Am looking for advice ... I ride a SUP in the surf ... am 70 yo and 78kg and am intermediate to good. Been 10 years since changing up my surfboard. Also am pretty fit. My daughter wants me to do the 111km Hawesbury Canoe Classic. She's in a fast kayak. Is the Naish a stupid idea? . Am looking for comparisons of the Naish to solid down wind SUPs I'll be on my feet for a long time too ... probanly into the night. Stability important too. I have a 4 door ranger ute, so pretty small at the back too and no roof racks. Thanks in advance
I have a friend who did this in a kayak in his early 30's. He did around a year of training but still bombed out. He said that he was naive to all the logistics - preparation (pre-race sleep in tents), you have to have a support crew, night paddling etc. Suggest that you go to the first one as an observer to see how it is done. Then you have a year to train for the next one. If not, talk to as many previous attendees that you can.
Never paddled the Naish but I would suggest looking for a hard board with as much glide as possible with some decent stability. There was a guy racing that I saw last year using a 16' custom for 15km flat water races..Surely something like that will be far better. 111km is an awful long time to stand on a sup. Just say you do 1 km in 7 mins, thats 16 hrs of paddling. Anything that is not perfect will bite hard - think technique, chafing, body, cramps, cold, food.
Good luck. It will be an amazing effort if you manage to do it.
I actually did it twice in the late 70s on a log pretending to be a hollownsurfski ... as they were then. Took 24 hours..so yes ... am under no illusion that's its a tough ask! Cheers
I loved my Naish One air, super stable board that could take a beating. But like the other folks have suggested for that kind of a distance a hard board would get you better glide and stability.
