There is no water sport that is growing in popularity faster than paddleboarding. You’re starting to see paddleboarders in New Jersey and other unlikely places. You can take paddleboarding lessons in almost any coastal community, and paddle board rentals NJ are now commonplace. The surge has been so sudden and dramatic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that paddleboarding is a relatively new sport.
But you would also be mistaken. It’s an activity almost as old as similar sports like surfing, and even older than popular pastimes such as wake boarding, skim boarding, boogey boarding, and more.
It all began in an appropriate place: in the Polynesian islands of the Pacific Ocean.
When Captain James Cook arrived in Tahiti in 1769, the Polynesians were doing something unusual to his European eyes. The native people were propelling themselves across the ocean waters on long planks, either standing on them while waves pushed them along or sitting on their knees pushing themselves along with their hands.
Europeans had encountered the world’s first surfers.
In fact, the Polynesians had been riding on planks and canoe hulls for far longer than that, a practice that probably dates back about a thousand years. They would use what we would not call paddleboards to travel between nearby islands or to cruise across calm waters, paddling along with great endurance. Soon Westerners took interest.
First, surfing had to get popular.
In the early 1900s, George Freeth became the “Father of Modern Surfing,” refining the activity into something more recognizable to today’s people and helping to popularize it. He was a sensation, and soon so was his chosen pastime. Before long, surfing took hold and began to spread across the world.
In the 1920s, Thomas Edward Blake worked to restore historic Hawaiian boards for a museum specializing in Polynesian artifacts and history, the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu. By the 1930s, he had invented an entirely new board by hollowing out and covering a classic style heavy surf board like the ancient Polynesians used. He then took to the waters and proceeded to smash record after record in paddleboarding competitions.
Modern paddleboarding had been born.
Blake continued to refine his board designs, promoting them as a tool to assist lifeguards. It made sense. These boards were light, easy to transport, and allowed the rider to move across calm waters not just quickly, but over long distances. Covering 20 miles is a relatively easy task for an experienced rider.
Still, paddleboarding did not take hold as quickly as surfing did. That sport kept growing over the decades, but paddleboarding was slower to grow.
In the 1980s, lifeguard races in Los Angeles caught the attention of a local entrepreneur, Craig Lockwood, who began to mass produce the boards. Others followed suit, starting their own board manufacturing companies. More races were created and drew new interest. It took some time, but by the late 1990s paddleboarding was again on the rise – and in the last decade, that rise has become meteoric. It’s the fastest growing water sport today, spreading to all corners of the globe and attracting people with its balance between surfing’s thrills and the calm of kayaking.
Want to know for yourself why it’s so popular? Find a local paddleboard rental and get out on the water to see!