The Gorge

Standup paddling on a specialized downwind board in good conditions is equally as satisfying as a good day of surfing perfect waves. Photo: Dana Edmunds

Anyone who enjoys downwind standup paddleboard runs usually found on the ocean—places like the Moloka’i Channel between Moloka’i and O’ahu, the run between Hawai’i Kai and Waikiki, Maliko Gulch to Kahului, Maui to Moloka’i Pailolo channel, the Na Pali coast of Kaua’i—might be surprised to know that one of the best runs can be found far from the ocean on a river: the Columbia River.

The Columbia River has a lot of history. It’s the same one Lewis and Clark followed on the last leg of their transcontinental expedition 200 years ago. Now it forms a natural border between the states of Oregon and Washington. Just at the base of the north face of Mount Hood and on the banks of the Columbia sits the town of Hood River. In the 1980s, Hood River became well known among windsurfers as a great venue for their sport. Kite surfing blossomed in the 1990s, and another decade later, along came an unlikely sporting endeavor that also took to the strong winds so prevalent in the spring, summer, and fall seasons: standup paddling.

It might seem that ideal conditions for standup paddling include little or no wind, but on the contrary, with a specialized downwind board, there is nothing like a run on water with a strong tailwind and the swells and waves formed by the blowing wind. This is a form of surfing where no territorial imperatives exist, everyone has all the space they need, and in today’s crowded world, that sort of surfing experience is increasingly difficult to find.

Waves of this type are very close interval, consistent, moving fast, and not for the faint of heart when the wind gusts hit forty miles per hour. Steve Gates at the Big Winds shop and Naish standup paddleboards get together every August to put on a two-day event, and this year the wind conditions couldn’t have been better. On Saturday, the wind was light, making for an excellent round-the-buoys course race. Early Sunday, the wind kicked in like gangbusters, and it was game on for the downwind event.

The course from Viento State Park to the Hood River Event Site in town is about eight miles. The paddlers run upstream against the current that helps to create the waves. With the winds averaging thirty-plus, it was going to be a wild ride. The start of any elite race is always an awesome sight. Perhaps the most inspiring part is the stroke rate the top racers generate while trying to pull ahead. I get tired just watching the blur of the paddles and thinking of the heart rates and oxygen depletion the paddlers must be experiencing. In no time, the elite field was gone and the open paddlers began to line up for their start.

The start in any type of racing is always critical. In a standup paddleboard race, the racers’ boards and paddles bang and knock into each other, and this first moment is pure mayhem. The idea is to get a quick start and jump ahead of the field. Of course, everyone else is attempting to do the same thing and pandemonium generally ensues. Sometimes the boards are so close together one is not able to even put one’s paddle into the water. One person will fall into the next, and it can be like dominoes. I usually try to get between two people I know so at least we won’t try to foul each other, though just about anything goes in a start.

We all stood next to our boards, waist deep, watching Steve, who would signal the start. I had my headphones on, but I saw Steve yell and everyone moved. I still can’t believe my luck, but I pushed off, jumped first to my knees … and caught a wave. That put me just ahead of the two boards to either side of me. When I put my paddle in for the first stroke, I caught another wave and again I surged ahead. There were over a hundred paddlers shoulder to shoulder, board to board, and just like that I was a couple of board lengths ahead.

“Baby Please Don’t Go” by Them was blasting through my headphones, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Someone from the right was angling toward me, and at the last moment I switched my paddle to the left so it wouldn’t get trapped between the boards, J-stroked hard to stay left, and braced for the impact. The boards bumped, he went down, and I was away. Another stroke, another wave, I was in clear water and able to paddle strong and clean. I had the kind of start everyone dreams of.

Let’s be clear. I’m not a racer: I’m a guy who paddles in races. I come because I like to hang out and rub shoulders with all the real racers, but I just got the start of a lifetime. A fast start and a fast run is the nature of this venue: the Gorge rocks.

