#1 in Surfski News and Reviews2026-07-21T11:02:44-04:00
  • National Series Notebook: A Red-Hot October

    The USA Surfski leaderboard grew to 203 paddlers this week, with seven new names added in five days. Kieffer now sits just ahead of Wilson Reavley (A26), whose 1,959 points represent a full season of [...]

  • On Downwinding: Crosswind and Mixed Days

    From the parking lot the water looks like nothing worth the drive. Wind chop runs in from the southwest, a leftover groundswell rolls in from the southeast, and where the two meet the surface has [...]

  • 2026 Great Stone Dam Race

    By Wesley Echols I really enjoyed myself today at the Great Stone Dam Classic, an 8.14 mile race in Lawrence, MA hosted by Shawn Burke, and Francisco. It was a perfect day New England day [...]

  • On Training: Decision and Commitment

    A runner lifts behind you, and for half a second you know exactly what to do. Then the half second passes, and you're still thinking about it. The gap between the boat and the swell [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • 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 [...]

  • On Training: Efficiency and Friction

    During any long session or race, most of each stroke converts cleanly into forward motion. A small fraction gets diverted into correction, stabilization, and adjustment. Some of that cost comes from outside: the ocean pushes, [...]

  • On Racing: Finishing Strong

    Finishing well has little to do with who is most tired. Everyone is tired. What separates paddlers at the end of a race is not how much they have left, but how clearly they can [...]

  • On Racing: Expecting the Unexpected

    The forecast you checked the night before is completely different when you wake up. The wind has increased, the swell period has changed, and there's a conversation happening near the water's edge about which direction [...]

  • On Downwinding: Reading Lines

    The line appears before the decision to take it is fully formed. A shift in the water texture, maybe forty meters ahead, something about the way a long roller is organizing at an angle to [...]

Latest News

Blackburn 2010 – Blistered and Skegless – by Wayne Lysobey

Rich K had warned of sandbars when he gave the Captains’ meeting at 7:00 am. The Blackburn usually goes off at a higher tide then this year. Still, I hadn't really expected to find a bar in the middle of the Annisquam, dead on my GPS course. My first clue was [...]

Blackburn 2010: Double the Fun – by Mark Ceconi

The Blackburn Challenge. Long considered the premier race of the northeast, conditions can vary from mild to wild, although for the last several years, the former has been the case. The conditions of the icy paddle made by Howard Blackburn that set the stage for this circumnavigation of Cape Ann were [...]

My View from the Bucket, Blackburn 2010 – by Eric McNett

Hot day and flat conditions. It doesn’t get any better than this! Okay, maybe not for the pure enjoyment of surfski racing(catching waves) but those conditions suit me and I look forward to them. When the weather forecast for the Blackburn Challenge was calling for hot and flat, I was pretty stoked. Craig Impens - [...]

Blackburn 2010: A Sea Kayak Account – by Rick Carter

It is axiomatic that in almost any race, the lighter you are the faster you go. At about 8.3 pounds per gallon, a small amount of water can be deceptive. Twelve gallons in your boat becomes a hundred pounds of slippery, shifting payload. Not only have you acquired a load that [...]

2010 Sakonnet River Race: Every Year is Different! – by Wesley Echols

This was the third year of the Sakonnet River Race. For the past two years we had roughly twenty-five paddlers, I expected about thirty paddlers this year but due to the violent and scary thunderstorms that moved up the East Coast, we had a small but competitive group of paddlers. There [...]

The Perfect Storm: 2010 Sakonnet River Race – By Mark Ceconi

Saturday, June 5, 2010, Portsmouth, RI The days ticked off on my calendar leading up to Wesley Echol’s Sakonnet River Race…a hard, but oh so fun 14 mile course out the tidal river starting at McCorrie Beach and out past third rock. You are assured of some fun rides as well [...]

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