I’m Back

I’ve loved the water ever since I was a kid. I always wanted to make it a part of my life, and that happened through standup paddling. I’ve been doing the sport for a long time. I first tried it in 2008. My wife had been looking at paddleboards in my Windsurfing magazine, and was interested. After she gave birth to our twins, I got an Amundsen SUP, which she still owns. I joined her, paddling my own Kona windsurfer longboard, but while I was still happy windsurfing, this standup paddling intrigued me. When I finally bought my own standup paddleboard in 2011, little did I realize that I was going to be done with windsurfing.

In the years since, I’ve paddled a fair number of boards on the Hudson River: surf style, all-arounds, and longboards. I learned that I’m not a very good surfer, but I love doing distance paddling. There’s something about that meditative place when you paddle mile after mile after mile. I loved paddling my local Hudson River so much, I ended up starting a nonprofit to promote the sport and environmental education in my hometown of Peekskill. In 2017, Hudson Valley H2O was born.

But the dream created a permanent snag. A few of us from HVH2O bought an old trailer to carry our kayaks and paddleboards. It would work — after we stripped it down and rebuilt it. After we finished stripping off the rust and started to repaint it, I made a misstep, literally. I was stepping down from one of the towers and my foot slipped off the tire. I fell, and something in my right knee popped. I rested, then drove home. As I walked up the stars to my house, my knee felt weirdly unstable. While telling the story, I fainted. So it was time for a hospital visit. X-rays found nothing, but when my leg got an MRI, doctors found a torn ACL.

For an athlete, a torn ACL is pretty devastating. Any sport that involves “pivoting”, changing directions from side to side, is difficult because the ACL is what prevents the knee from sliding side to side. Standup paddling doesn’t involve pivoting, but the rolling motion of a board does create some stress. After a couple of months of healing, I tried paddling my trusty 14’ cruiser board. It’s a good ride in the chop, but it likes to roll. I knew it wasn’t going to work. My 9’2” micro-cruiser/surfer had the same problem. All that movement underneath was painful. The other problem was that carrying a heavy board was painful, especially when I would twist my body and again stress my knee.

I found a solution almost by accident. While on Lake Sebago I was paddling with a friend who had a small inflatable board. It wasn’t fast or super fun to paddle, but it was much easier on my knee. The one time I stumbled to the deck, it didn’t hurt. Maybe an inflatable was the way to go? Light and forgiving underfoot, yet not as fast or responsive as I was used to, but at least I’d be paddling again!

So I sold the 14’ board, gave the micro-cruiser to my daughter, and went shopping for a good inflatable. I finally settled on a SIC Okeanos 12’6” Air. Not too long but not too small. It took a while to inflate, but not too long. My test runs were good. It was slightly soft and wide enough to keep the rolling under control., yet slower than a hard 12’6”. Those were the trade-offs to get back in the water. Falling still hurt, but at least I wasn’t landing on a hard deck.

Despite the trade-offs of the board and my knee which will always be jangy, I was back. Six months of almost no paddling was rough on my body too. I had gained weight, my back was stiff, and I had lost strength in my arms. But I was back. My board is now slow and bouncy, and I will probably never win a race again. I am still back.