Peak Paddle Performance Podcast

My guest on the podcast today is long time friend and paddler Rob Hartman.

Rob is a husband and father of three girls. He works full time as a software developer, plays the Upright Bass as an accomplished jazz musician, and has long been one of the top masters paddlers in the US. In recent years Rob has competed primarily East of the Mississippi, where he is a top contender in any race he enters. His most recent racing efforts were focused on the Chattajack where he narrowly missed the overall Surfski win when Carter Johnson came off his draft to outsprint him at the finish.

In our discussion we talk about Rob’s first exposure to kayaking in an old school fiberglass surf kayak. Rob talks about his early days as a teenager fearlessly playing in the cold and crazy surf on Lake Michigan. This ultimately led to a couple of Sea Kayak races, which led to Rob joining the US Canoe and Kayak Team and training and racing with them for a couple of seasons.

One of the things that has amazed me the most about Rob is his ability to consistently paddle at a very high level despite the demands of family and career, and of course aging. At 52 Rob is as fit as ever. What became a key theme in this podcast, as evidenced by the title, is that there is no shortcut. You’ve got to show up and consistently do the work if you want the type of results Rob has been able to achieve.

I always enjoy spending time with Rob, and this podcast was no exception. It went a little longer than most, but we had a lot to catch up on. I hope enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

P.S Below is a little bonus if you want to see Rob in action on the Bass. He doesn’t know I’ve linked this, and would probably be embarrassed by it, but it is a great demonstration of his humble talent!

My guest on this podcast is Matt Murphy. Matt is a Naval Architect and Ocean Engineer by trade, who grew up in and on the waters of Northeastern Canada. After school, Matt made his way to Houston, Texas where he currently lives with his wife and four kids.

Matt has a very diverse paddling background spanning both racing and multi-week adventures. In this podcast we cover much of Matt’s paddling background and the paddling scene in Houston and across Texas, but most importantly we talk about the work Matt has done helping to build the American Canoe Association (ACA) surfski education curriculum.

The ACA serves as the National Governing Body for paddlesports (Sprint, Slalom, Paracanoe) for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and as the U.S National Federation to the International Canoe Federation. They have recognized Surfski as a unique discipline and are excited to support it’s growth both through competition and education. Matt has worked extensively over the past four years along with Ben Lawry to develop a four stage curriculum of education including the following:

The ACA is hopeful to start certifying surfski instructors across all major regions of the US. If you are interested, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Matt

In this podcast episode I had a chance to connect with Rod and Barry of ThePaddleChannel. Rod and Barry have progressed from SUP to OC to SURFSKI and their YouTube channel documents, in full transparency, the trials and tribulations of their journey along the way. They are both super passionate about paddling and more so about downwind. Their videos bring a great perspective that should resonate with both new paddlers and those transitioning across paddling disciplines.

Many of you may have heard of the Carolina Cup, which is one of the biggest paddle events in the US (possibly just behind the Gorge and Chattajack). This race is put on by the Wrightsville Paddle Club which is about a 45 minute drive North of where Rod and Barry paddle at Carolina Beach.

Rod and Barry have an 8 mile downwind that they typically run starting at Fort Fisher and finishing at Carolina Beach or in the Carolina Beach Inlet. This run takes advantage of the the prevailing south/southwest winds that run throughout the summer. There aren’t any points, bays, shoals, or other factors to greatly influence the wave conditions along the route, so conditions remain pretty consistent. The biggest challenges are in launching and landing. The launch is directly off the beach, so there is often a surf break to navigate. They have the option of either finishing on the beach or in the inlet, both have their pros and cons which we discuss in detail during the podcast.

Carolina Beach is a busy beach town in the summer, but in the spring and fall things quiet down, but the water is still warm and the wind still blows, making this an excellent time to take a paddling vacation. There aren’t many other paddlers or paddle businesses in the area, so your best bet is to take your boat, but you can always get in touch with Barry or Rod and they will be more than happy to help you with finding a boat if possible.

The detailed Google Maps discussion starts at around minute 24:00 on the video and in the podcast.

I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Carolina Beach is now on my short list of downwind destinations. I really like the idea of an April or May trip when Lake Michigan is struggling to get above 40 degrees 🙂

In this podcast I’m joined by Reivers Dustin, who at 70 years old, is still every bit as passionate about downwind paddling as anyone I’ve met. Reivers is highly regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Bellingham surfski community.

This story started out with my intent to explore the downwind paddling in Bellingham Bay. Anyone who has raced on the West Coast, knows that there is some serious talent developing in this hotspot and I was excited to learn about the paddling conditions that are making this possible. But in speaking with Reivers, I soon realized the story of Bellingham’s success in creating a sustained paddling community, is much more than the downwind conditions. I’ll leave the details for the Podcast/YouTube, but to summarize, I believe the five key elements in Bellingham are:

I don’t have the data, but would speculate that Bellingham has the highest per capita number of surfski/OC paddlers of anywhere in the US. They have achieved this despite not having a big ocean sports / surf heritage, and water temperatures that are always cold (see below). I find this all quite impressive.

