Stand Up Paddling is excellent exercise

If you have read most of the postings on this blog (and there are many) you may have come across some posts where I speak about using a stand up paddle board or SUP. Here you can see what the board looks like:

Anyway, when there are waves around those of us who have these boards and love surfing just paddle out to find them. Here you see Nik surfing a lovely wave:

The beauty about surfing on a SUP is that you can paddle on to the wave before you would normally be able to while laying on a regular surf board. This means you can take off and be on the wave further out and away from the critical section of the wave. This gives you time to move around and get perfect positioning on the wave. There are many other reasons that SUP has become so attractive to traditional wave surfers.
The biggest group of SUP users are those that simple paddle on flat water to exercise and explore in the same way that many people kayak. I don't usually show photos or video of myself, but my wife gave me a lovely new waterproof camera for Christmas and it works well on the SUP. This is my first test video. (IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VIEW THE VIDEO WITH MUSIC PLEASE CHANGE THE SETTINGS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE VIDEO FROM 360p TO 460p.) The workout is great and so much more enjoyable that hitting the gym in my opinion.


There are many sizes and shapes of SUP boards depending on what you are planning on doing. The board I am using is a good all around board that you can surf in the waves, do long down wind runs and or just do a little afternoon exploring and exercise. I hope to see you out there.

www.adventureantigua.com 

big waves here in the Caribbean tomorrow.

Each winter several big cold fronts push off the East coast of the USA and Canada and give the Caribbean a slight change in weather for a few days. If the cold front makes it all the way down here then we will get some cloudy weather and usually a big surge in winds. Our normal trade winds and waves come out of the East coming over from the African West coast, but during big cold fronts we get winds and swell (waves) coming out of the North. If cold fronts have all the right (or wrong depending on how you feel about weather) conditions, then a gale or nor-easter will form off the North-East coast of the USA. These storms can be as strong as hurricanes and although they can be over fifteen hundred miles away as in the case of the storm today, we can have huge effects from them. This storm as seen in the satellite photo taken a short while ago has winds of over 60 mph in the middle making it almost hurricane strength. AS you can see from the swell maps, the usual east to west flowing Atlantic waves are being replaced by massive North to South long period swells which will stick around for a few days up until Easter Sunday. This photo below shows waves right now in the North Atlantic around the storm up to 30 feet!!!!!All the surfers here have been going bananas since windguru.com first indicated that we were gonna get some. For whatever reason everything is lining up for the swell to be big. 4.9 meters means waves will be over 15 feet in open waters later this week. This photo shows what it will be like on thursday in the Atlantic.North and West facing coastline that is not protected by barrier reef will get huge waves and there will probably be some beach erosion over the next few days too. I for one will be surfing most of the time and i think we will have to cancel trips. I just got a call from Wadadli Cats too who is thinking about cancelling tours tomorrow and on thursday. We will have to see. Tomorrow we will both be up checking conditions before the sun risies. Friday's forecast shows the waves getting smaller.The strange thing about these "ground swells" as they are called is that they are mosly only dangerous when they get near shallow spots not protected by reef and dont have anything to do with winds here on the island. Out in the open they are like long swells and don't cap. I remember fishing one time when the waves were about 15 feet, but there was no wind. It was like being in a rolling and moving hillside. The fish didn't seem to mind which was cool and the surfers love it. Anyway, SUP or "stand up paddle" is the sport of choice for me and a few of my friends when its like this these days, and i will try to get some more pics of our sessions over the next few days. The last time we had good waves was back in Jan and there was no wind on them making them perfect for surfing. Nik seen in the opening shot was loving life back then. Tomorrow there should be winds of about 16 knots, so it will be a little more bumpy on the board. Last week we had a nice little SUP sunset session and i took along my camera. The MPEG movies are cute and show a nice sunset on the SUP. The area we paddled is Jolly Harbour to Jolly Beach. AS you can see, SUP isn't just about waves.

