Hey All,

Does anyone know of a good inflatable SUP?

Is it possible to catch some small waves with inflatable SUPs?

Is it a better idea to go for inflatable rather than bamboo, PVC etc?

Cheers

Yes.. Naish, Starboard, Fanatic and Red Air make great inflatable sup's.. imo.

Sort of.. but it's hard work and not much fun.. imo.

No.. If you have roof racks and somewhere to store a hard board it's defiantly the better option.. imo.

Hey David John,

Thanks heaps for your response. Idea of the inflatable is to have in the car so its easy yo head down after work.

Unfortunately drive a 2 door ute and worried about it being on the back of the ute as it will be on a 45 angle.

Inflatables are great for flat water paddling but if surfing is what you want it for I'd defiantly recommend demoing one before buying.

Inflatables can surf OK, once you learn to keep the nose out the water. If the nose touches the water it tends to "stick" to it. And the thick rails make the board lose speed a lot in turns, and not have a lot of grip.

This said, surfing an inflatable is better than not surfing at all :-)
Think of it as surfing a surfing mat compared to bodyboarding or kneeboarding. Not the same thing at all, but fun in its own way.

I would recommend an inflatable board with a narrow nose, to minimize the "plowing" effect of the big front rails. And the smallest board size possible, inflatables have volume to spare, and reducing the length alleviate the "nose sticking to the water" issue.
Something like:
http://gongsupshop.com/epages/box1707.sf/en_GB/?ViewObjectPath=%2FShops%2Fbox1707%2FProducts%2FGON8SUPCM75
gongsupshop.com/epages/box1707.sf/en_GB/?ViewObjectPath=%2FShops%2Fbox1707%2FProducts%2FGON8SUPCM85

Disclaimer: I am a Gong ambassador, these are just examples. Other brands have good boards too.

Surfed one today on one footers. Starboard Converse Deluxe 100 mm thick model, 9 foot long 30 wide.
Not too fat and has the long board feel. Once you manage to keep nose up you can have a great time on these . Best thing is their durability , portability and their less likely to hurt you or someone else. Good to have one in the quiver

Hey lads had a lesson through Sup-Fit on the weekend great to try different boards. Highly recommend it for a beginner.
Amazing the difference between them all

I haved the Astro Wide Point 8.2 x32 Starboard is nice but is not any more on the catalog. They had the Hypernut and others

Yes you can surf but is tricky

www.seabreeze.com.au/Photos/View/11825651/Stand%20Up%20Paddle/Astro-Wide-Ponit-82-x-32-Inflatable/
www.seabreeze.com.au/Photos/View/11825658/Stand%20Up%20Paddle/DSC07245/

Once you find the sweet spot for you food, and found the way to drop on the wave due the air lift the nose

Is really fun

I had one of the first inflatables- bought 8 years ago. Brand called Uli Boards. I would have to say this would have to be the worst way to learn to surf. I have tried a few others over the years but in general they float high in the water, flex a bit in the middle and have to be really really pumped up to high pressure to overcome this banana mode. They dig the rail in a lot and are slow to turn. Worst of all they are quite unstable and feel like you are on a set of skates- especially in any kind of decent chop. You have to take a very low stance for balance and this wears you out in choppy conditions. A few locals have had them and in the tropics the seams de-bond after a few years. The glues don't like the heat and humidity. You will get a real work out pumping them up and the last 10% is 90% of the effort.

I think they are great for flat water over rapids where they will take some abuse and obviously win when u live in a unit and don't have space.
They really aren't that fast to inflate and it pisses u off when the surf is up and you just want to launch but need to wait 10 mins and 20,000 calories to pump up the board. Then you have to deflate it, roll it up and put it away when in 30 secs you can have your board on the roof and tied down.

I regret buying it as a novice since it really slowed my progress. Once I got a regular SUP I had much faster progress. I bought it to stuff onto airlines and surf overseas but in the end the hit in performance was not worth the transportation gain.

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dreyfus said..
I had one of the first inflatables- bought 8 years ago.

