Beginner’s SUP

This. I bought MrsRNP a Lidl/Mistral board during lockdown as it was the latest Insta fad. Me and the dog have used it more than she has! Must be lots on ebay/Marketplace?

I don’t know any better but our Lidl inflates and floats/paddles okay🤷‍♂️

That’s what we have too. One has a very slow leak under the deck pad that I keep meaning to fix (loses about 3psi overnight) but otherwise they’ve been great. Might not be stiff enough for waves, but that’s a common thing to most inflatable SUP’s, they all slap a fair bit.

Electric pumps are fine but my god they are slow. Like hand pump another one and get ready and tidy up and wait a bit and bobs your uncle it’s ready.

And flipping anti social! I often elect not to use ours because the noise ruins the quiet of the place you’ve gone for peace and quiet for other folk.

Red do (or did, not looked for a while) a splitter/divider thingy so you could simultaneously manually and electrically pump it up. Too expensive for me to justify but one day I’ll model and 3D print my own version.

These leccy pumps aren’t cheap are they !

Also incredibly noisy. Like can’t hear what the person next to you is shouting at you noisy.

Yeah hand pumping can be hard, but it’s a good warm up.

risking it flapping about like that matress

They’re as good as solid if pumped up correctly. I keep mine inflated in the garage and stick it on the roof bars if I’m going somewhere I can stay below 50mph to get to. It’s never shifted an inch. But then I do make sure I twang the straps and say “yep, that’s not going anywhere” everytime I do it just to be sure.

It’s quicker by hand that my leccy pump, and it gets you nicely warm before you set off. It’s only really a problem if you’re doing more than 1 or the weather is hot, in which case I find it to be a sweatfest

I often pump it up at home and chuck it in the van (on your roof would be fine). I use the pump to get it inflated to size, maybe up to about 3psi, then I use my compressor to get it up to pressure. I have a little set of adaptors that work really quite well

My friend has one of the adaptors where you can plug two pumps into one board.  There were some very puerile comments made when she got that out.  They work though, we got a late arrival’s board pumped up in no time.

Pleased to say the SUP had arrived and is ‘like new’ – it’s in the original box, but the box if a bit tatty so I expect this is a return that’s been sat around. Accessories haven’t been out the bag, not a mark on the paddle. Just a couple of marks on the board from being folded up and stored – looks to be in the original wrapping TBH.

Looks like we are being kicked off our caravan site in three weeks (static van is 20 years old) so the SUP will be travelling a bit more than intended and off to pastures new, rather than just North Wales.

@fossy – where did you get the refurbished kit from please? Cheers

ebay – seller Clear Cycle UK

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/shopwithclearcycle

PS I got sent an ‘offer’ after looking at them, and coupled that with a 15% off voucher from ebay.  So at least wait for ‘offers’.

It’s not the stiffness that makes inflatables poor on the face of a wave. The sides are nearly square so there is no rail to push down to enable a turn. You are forced to use the paddle and body weight, but they will never surf like a rigid. Rocker is built into dedicated wave SUPs which also helps.

You can catch a wave and ride it in , but you will be limited to what you can do once up on the face. Basically running along on it , in pretty much a straight line.

It’s New SUP Day here (well new to me anyway).  Picked up an ex-demo Fanatic Ray Air Premium with carbon 35 paddle for £550, one of these –

Fanatic Ray Air Premium / Carbon 35 Paddle Package