I Am Lovin' The Ride

A woman’s perspective on sup couples who travel together.

- “Nantucket” Kate Hamilton Pardee

I am a late bloomer. Not only did I marry a diehard surfer at an older age, but I also decided to join him on his sup journey…

It all began a few years ago with a whopper of a standup board that my husband Gary—who was over the moon that I was interested in his sport—bought for me. It was wide, heavy and, well, flat as a board. In fact, one of the things that I first noticed about it was how the arches of my feet started to ache: a minor inconvenience compared to how easy it was to keep my balance on the board, and how easy it was to fall off of if I didn’t pay attention to side wakes or swell coming my way.

Here on Nantucket (the island we live on, just off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts), we like to bring the boards to the creeks—a quiet, natural destination where I slowly learned about tides, and more importantly, the direction of the breezes. As I gained my balance and my calves and feet became accustomed to standing for longer periods of time, I realized that my weakness was dealing with the force of the winds in which I often paddled.