Voice From Sup Pioneers

LET’S HEAR IT FOR STANDUP PADDLING… and to those intrepid pioneers who jumped into the sup scene before there was a sup scene!

- Clay

And in some cases even before you could get anything other than a “cannot find criteria” response when you Googled “standup paddling,” LOL

The sport that probably began as an ancient fisherman’s way to get up and see where his next catch might be scored had a spurt of interest on huge surfboards ridden by the likes of Duke Kahanamoku and John ‘JZap’ Zapotocky (RIP, we lost John in 2013 at the age of 95) and the Achoy Brothers in the early to-mid 20 th century off the shores of Waikiki. Then: silence…until Laird Hamilton started toying around with undersized wooden canoe paddles and oversized tandem boards.

Laird dragged fellow big-wave surfer and champion wave sailing wind surfer Dave Kalama out on Maui one day in the spring of 1995—some other Maui watermen and women began to take notice, as did San Diego’s Rick Thomas (in 2000), but it wasn’t until the fall of 2007 that the world’s biggest surfing lifestyle trade show—Surf Expo in Orlando—had its first sup gear on display: outrigger canoe paddle maker Dave Chun of Kialoa was on hand with his latest sup paddle. But for most of the other soon-to-be sup companies our sport was still “not ready yet.”