almost every
situation. While a heavier board may well carry speed well between waves, there are too many negatives that come with the extra weight. I found lighter boards, in general, perform better in waves in almost every condition. They are incredibly easier to accelerate quickly to catch a bump, which is perhaps the aspect that I liked best. And when we are considering flat-water performance a lighter board is always going to be faster, all other things being equal. I suppose there may be a limit to how light a board should be, but the light boards in the 23-24 lbs. range are pretty ideal as far as I am concerned.
- A quieter ride is better than a noisy one. I have no way to back this up other than personal experience. In sprint canoes if the boat is making excessive noise it very likely isn’t
trimmed right. Fixing that makes the ride quieter and makes it faster. If no amount of adjusting the trim makes it ride more quietly then there’s a strong possibility the boat is poorly designed for you.
When I was testing boards some of the boards were really quiet and some were very noisy. There was one board I loved at cruising speed except for the way it seemed to plow water at the nose. It was very noisy. At speed, given the way I paddle, it just seemed sticky in the water and was disappointing. The board I ended up choosing was the quietest ride of the boards I tested. It was also the fastest of the all round boards (I don’t count the Starboard Sprint as I don’t consider it an all round board). Possibly. But a clean, quiet nose wave and quiet release can’t be bad, especially at speed where every board or boat I’ve ever paddled get’s noisier
Good luck searching for the best board for you!
