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
Looking for an ocean ski? Check out the surfski comparison chart!
Surfski Comparison Chart is Now Updated!
Check out the Comparison Chart with the numbers assigned to each ski along with the comparison Grid to get an overall visual on the relative speed vs stability. For example you can see that I rated the SR as the most stable since it at the top of the chart [...]
New Surfski Reviews Coming: 2012 Nelo Vintage(30lbs), 2010 Nelo Vintage(23lbs) and Van Dusen Mohican
Team SurfskiRacing.com Chris(web master) and myself will be reviewing the 2012 Nelo Vintage in the WWR construction(30lbs), a Nelo Vintage in the E construction at 23lbs, and the pure flat water surf ski, the Ted Van Dusen Mohican. It will probably be a month before we get everything posted but [...]
Stellar SES Review – by Wesley Echols
Disclaimer Unlike my other reviews where I had no formal industry ties; this review is unique in that I am the Northeast Sales Representative for Stellar and based on my experience of paddling and reviewing surfskis have provided Stellar with feedback both during the prototype testing of the larger Stellar [...]
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 [...]
Update by Reid Hyle, New 2015 Stellar SES 2G Surf Ski Review
October 14, 2015, Reid Hyle's Thoughts on the New SES 2G Definitely put the new SES on your short list if you are a medium sized paddler looking for a new ride. There isn’t much need to go over a lot of detail about what has been changed from the [...]