Modern inflatables are nothing like 8 years ago. The stiffness (of the modern double skin, especially), and the durability (with welding instead of glueing) is like night and day.

This said, you are right that inflatables are a very bad choice to learn SUP surfing on. When you already know how to surf, you can adapt to them and have quite fun surfing them. But while learning, the feedback you get on them (in the turns for instance) is too confusing to progress easily.

Also, if you already know how to SUPsurf, you can get an inflatable as small as possible, which alleviates a lot of their drawbacks (time to inflate, nose sticking to the water, flexing in the middle, general cumbersomeness, weight)

My experiences aren't just from 8 years ago. I have several friends with recent models and some have returned them under warranty due to leaks. If you live in the tropics the heat and humidity are very different from southern states and both bond strength and folding/unfolding affects their durability. I doubt they have anywhere near the longevity of regular boards in the tropics.

I have at least one friend who sprung a leak last year on a VERY popular brand and had to do a paddle to shore straight out of a comic book.

To me they are a niche thing. If you want to parachute into jungle with an inflatable in your pack so you can paddle rivers or want to do rapids with lots of rocks OK. If you absolutely have no room for a regular board then also OK. But a lot of the time people find the preparation such a pain that they just leave them inflated, so there is no advantage.

I took mine O/S on a few occasions and I would say the size/volume did not make it significantly easier than a regular short SUP. In fact I found that renting was by far the best solution than lugging around a bag you could hide elephant body parts in.

Having ridden a few more recent models I still find the feel very unsatisfying. Because they sit so high in the water they will always feel a little like standing on an esky lid. Balancing on them always takes more work and is fatiguing over several hours.

Like I said, I just find it was a good concept that is still implemented poorly. Setup and take down are tedious and fatiguing. This leads people to just leave them inflated anyway. They lack longevity. Aren't really that much more portable for airline travel. Lastly the flex (and it will a;ways be there) degrades the performance and control.

I must admit they are a little harder to steal from inside a car though. And they are dead sure safe for kids and those learning since the lack of rigidity makes any impact much less damaging to the rider and people close by. But they already have soft tops for that?

If they were really a solution to the portability issue and were easier for checking in on airlines while maintaining reasonable performance than they would be hugely popular with anyone taking a board anywhere. But they aren't.

As always, people's mileage varies.

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dreyfus said..
Having ridden a few more recent models I still find the feel very unsatisfying.

Out of curiosity, what size did you try? something like 7'5" x 140 liters?

I personally recommend inflatables for beginners that have no surfing background because of the impact resistance. Non-surfers in my experience do not realize how a hard board is sensitive to impacts on hard surfaces, and that dings should never see water, or at least be properly dried out and repaired before returning to the water. They end up often with destroyed waterlogged, non resellable boards.

Beginners with a surfing background are the opposite: even for paddling on the flats, a hard board will be more satisfying as it somewhat reminds of the glide of surfboard on a wave.

An excellent short video on what makes a good surf isup.

Been looking at surf iSUPs for travel and thought this looked interesting, not too sure about the fin system though -

www.decathlon.co.uk/500-inflatable-surf-sup-9-id_8403344.html

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colas said..

dreyfus said..
I had one of the first inflatables- bought 8 years ago.

Modern inflatables are nothing like 8 years ago. The stiffness (of the modern double skin, especially), and the durability (with welding instead of glueing) is like night and day.

This said, you are right that inflatables are a very bad choice to learn SUP surfing on. When you already know how to surf, you can adapt to them and have quite fun surfing them. But while learning, the feedback you get on them (in the turns for instance) is too confusing to progress easily.

Also, if you already know how to SUPsurf, you can get an inflatable as small as possible, which alleviates a lot of their drawbacks (time to inflate, nose sticking to the water, flexing in the middle, general cumbersomeness, weight)

I have an ULI from 8 years ago (maybe more, actually) and also have two recent iSUPs. The new ones are a lot lighter and have more deck fittings. But in every other way they are either the same or worse. ULI really built those boards. Even at only 15PSI they are harder than any of the current big brand ones at 18-20. The fins are better too. And mine is still going strong after all these years and didnt lose even half a PSI in 6 months left fully inflated! My newer ones both let themselves down gently...

and the old ULIs were double skin btw.

