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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Epic V10L Performance Review – by Wesley Echols
For several months I paddled a fiberglass ‘performance’ layup V10L. What immediately struck me back when I owned that boat was how comfortable the cockpit is. The bucket is very shallow compared to the other High Performance Skis (HPS), however, your feet are below your seat. Because of this, leg [...]
Nelo 550L 2G (WWR) Surf Ski Review
In May 2021, I reviewed the newly designed Nelo 540L 2G and now the 550L 2G in the WWR layup. I have approximately 60 miles in the 550L 2g in various small bay conditions where I live in Portsmouth, RI. I have also raced it on the modified Ride the [...]
Stellar SR Surfski Review
https://picasaweb.google.com/Surfski14/StellarSRSurfski# (Disclaimer: I am the Northeast Surfski Rep for Stellar). The best way to decide on any ski is to gather as much information as possible from paddlers, manufacturers, websites, then paddle all the skis [...]
2020 Surfski Reviews: Part One-Stellar Skis
Introduction On February 2, I kicked off my "on season" training plan for the upcoming year that I look forward to every year. That was delayed three weeks later due to the flu, not the coronavirus. I did get my flu shot but with only 45% efficacy due to a [...]
Uno Max Surf Ski Review by Wesley Echols
I have had a long history of paddling Think surf skis including many Evo's, Evo 2, Legends, Uno, and now the Uno Max. The original Uno fit me well and was extremely fast but I found unpredictable in ocean conditions. It took me many months to get where I could [...]