Equipment is a key part in this type of paddling. The wind waves are not steep and seldom break, and some finesse is required not only to catch the waves but also to stay riding on them as long as possible. Something one never should do in a race is to try anything new; however, I just got my first production sample of a new fourteen-foot board I shaped and I was dying to give it a shot. When I saw the forecast for the strong wind, I wavered a bit, thinking a more familiar board might be prudent, but the more I stared at the shape of my new board, the better it looked. Every time I paddled it in the local river, I felt how stable and forgiving it was. In rough conditions, these two traits are a premium, especially in a river where the waves come from all sides, current eddies come into play, and the short interval buries the nose into the wave ahead almost before one can react.

On this new board I had shaped a displacement bow feeding into a planing hull with a slight concave amidships. The advantage of a displacement hull is that it requires less effort to move. A planing hull works best when riding a wave, but before one can ride that wave, one needs to catch it first. The concave adds stability when paddling in a parallel stance. The outline plan shape is also distinct. Most race boards feature a narrow, sharp nose, wide point amidships or behind center, and a lot of curve in the tail to compensate for the lack of wideness up front. My board looked more like a 1970s outline with a wider nose, centered wide point, and straighter lines out the back half of the template.

My design theory goes back to my single fins at the Pipeline, in contrast to the more modern thruster shapes that favor the narrow nose and more hips in the tail. I always felt the narrow nose took away paddling to increase a quicker turning ability when up and riding. Just like at the Pipeline, in the open ocean, or river wind swell, my prime concern was catching the wave rather than performance once the wave was caught. The secret of successful downwind paddling is letting the waves do most of the work, but you have to catch them first. Downwind running is its own kind of animal; in the right conditions and on the right equipment, it sure makes distance paddling fun and exciting.

I got into this kind of ocean-swell paddling on a prone board in the 1980s and built a lot of boards to maximize the catch and glide. The first thing we learned on the prone paddleboards was that we weren’t able to paddle fast enough to catch swells that seldom broke, or even got steep. Utilizing a full displacement hull shape—round-bottomed like a sailboat—we were able to use the push of the swell combined with a coordinated paddle stroke to catch the bumps. Riding them became a problem because the round bottom was like lying on a log; it just wanted to roll over at speed. Creating some drag with a foot or an arm outstretched like an outrigger gave some stability, but to the uninitiated, these boards were very difficult to keep upright even in flat water. Paddling them with power and at speed took a lot of getting used to.

The modern prone paddleboard has evolved into a shape similar to the standup boards; stability is paramount because the option of knee paddling is essential for long distances. Standing with a paddle offers more leverage and speed than lying down, or kneeling, and paddling with the hands. A surfski or an OC-1 are the most efficient single-man craft for paddling downwind, but riding a standup is a lot of fun because it is so similar to board surfing.

My pretty little start was just a matter of that displacement bow taking advantage of the push of the swell and having the board start to go on its own. Most of the other race designs use variations of planing hull shapes and need some horsepower to get up on a plane. In the confusion of a mass start, it is difficult to get clean, full-power strokes when everyone is so close together.

I knew there were a lot of strong paddlers in the field. I had paddled with a few of the guys before, and they were fast and experienced on this course. But anything can, and usually does, happen at the start. So just like that, in the first minute of the race, there were only about six people ahead of me.

The glides were one after the other. It’s hard to imagine that waves would come in sets on a river, but just like in the ocean, that’s how it was. When one came, it was certain there would be several more behind it. The tail of the board would lift, the surfer would give a couple of quick strokes to connect, make a swift shift from a parallel stance into a surf stance, take the rapid drop into the trough, maybe take another step back to keep the nose from going under, maybe moving all the way back to the tail to keep the nose up, and as the trough began to flatten and fill up, take another few steps forward, combined with some hard paddling to try to bridge the gap and use the speed to transfer into the wave ahead. Sometimes the board would plane across the flat, climb over the wave in front, and drop down another one. Back in my prone paddling days, we used to call this railroading. Other times the jump back forward would be too late and the wave would get away.