But in general I'd agree with DJ about inflatables. Avoid them unless you really have no other option. They aren't too bad for dead flat water, or white water maybe, but in any other kind of dynamic environment (eg. surf, downwind) they can suck the will to live right out of you.

Google "Steamroller Alamoana Sup" old mate at the beach park. What, no fun?

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goggo said..
Google "Steamroller Alamoana Sup" old mate at the beach park. What, no fun?

He'd be having much more fun on a hard board.

I've just come back from a couple of weeks in the tropics and took an inflatable to surf. Dear god, I'd forgotten how useless they are to surf. Basically, if the wave is a steep reef break, you might as well forget it. A couple of times I gave up and bodysurfed instead. What a waste of some great (warm) conditions and a lot of money.

Yes, inflatables are better than not surfing at all. But only just. They are hard work. My 11ft iSUP is harder to surf than my 16ft downwind (hard) board!

Inflatables that surf passably well *could* be made. But they (mostly) *aren't* being made. That is not the market for iSUPs.

To surf well, you'd need a board more like the ULI Lopez designs, with what they called a wiki rail. There are other brands that are making iSUPs with hard rails too.

Basically, the tails of most leading brand iSUPs are too thick and wide, and too soft a rail. Most are designed with stability in mind, and are aimed at recreational inland paddlers who want to pootle around on canals, slow-moving rivers and lakes with their kids and dogs. They are actually very good for this purpose. But surfing requires something else altogether. It needs rigidity, changes in rail volume and shape, and plenty of rocker. These are three things that iSUPs do not have. So, surfing an inflatable (with current technologies) will always be like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. You can do it, kinda, but it's just not what they are designed for, really.

Anyone try a pendle?

Steamroller gets to beach by moto ,so hard board not happening.

I'd like to see Steamroller vs Chuck Norris on an inflatable . Chuck has some competition this time

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goggo said..
Steamroller gets to beach by moto ,so hard board not happening.

Yes, I know. I own a Steamroller ULI, which is the model he's surfing in that video, and was named after him. I bought it about 8 years ago, when I was only the second person in the UK to own an inflatable SUP.

So I'd guess I've been surfing iSUPs longer than 99% of the contributors to this forum. Unfortunately, inflatables have not got any better to surf in that time. Maybe, even, they have got worse. I surfed that Steamroller ULI at a double OH+ Fuerteventura reef break back in It performed as well (at only 15 PSI!) as any of the latest models, and better than most. But it's a crazy experience in big waves on an inflatable. They bump and bounce all over the place. I was laughing so much on the wave it was hard to actually surf! I think maybe on my latest surf trip I might have been better off with the old ULI, actually - the rails are thinner than the modern boards and the thick double skin makes it stiffer than most current offerings. It weighs a ton though.

yes, the Pendleboard looks worth investigating. Are they actually selling them now though?

a friend of mine built a 3-piece 14ft downwind board for his travels to Oz. That works great. Shame no big brand is doing the same. I used one of the original Pope Bisect (2-piece) longboards from back in the day, and travelled all over the world with it in the '90s. All the advantages of a hard board with most of the advantages of an inflatable.

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goggo said..

That could be the best ad for a product I have ever seen. I am not saying it would be good to surf, but he sure gave it a thwacking and surfed better than I do!

I don't sell Sunova (or any other sup product), but on my last surf trip to the Maldives they had a board that came in two pieces. It did not seem to take them long to put together (just using an Allen key) - but pumping up an inflatable isn't fast either. They basically make a normal board, cut it in half, and stick the joining system on each end. Bert and James were surfing a 10' board and giving it heaps - I was impressed!

I sell a few SUPs. My rule is, if you want to surf it, buy a hard board. Pretty simple rule. I have surfed the Red Paddle Co Whip. It was fun, but I would have had a different type of fun on a hard board.