If you are interested in visiting Bellingham, it is no doubt one of the best outdoor active sports towns in the United States. In the same day you can shred powder in the morning and surf runs in the afternoon. if the wind doesn’t blow and the powder isn’t dumping, there are endless hikes and world class mountain biking everywhere. Below I’ve pasted a promotional video for the Ski to Sea race, as I think this tells the Bellingham outdoor story much better than I can with words.

It has been a long hiatus, but the Peak Paddle Performance Podcast is back in action. We’re going to try out a new format where we find paddlers enthusiastic about sharing their local downwind routes for the world to see. We’ll record via a Zoom meeting with screen share where the guest can walk us through a map view of the paddling hot spots as we geek out on all the wind and wave nuance they’ve discovered. Additionally we want to collaborate with and cross reference the great work being done by Lizelle Kemp and her team at Downwindable.com. Check out this link for all the downwind routes in SA, many of which Oscar describes in this podcast.

In this first episode, we start with the legendary Oscar Chalupsky as he walks us through the iconic Millers Run in Cape Town SA. Oscar gives us a great sense of the overall Cape Town paddling scene and what to expect out on the water. He then heads north to give an overview of his hometown Durban, SA where the water gets warmer, but the surf and swell gets much bigger and the conditions are about as gnarly as anywhere in the world.

It is never a dull conversation with Oscar, and this one was no exception. While the focus of the discussion is on walking through the downwind routes, there is inevitably a wealth of valuable information around paddling downwind and keeping it safe

We made a few references to water temperature, below are the 10 year monthly averages for Cape Town and Durban from seatemperature.com

In this podcast I sit down with one of the many dear friends I’ve met through Surfski Paddling. Greg Greene and I first crossed paths when we battled it out in my first surski race ever in Duluth, Minnesota. Although 20 years my senior Greg managed to take me at the line and despite that first encounter we’ve been great friends ever since.

I wanted to bring Greg onto the podcast because he exemplifies what the surfski journey is all about. Starting the sport in his late 40s and in a town without a surfski community, he also represents a large portion of surfski paddlers in the US.

While I want to say that Greg’s story is that of the “average paddler” as you’ll find out, he has had some incredible experiences that make him both the envy and an inspiration for us all.

In this podcast we cover the following and much more:

I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did!

In this podcast, the tables are turned and I’m in the hot seat as Buzz Burrell (a long time endurance sports athlete and entrepreneur and new surfski addict) interviews me. We cover a wide range of topics from paddling the Great Lakes through the winter months, to trying to make a surfski business viable in a small market with a short season. Some of the highlights of our conversation include:

In the end, it was actually quite fun for me to be on the other side of the mic. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as Buzz and I enjoyed the conversation

Today’s podcast guest may be best known as the younger brother of paddling legend Dawid Mocke, but Jasper Mocke is in every way a legend in his own right. Jasper is an incredibly talented athlete with several notable accomplishments including World Surfski Champion in 2014, World Champion in K2 Marathon 2014, and 3x Perth Doctor Downwind champion. You may also recognize Jasper as the star of many of the best surfski promotional videos Epic Kayaks has produced, whether it be breaking the Miller’s Run downwind record or deftly maneuvering a V14 in big breaking surf conditions.

In this podcast Jasper shares his wealth of knowledge and passion for the sport including, but not limited to the following:

Facebook Athlete Page

Jasper Mocke Personal Facebook Page

In today’s podcast I managed to catch up with Olympic athlete, coach, and co-founder of Paddle California, Michele Eray. I somehow coerced her into sitting still just long enough to record a great podcast session. The title of this episode and Michele’s personal mantra says it all, “You regret more in life the things that you didn’t do than the things you did”. Michele takes her mantra quite serious and I’m certain you’ll agree after listening to our conversation.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode, below are just a couple of the highlights:

If you want to connect with Michele for coaching or to purchase a Nelo, you can find her on the web at:

Business website: http://www.paddlecal.com

Business Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/paddlecal/

Personal Blog: http://micheray.com

Personal Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MicheleErayAthlete/

In early December the guys @CarbonologySport shared some vintage footage of the 1983 Port Elizabeth to East London (PE2LE) 4 Day Stage Race. It generated a lot of intrigue on Facebook, and I thought it would be great to sit down with Oscar and have him walk us through what it was like to race surfskis on the open ocean almost 40 years ago. We spend a large portion of the discussion on the PE2LE. But in classic Oscar fashion we also cover a host of other entertaining and educational topics including but not limited to:

Here is a link to the book Waterlogged by Tim Noakes which Oscar references and in which he was one of the first athletes tested that led to Noakes ground breaking and controversial discovery that the conventional wisdom on hydration during sport was wrong.