“It’s not quite as dangerous as it looks,” says Mike Tavares, a part-time Chattanoogan and whitewater paddleboarder.
This month, Tavares and girlfriend Haley Mills will lead the first-ever Whitewater SUP Tour by Boardworks hitting spots in Alabama and North Carolina before heading west to Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah.
Mike TavaresCalifornia-based Boardworks and a host of other companies are riding a wave of popularity for stand-up paddleboarding, also known as SUP. It’s tough to pin down paddleboarding sales numbers or other statistics, but those in the industry say it’s growing fast. “Talking to people in other paddleboard shops, they seem to see the sport double every year,” says Mark Baldwin, owner of L2 Boards on Market Street.
But the whitewater version, which uses a shorter board along with elbow and knee pads, remains a small sect of devoted wave seekers for the time being. “Whitewater stand-up is really kind of a niche thing right now,” Tavares says.
With the Boardworks tour and the discipline’s growing popularity, some rivers could soon be standing room only.