STAND UP PADDLING with Mark Jackson
Our regular Stand Up Paddling (SUP) contributor is the energetic Mark Jackson, North Shore native and owner of Stand Up South Pacific Ltd, who is helping to introduce SUP to Aotearoa and especially to his Hauraki/Takapuna home town. In this issue he profiles a local Taka lady who's fallen in love with Stand Up Paddling…
STRAY KAT STRUT
A classic rubber neck glance and you’d peg Katherine as the blonde bombshell 'with her McLean’s showing'. Look further and you'll find that this North Shore Mum has a "Stray Kat Strut" that’s not on the cat walk but rather on a Stand Up Paddling (SUP) board.
Katherine Heatley won her division in the SUP races at the State (Takapuna) Beach Series last summer and since we profiled the Houghton brothers – Mark Houghton won his division in the world famous 'Battle of the Paddle' in Honolulu Hawaii – we think it fitting to have their neighbour Katherine tell us her story. Not all women are from Venus! Here’s what this Martian has to say about the planetary experiences that led her to SUP and her thoughts and feelings about the sport.
"I'm an extreme sports person and if I had seen people paddling around in the flat water at Takapuna I would have thought that this sport was too boring for me," says Katherine. "But fortunately I was trying to get my children, or one of them, at least into surfing in Hawaii and was in awe watching this new craze of people standing on their SUP boards having a fantastic time surfing on these waves, which looked easy and I thought – now this looks like my kind of sport."
"When I got home to New Zealand I went on the hunt for an SUP board. I just had to have one."
"I first tried it on Lake Pupuke and had my little boy sit on the front and thought this is great but was chopping at the bit for some waves. Unfortunately I decided to go out for my second paddle in a storm thinking I was going to just get out and surf the waves. Well, I couldn't even balance to stand up and did the paddle of shame back to shore.
"There's a lot more to the sport than I ever realised. Not just trying to surf, but learning to balance on the board and the technique of paddling which is challenging in itself. What I like about the sport is it's not as hard on your back as you would think. You are using all parts of your body to balance and get the power behind your paddle. You need good core strength, and if you don't have that at first, the more you paddle the better your core strength will become – it's fantastic.
"During the State Beach Series last summer we had different conditions to paddle in, sometimes with a sizable swell, which sorted out the novices from the hard core experienced paddlers over the gruelling 3km race. If you want to do well in the race you also need to be fit as you can be as your strength only lasts for so long before you will fade unless you have good endurance. So doing longer paddles and even down-wind paddles are good for training and make it a worth while experience.
"My partner and I even took the boards to Westhaven and put them in one beautiful Sunday and did a paddle out under the Harbour Bridge, then paddled into the Viaduct, put our boards up on the wharf, and went in for a Corona. Then we jumped back on our boards and paddled back to the car. So paddle boarding has so many variations of ways you can use them even to taking a picnic down to the beach one evening and padding in the sunset in serene conditions just breathing in the salt sea air meditating. It can be very therapeutic."
Thanks Katherine. It's great to hear it from the girls with the attitude “anything you can do I can do!". Loads of people are realising that the buzz we all get from SUP is empowerment all on it’s own – whether you’re male or female, younger or older. It’s that antidote to civilisation that has you rediscovering yourself and realising you don't have that fear of flying. It transforms your SUP board into your 'love boat'.
Let me tell you something really subversive. Love is everything it’s cracked up to be! I love my wife’s statement about SUP... "I just wanna go and paddle”. Short, sharp, true – just like her. So, Harry Belafonte was right! The women are smarter.
And another thing – See the feature on Babes on Boards in this issue. Katherine Heatley is the driving force behind this exciting new initiative for Stand Up Paddling.
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