Weekend cruises

At our last Stanford 2020 cricket match, the SUP Falmouth crew, Nikolai Bohachevsky, Robert "Rabbs" Hill said that we should have our first big downwinder.
OK for those of you who don't know what SUP stands for, it means Stand Up Paddle and it the latest watersport to have reached Antigua. So far there are four of us on island and we are all hooked on the fun of both cruising on these boards as well as paddling into and surfing waves. Nik and I have done every imaginable water sport there is here in Antigua and knew that SUP would be the sport for us when we started hearing about it. Nik was much more into following it on the net and was first to get one of these massive boards sent here all the way from Hawaii. At over ten feet long they are not easy to move around until they hit the water, and then it’s all different. Using a carbon fiber paddle you propel yourself over the water in search of adventure and that was exactly what we were planning to do on Saturday. Of course we had to do it early because Antigua was playing the United States Virgin Islands and we had to be at the Stanford Cricket Grounds early that afternoon. The plan was to leave Turtle Bay which is just at the entrance of Falmouth Harbour and cruise downwind riding the large Atlantic swell all the way to the start of the island's Caribbean side. According to Nik, it was a 6.5 nautical mile run and in the very windy conditions that we were experiencing on Saturday morning, I knew it was adventure!
We left from a friend's house just barely making it over his electric fence designed to make sure the garden isn't eaten by goats and make sure the goats are not eaten by his dogs. Man it would probably suck to forget that was there after a good surfing session. Anyway, on the beach I noticed a lovely large cowry shell and picked it up. I was balancing my 10 foot 10 inch board on my head and just slipped the shell into my back pocket. Immediately I could smell the stink. OMG the smell was bad and I had fallen for a trick that I had seen many of my guests fall for over the years. Shells on beaches are not always washed clean of the dead animals inside. This one needed quite a bit more time on the shore before it was ready to be handled. Once I put the board into the water I fished that stinking sucker out and hurled it back to the beach. Someone else will make the same mistake later. Anyway, it was rough and the shore break was pushing me close to some rocks. I didn't feel like having an adventure so early so I carefully made it past the reefy rocks out into the deeper waters. Rabbs and Nik came in after me and we were immediately part of the Atlantic ocean. The waves were big coming from east to west, but there was also some reverb coming off the land on our right making it extra choppy and difficult. Rabbs fell behind me and I knew this wasn't going to be easy. I found it less difficult when I was paddling hard and keeping my speed up, so I kept on going out away from the disturbed waters closer in to shore. From all my time spent fishing I knew that very close to us the waters dropped down past the continental shelf into depths of over one thousand feet deep and deeper still. There were big fish out here and with the waves and winds it was all very exciting. We had over six nautical miles to go and the thing that worried me most was the prospect of being too tired for Antigua's first 2020 battle later that evening. Our plan was to go down past Rendezvous Bay staying well off shore but coming back in to surf a few of the wave spots further down the coast. Our first one was near what we used to call "Farley Bay". In the "old days" we would windsurf the waves there which broke just over razor sharp coral reef. Although the reef wasn't in the same condition these days it still was pretty sharp. I had been sliced up pretty good several weeks ago while surfing some other reefy waves, but you can't think about that too much when you are out there. Nik was only thinking about doing it again when he was on this wave several weeks ago. (Please dont aske me where it was taken either). Shhh....If that's all that's on your mind, then you won't catch the good waves. Anyway, the waves were "blown" a term which means they were getting attacked by the winds and were not that smooth. Nevertheless, Nik and I surfed three or four good waves while Rabbs continued past them. On his last surfing session, his board had come unleashed and had ended up on the rocks only to be followed by him. His scratched up board and urchin needle filled feet didn't like that experience too much and with the pain still being felt under his feet, he kept well clear of the reef on this morning. The wave was longer than Nik and I had expected but it was so windy that getting back to the peak after surfing one was difficult. After getting totally breathless a few times we continued on. Nik went outside the barrier reef but I squeezed though a few coral heads and managed to cruise along the rocky shore for a few hundred meters before going out another channel into the Atlantic. This channel had some huge swells coming in and for a moment I thought I was way too close to the reef and had to paddle like a mad man to make it past the impact zone. Up ahead Nik and Rabbs were taking a break and were sitting on their boards. As large ocean swells rolled between them and me, they would disappear from view. The ever changing blue canvas that is the ocean is such an awesome sight and pleasure to behold up close. I looked for whales but knew it would be difficult in these winds to see much. There were "white horses" everywhere.