The way I designed the nose, if I wasn’t quick enough and the nose did bury into the back of the wave, the board would stall, slowing down and letting the wave catch up again. Other board designs use a lot of nose kick to keep from pearl diving, but too much rocker can push water and be slow. Some boards use a variation of a displacement hull, like on a fishing trawler, with a pronounced vee in the nose to split the water; this can track one way while the paddler is expecting to go the other. On all the race boards in heavy downwind conditions, one needs to be quick and light on his feet. My round-bottom nose would bury but still lift; the deep vee on the deck would let any water coming over the top drain quickly away to the side. As long as I didn’t get thrown off balance forward, I would just wait for the tail to lift again and reconnect with the wave.

In a way, this is one of the most subtle forms of wave riding. Only by becoming sensitized to this light push and glide can one put together long, connected rides. At times, a gust of wind would try to blow the paddle out of my hands as I reached for another stroke. I had to keep a firm grip with my lower hand on the return, or the wind would turn my blade before I could get it back into the water and I would miss my stroke. On some of the bigger waves, the down angle of the drop would be pretty steep, and I found myself standing on the tail with a lot of board ahead of me. Yet from the tail, I could turn easily and aim for the tallest point of the bump in front.

Generally the peak of each succeeding wave would line up, but without a look behind, the only way to gauge the biggest part of the wave I was riding was by watching the wave ahead. In the open ocean, the swells come from either side, sometimes going left and other times going right. In the river, this effect was more pronounced. One moment I would be heading to the Washington side and the next toward Oregon. The difficulty was not getting to the back of the board, where I could steer, quickly enough, because while I was being pushed hard to the left, suddenly another swell from the opposite side would sneak in and try to roll me over. If I did it right, I would be on the tail, turn back right, and be going the other way. My track zigged and zagged from one side to the other, never running in a straight line.

The other great thing about a course like this is that there really isn’t all that much paddling involved—just a couple of quick strokes here, a few there, a lot of footwork, back and forth to trim the board, using the speed from the wave to keep the board in the swell and the glides long.

About a month before, while recovering from a broken heel, I came up and went for a downwind run with Steve and his gang. I was on a prone board, since I wasn’t able to stand up without the aid of crutches. My board, a twelve-foot—state of the art in 1980—hollow, superlight shape, had me feeling pretty confident about having a good run. The water level was high, so there was a strong current, but the wind was blowing hard, and as we drove down to the launch, we could easily see the corduroy-like lines of waves in the river.

A fourteen-foot board will catch almost every ripple that comes by. Photos: Dana Edmunds

We shoved off and right away I began to connect some glides. Before standup, this is how we used to do it, and it was great back then. But lying down is not comfortable, and my two hands do not come close to the area of a paddle blade. The standup boards walked away. If I stopped paddling at all, the current took me backward. After a while, I remembered why I never went on the prone boards anymore once we started to standup paddle. To make a long story short, a couple of hours later I finally made it to the finish site. It took me twice as long as it would have on my standup paddleboard. My wife had my crutches ready for me at the water’s edge. As she grabbed my board, concern was written all over her face because of how long the paddle had taken me. I told her I hoped to never do this paddle on my belly again.

Back at the race, the course and conditions were great, which was a good thing because I had not done much paddling before the event. Had some hard work been required, I would have choked. I got in ahead of most of my friends, had time to catch my breath, and watch them come into the finish. Almost all told me about the rough conditions dumping them off their boards repeatedly. I smiled, thinking about how stable my board had felt throughout the entire run. I love everything about that new board, from the shape to the cool-looking paint job. I had already toweled it dry, put it back into the bag, and had it strapped on to the car.

From now on, I plan to keep closer tabs on the Gorge wind forecasts because any run even remotely like this one we just enjoyed is guaranteed to be memorable. Like surfing, no two sessions are quite alike, but that is one of the big attractions: You just never know what’s going to happen. As in life, no matter what gets thrown in your path, it always seems to work best to just keep paddling.

Rory Russell and I debate how to best tie our boards on the rack. The last thing we wanted was to arrive at wherever we were going to find our surfboards gone, a common occurrence in the days before specialized surfboard racks. Photo: Art Brewer