As a nine-time Catalina Classic finisher, director of the Hennessey’s U.S. Paddleboard Festival and promoter of countless other races, Tim Ritter has done much to grow the sport of paddleboarding. As we get  into race season, we caught up with Tim to get his take on the status in paddeboarding.

As a journalist, I’ve always found Mike Eaton an exceptionally easy subject to track down, the research portion of any article on Eaton going something like this: Call up his website, scroll to his phone number, dial. The end.

And on the other end of the line, sounding scratchy and distant and as though he were standing near the one desk in the back of an otherwise…

Remember back in December, when it was late in the afternoon and you and your buddies had just gone for a good surf in some overhead waves, and you were sitting on the porch having a couple of beers? Life was good then, and you were talking about things you wanted to do--surf trips you wanted to take, places you wanted to travel to, and then, for no reason other than that it seemed to fit and it…

Paddleboarding events up and down the California Coast have long existed as disjointed pieces of the same ocean-going pie--an Encinitas 7-miler here, a Santa Cruz 14er there--but in recent years the numbers on paddleboarding races have gone up--both the races themselves and the number of entrants in them.

Still, the events aren’t interconnected at all. Pre-race scuttlebutt might alert…

When it comes to Hawaiian paddleboarding, Dennis Pang has steadily been making some of the best boards on the islands for years, and his team riders have been perpetually at or near the top of the leaderboard at some of paddleboarding’s most prestigious races. We caught up with Pang recently to discuss the latest innovations in Hawaiian paddleboarding, the growth of the sport, and what…

For the most part, stand-up paddling has been the purview of surfers looking to extend their water time. But for former Olympian Jim Terrell, surfing never held any interest. As a four-time Olympic canoe racer and a paddle builder, however, he knew a thing or two about efficient paddles. Six years ago, when he got his first order for a stand-up paddle, he didn’t think much of…