We paddled past another nice reef break and knew that we would have to come back and give those a try another day. Winter Hill, the part of Antigua in my mind, closest to the "drop off" was coming up ahead. That point was also particularly choppy and was often a place where you could find calm seas once you got behind the bluff. We were doing what is called a "downwinder" and on downwinders you have to try to use the winds and waves to your advantage. When you feel or see a nice swell about to overtake you, a few hard paddle bursts sometimes make it possible to surf ahead on the wave even in the open ocean. We had been doing this the whole time and at Winter Hill the swells were especially steep. I managed to surf down a big one for what seemed like ages. I was super tired though and tucked into the lee side of Carlisle Bay to relax for a moment while the other guys caught up. I think all those years of having to read swells in windsurfing regattas was making me a little faster on this downwinder, but I am sure I didn't feel any less tired. This spot is excellent for spotting turtles and within seconds I was seeing them pop up for breaths. We continued on toward our destination. Johnson's Point was a few miles down the coast and despite Rabbs moaning (hahaha) we pushed on. As I said earlier Nik and I have spent our lives doing one watersport or another when we were not sailing or powerboating. The ocean is where we both feel most comfortable. This is the not the case with Rabbs who just recently left London. Riding a big motorbike across Europe is more what he is comfortable doing, so being out there in the big Atlantic swells on what sometimes feels like a tiny surf board was a bit threatening.
IT was calmer now and as we cruised past Curtain Bluff Hotel, Rabbs looked way more confident. I took a little wider angle going down the channel in between Cades Reef and Cades Bay while the other two were closer in. I was approaching an area where I occasionally see huge green turtles and sure enough up ahead I could see a monster. It must have been as big as greens get and by far the largest I had ever seen. As I watched in awe waving my paddle at the others trying to get them to come over, another came up just further ahead. Two massive green turtles lay on the surface getting some sun and taking a few deep breaths before going back down to the sea floor to feed. Nik and Rabbs missed them unfortunately and we paddled on. Only one hundred meters ahead I spotted two more slightly smaller greens on the surface. All three of us approached in them in awe unnoticed until the closest took a big breath. It almost did a double take upon seeing us and with a splash it zoomed off below. Another thirty meters ahead were three more green turtles and it was almost as if we had found a secret spot for the big endangered animals. Later I told JD to be careful when he was skippering Xtreme past this section of coastline. We only had a little more to go and came closer in to shore as we approached Pelican Island and Johnson's Point. Here we spotted several smaller hawksbill turtles which we speak about at length on the eco tour. These small turtles probably were around 5-10 years old and have another 10-15 before they would reach sexual maturity. Many people and fishermen make the mistake of saying "there are so many turtles out there...how can they be endangered". The problem is that there are indeed many turtles, but most never make it to sexual maturity therefore not getting a chance to propagate the species. Hawksbills are critically endangered and still occasionally hunted illegally here in Antigua and Barbuda.
Up ahead I could see my pickup truck on the shelly shore just behind and overturned local fishing boat. I was thinking about the three bottles of water I had inside as I made my last paddle to the beach. My bad knee pained as I took my first steps on solid ground since we left Turtle Bay some two hours before. It had been a great adventure and surely many more would follow. As Nik and Rabbs loaded their boards into the back of my Ford, we joked about paddling to Nevis this time next year. It’s only seven times further than we had just done.......:)

