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No wind or waves? Bungee SUPin’ for additional summer fun!

All some paddlers want do is get an adrenaline shot from their stand up paddling. By this we mean ride a few waves and/or lock into a few wind driven bumps and boost downwind – drift surfing if you will. Unfortunately, though the UK’s summer is a fickle beast with often days, weeks and sometimes months of windless flat spells. Of course, stand up paddling is super diverse allowing all kinds of watery escapades. Flat water piloting often serving to end the boredom (as much as possible) for those riders wanting more from their time afloat. After a while, however, even flat water SUPing doesn’t quite cut the mustard so what next then?

Bungee SUP!

Armed with a length of bungee (8mm thick should suffice) with a loop or handle attached to one end you’re free to secure the springy rope to a fixed object. Then it’s a case of hauling the bungee back until it’s taught. Once loaded he/she should either lock the handle off whilst they ready themsleves aboard their SUP or get ready to pounce (jump) onto their machine as the bungee recoils. Once up the spring loaded nature of the bungee will pull riders for as long as the recoil power lasts. And that’s as much as how long the bungee is as anything. The longer the bungee the more you’ll have to walk back to load it up. But the longer the ride.

No wind or waves Bungee SUPin for additional summer fun 2
Stretching the bungee ready to recoil and SUP!

Deep water starts, such as off a dock, pontoon, riverbank or rock are arguable easier as SUPers will already have their feet on the board. For those looking to hop up from the beach or shallow water timing is everything with accurate foot placement also being a thing. It’s arguably trickier this way and requires bang on depth of water measurement. Not too deep that you can’t hop up but not too shallow the fin grounds out.

Whether you start your bungee SUP run from deep or shallow water a slight back foot weight bias will be needed to offset the forward pull of the taught line. Otherwise, you run the risk of being hauled over the front. But bungee SUP’s extremely doable for most paddlers who’ve had some time aboard their ‘ship’. And that goes for inflatables as well as hard shell SUPs – as you can see in the accompanying pics where a McConks Go Free 9’8 is being ridden.

What you’ll need for bungee SUP fun.

  • A length of around 8mm thick bungee. It needs to be fairly long otherwise you’ll have no room and no length of ride. So 20 metres plus.
  • In the pics you can see a waterski/wakeboard handle being used as this spreads the load when gripping. You don’t have to do this as a loop on the bungee itself will do the job.
  • Snap shackles or caribenas are worth having as this makes it easy to attach your bungee line to fixed objects, such as channel marker posts as in the pics. You could use something like a Danforth anchor attached to an inflatable mooring buoy to increase the amount of bungee SUP options you have.
  • A stand up paddle board (obviously) with paddle attached to the deck if you’re not comfortable holding the bungee in one and your paddle in the other.

At the start of this article we used the word versatility. Stand up paddle boarding is indeed that with bungee SUP being yet another fun avenue you can head down. Let us know how you get on if you decide to try bungee SUPing for yourself or if you have any tips of your own to make things like this easier.

Check out part of these bungee SUP articles via the link below –

Check out more articles like this over on McConks’ SUP Knowledge Hub –

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