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!
2014 Think Ion Surfski Review
Like many of you I searched the internet for information on the Think Ion when I heard it was coming out. The main points I garnered were that it had plenty of rocker with a bucket like the Evo 2 and is a big water ski. So I asked myself [...]
NK Rapido Surf Ski Review at 40 miles
Review by Wesley Echols Intro I got my NK Rapido, Carbon Lite layup(Green Tip) at the Run of the Charles Race in Boston, Massachusetts on April 27th, 2026. I had previously paddled the Storm for about 20 minutes and more recently the lastest version of the Nitro at the 2026 [...]
Huki S1R Review – by Wesley Echols
Let me begin by saying I have owned three S1R’s over the years in different layups. As the chart indicates it is in the stable class of surfskis. It has excellent initial stability. I have seen experienced sea kayakers demo my S1R’s and feel relative comfortable just sitting in this [...]
Ninja and Swordfish.Much Fun!
I made a road trip down to Mark Ceconi's (SurfskiRacing.com) neck of the woods, combining a business trip with a paddling session. While I had planned on paddling both Friday evening and Saturday, I arrived at Mark's too late to go paddling. However, the evening was far from lost. While [...]
Think Zen Surfski Review
Update June 2019. Since my January post about the Zen I have much more bucket time. I even raced the Zen in the June 2019, Ride the Bull Race on a 20 mph day in mixed conditions that included some downwind, quarter beam seas at 25mph, mega big boat chop, [...]