Yesterday it was the fourth SUP rider's turn.

Mykl did a paddle session by herself several miles from Darkwood Beach to CocoBay Hotel. Although the conditions were not as rough, the winds were not always behind her and while i took a few photos from the shore, i could see her having to work pretty hard against some pretty strong winds. She said it wasn't that difficult! Pretty good looking though. Anyway, there are four SUP riders now hooked on this new sport and we hope to have some more stories coming up on this journal.

"Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone."

A song that i like to listen to every now and then is Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)". So many things he says in the song like the title of this blog are true and things we should all think about. One of the things i didn't think about as a kid was the silly sunscreen. As you know from reading my blog on sunscreen, i think covering up as much is possible is better than putting it all over you. Anyway, one of the other things i didn't do was be good to my knees. In fact i wrecked one totally in kitesurfing fall. I used to love the extreme air we would get out there and after windsurfing all over the world, kitesurfing was such a cool new angle to the water sport addiction i had. I knew it was dangerous and i had actually met two people who later were killed in kitesurfing accidents, but i thought i would be fine. I was wrong and as i landed badly from a big jump down at jabbawock, i immediately knew i had done something bad to my knee. I had fractured my tibia in the middle of the knee joint and crushed a section of tibia plateau. My life changed that day back in 2002 and has never been the same since then. I have had three major operations on my left knee and my doc has tried to help me get back on the water. The last time he opened me up the bones were all fine but the cartilage was in terrible shape. This shows the knees back in 2006.

There was quite a bit of bone on bone rubbing and he urged me to not drive the boat as much as i had been doing. He told me that i would damage the cartilage in my knee even if i rode a bike. I already knew that driving the boat and just being on the boat was one of the most painful things that i did regularly, so it wasn't a big shock to me. It sucked though all the same, but i started taking some time off the regular driving. Since my accident in 2002 i have slowly stopped doing sporting activity more and more until this time last year i was doing no exercise at all. It was killing me. My mind was suffering more than anything else and i knew i had to get into some fun physical activity again. Several doctors in the USA and in the UK had looked at my scans and told me that if i was 50 then they would to a total knee replacement, but since i was so young i better just wait a while. This bugged me so much because it meant i had to be inactive until i was old enough to get my knee fixed (to be active again at 50)! Last may, after experiencing plenty of pain for a week or so during the fishing tournament, i decided to saw "what the heck", and go to a windsurfing event. HIHO held in the BVI had always been one of my favorite events and i had stayed away from competing in it because of my knee. WHY? Its just a little pain right? My knee wasn't going to get better anyway and the worst thing that could happen was that it would have to be fixed earlier than planned. I went and had a ball. I finished 1st overall and did have plenty of knee pain, but it wasn't so bad that i couldn't walk. It also didn't last more than a week or so which was cool. That all being said, i think over the next few months i noticed that knee pain was more quick to come and little things would sometimes give me plenty of trouble. Hurricane Dean came along and i couldn't resist the temptation to windsurf a little. It was extreme and extremely enjoyable, but as you can imagine the pain lasted another week. 3 hours of windsurfing and one week of bad pain. I had to find some other sport to keep my mind and body in shape. I am the kind of person that needs physical activity for my mind as much as for my body. I think that's the case with many people. What was going to be kind to my knees? My buddy Nik kept telling me about stand up paddle surfing or SUP. Essentially its a mix between canoeing and surfing using a big purpose built surfboard and a long paddle. You can cruise along exploring the coastline or you can go out to surf that is difficult to get to while normal surfing. I tried Nik's board a few times and enjoyed it so much that i was very excited about getting my own. This had to be better on my knees, so i ordered some gear from my friend Sean in Maui. After our two boards came in, my girlfriend and I went for a nice long cruise from Curtain Bluff Hotel to OJs. It was 4 miles downwind close to the reefs, flats and mangrove habitats of Cades Bay. We saw turtles, rays, permit and loads of other sea life and birds. I was loving it, but i did notice some pain in my knee. The next day my knee killed. If i couldn't do this then what could i do?
The next day i went to get some scans of my knee and sent them up to Mr. Justin Cobb in London. He's the one who has been working on my knee since 2002. As one of the world's leading Orthopaedic surgeons and a close family friend, i trust him with my life. Justin has just chaired a conference where 300 orthopaedic surgeons from around the world discussed knees and hips. He says that every year there are huge advances in technology and that there is a very good option for me. It looks like i may be in England within a few months to do some "relining" of my old knee. He says it wont be a total knee replacement, but more of a resurfacing or "relining" the ends of bones when cartilage has worn away and bone has been destroyed. Anyway, i am not sure when this will be and in the meantime i will be using my SUP in the afternoons. They say there will be waves this weekend!!!! eli

