Latest News
On Training: Orientation and Pattern Recognition
Your nemesis is two kilometers of confused water where the swell from the south meets a cross-chop off the eastern point of land. You've paddled it dozens of times. For most of those sessions it's just been noise. Water moving in competing directions, and the mission was to react to each [...]
On Training: Attention and Its Limits
The paddler to your right has been pushing the pace for the last few minutes, and you've been tracking them. Watching their rhythm, watching the gap, watching whether they're going to open it further. Somewhere to your left, a run has been developing for the last few seconds. It would have [...]
On Training: Seeing the Water
The first time something catches your eye before you understand what it means, you almost dismiss it. A change in texture fifty meters ahead, a slight darkening of the surface, the way another paddler two boats over suddenly lifts their pace before you've registered anything worth responding to. It registers briefly [...]
National Series Notebook: A Loaded July
Patrick Dolan flew 5,000 miles from Hawaii to Massachusetts and won the 2026 USA COR National Championships on a grueling open water course against a stacked field of athletes. Five days later, Austin Kieffer won the showcase race at the Gorge Downwind Championships paddlesports festival in the biggest conditions the event [...]
On Training: Physical Integration
The race was two-thirds over and the aerobic system was still running cleanly. Breathing had stayed in control, the stroke hadn't collapsed, and the pace was within the range that should have been sustainable. But something had shifted in the last thirty minutes. A shoulder carrying something separate from the general [...]
On Downwinding: Leveraging Energy
The difference between flatwater paddling and downwinding isn't subtle. Grinding a flat stretch is the opposite: all work and no rest, every foot of distance earned stroke by stroke with nothing free about it. Catching a wave takes a handful of hard strokes, sometimes just one, and then the boat rides [...]
Surfski Reviews
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Think Jet, Right Sized
Last week I got to try the pint-size Think Jet. It comes in at 17ft by 19 inches and accommodates 80 lbs to 165 lbs. While I am clearly over the weight limit, I took it for a 30-minute paddle yesterday to get a feel for it. It is designed [...]
NEW 2016 Stellar SEL Surfski
Dave Thomas, Co Designer with Ed Hofmeister and owner Stellar Kayaks and Surfskis, is paddling the NEW 2016 SEL Excel in our new color scheme. With the addition of the SEL, SR, SES, all 2nd generation editions, we have launched 3 new models in 2015. Couple this with our NEW [...]
Surf Ski Review, Stellar SES, Fenn Spark, Epic V10L
Over the past year I have bought or paddled many skis: Epic V10 Ultra, Epic V14 Ultra, Fenn Glide Elite, Think Uno Max(2), Evo II(2), Think Ion, Think Big Eze, Huki S1X Special, and the Huki S1XL. Included in this long list is the Epic V10L Ultra and the Fenn [...]
Chris on Nelo 550. It was a hit!
Training Paddle, Wesley and Chris from Wesley Echols on Vimeo.
Ninja and Swordfish.Much Fun!
I made a road trip down to Mark Ceconi's (SurfskiRacing.com) neck of the woods, combining a business trip with a paddling session. While I had planned on paddling both Friday evening and Saturday, I arrived at Mark's too late to go paddling. However, the evening was far from lost. While [...]