Hurricane Igor misses Antigua totally, but sends us waves

For the past few days the waves have been coming in to Antigua from hundreds of miles away. I imagine the surfers have been calling in sick from their jobs all over the Caribbean. One of my good friends who owns his own company tells people that he's busy all week with "board meetings".
The guy surfing above is world famous kite boarder Andre Phillip. He was pulled into the wave by the Stevie Mendes who took the photo.
Anyway, while we didn't receive any real winds or rain from the dangerous hurricane Igor, the waves have probably caused some damage to the marine eco systems as well as some beaches.
Last night I passed by Dickenson Bay where the Sandals and several other hotels sit, and the waves were coming right up and over the beach. Although they didn't seem that big, they were causing problems along the shore because of the high tides and surge.
Today I am cancelling my Xtreme tour sadly because of these swells. The tour could probably go out, but snorkeling would be horrible as would our beach stops. This doesn't happen very often at all during hurricane season, but I think today it's the right decision.
Some people are enjoying it though. This is a photo of my good friend Nik on his SUP (stand up paddle) board "ripping". The photo was taken by the equally talented Shelly Chadburn.

I have been laying low for the past few days and missing the waves. The forecasts have the waves sticking around for another few days, so i am sure I will get some of my own. All the forecasts show lovely marine weather again from Monday.

North Swells

I know many people who visit my photo site and read my blog are not going to be happy about the lack of big wave photos, but the truth is that i was surfing them and didn't have time to shoot that many pics. Most of the surfers in Antigua were not that happy as there was quite a bit of North in the wind direction which made the waves choppy and bumpy. It also prevented them from forming properly. The guys drove around most of the day on wednesday looking for new perfect waves, but mostly were unable to find them. Roddy and Nik found some good ones late wednesday afternoon near Eric Clapton's drug and alcohol rehab center, Crossroads. The waves on the far North side of Willouhby Bay were protected that day from the winds and were nice walls of double overhead green according to the boys. After wiping out on a good one, Roddy told me he was held down in full washing machine mode for what felt like minutes. A good thing he can hold his breath long!

One of the nice things about using the SUP long boards is that you dont need to have super fast moving waves to keep you up as the guys with the little boards do. I knew of a nice wind protected wave near to home and surfed with Nik in the morning until we were beat. As you can see i took a few snaps of Nik on this nice litte wave just before i jumped in myself.

Later that day i returned with "Rabi", Ross and JD for a wicked afternoon session and by the end of the day i was "spent" and smiling. That was wednesday. Thursday was bigger and i had a bunch of work to get done in the morning. We are trying to launch our new yacht on the 30th of March, so i was busy getting last minute metal fabrication done in the morning. After lunch it was time for some surfing action and i met us with Roddy to go back the same spot as the day before. When we got there Nik was already enjoying the surf. We were just about to go out when Roddy got a call from a friend who said that the regular spots were much better. In a decision that i now regret, we called Nik in and went over to one of the regular spot on the other side of the island. The waves looked huge when we got there, but once we were out we didn't get the waves we had hoped for. I spend more time waiting than anything else and only managed to get a few good ones. On one wave i took off a little late just before the wave broke and got thrown off the top as the lip came crashing down. Somehow i managed to fall right on top of the boar which had flipped over exposing its fin. Guess where i landed? The fin caught me just above the left hip. Its a good thing i am sporting a good set of love muscles at the moment otherwise i may have been impaled! After making sure i wasnt cut i took some time to rest and caught another wave or two. On my last wave i fell pretty hard and managed to break one of my fingers. That was the last straw... I was over this place. Why did i leave a good thing? To cheer me up and kill some of the pain, we decided to meet some of the eco tour crew Trevor, Tony as well as Greg (helicopter pilot) for some rum over at the Foredeck Bar. We heard stories of beaches getting bad erosion and of hotels losing beach chairs. One or two boats had gotten in trouble and several coastal roads had been flooded. The surf is still larger than normal today but is getting smaller by the hour. I think things will be back to normal by tomorrow and it will be back to cruising on the boards instead of surfing.

Going surfing.

After the thunderstorms and rain today for the second time in two months the dry island may start to look green again. I hope so because i was getting tired of the dusty dry conditions here. Anyway, hurricane Bertha missed the Caribbean totally and is of no threat to us anymore, but we may get some waves to surf today and tomorrow which have been generated by the storm some 660 miles from us. I am going to take my SUP board down south where there are reports of some 6 foot glassy swells. Will try to take some photos.