The SUP board market is gradually becoming truly unmanageable. Every year, a multitude of new brands and supposed innovations come onto the market. But what actually makes a touring SUP a good touring board? What criteria should it fulfill and which points are really important? It is impossible to find a generally valid answer to this!
Our approach is, of course, to introduce you to boards that we have actually tested. We have paddled the boards over long distances and have also undertaken multi-day tours with some of them. For us, touring doesn't just mean getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible, but SUP touring always means "adventure" in our eyes.
The journey is the destination
We would like to use the somewhat hackneyed saying "The journey is the reward". So it's not primarily about speed and we have therefore defined our evaluation criteria differently. But let's start with the basic question: What distinguishes a touring SUP from other SUP shapes?
Typical features of a touring SUP
Touring SUPs are designed to cover long distances on the board. They are built longer and narrower for higher speed, better directional stability and a longer glide phase between paddle strokes. As additional support for these characteristics, touring SUPs, especially hardboards, usually have a displacement hull. The sharp cut nose allows touring boards to cut through choppy water and small waves while maintaining speed and course. On the other hand, it makes them more vulnerable to heavy weather conditions and strong side waves.In this article, we will mainly focus on inflatable touring boards, as they are superior to hardboards in some respects, especially on multi-day tours.
Hardboard or iSUP for long tours?
There's no question about it: we're SUP nerds and prefer hardboards for our daily SUP trips. BUT especially for long, multi-day SUP tours and SUP adventures, iSUPs have the edge over inflatable touring boards. Anyone who has ever had to carry their SUP around a lock or heave the board over a high edge out of the harbor basin knows exactly what we're talking about. Landing on rocky shores to set up camp will bring you to the brink of a nervous breakdown with a hardboard. It's easy to hit your nose against a rock or your stern against the edge of the shore. Chipped paint or even holes are the result. An iSUP is usually not only lighter, but also much more robust than a hardboard. It can also be packed up quickly, for example to cover a short distance on public transport.
A not insignificant advantage that is especially interesting for BAJAO: You can use the board as a sleeping mat and build your BAJAO Cabin on it, so you can sleep on your SUP.
One disadvantage is of course that you are very limited in terms of the shapes of the SUP with an iSUP. A real displacement hull cannot be created with drop stitch. You always have round rails and a round nose. However, since we are not looking for total performance when touring, this disadvantage is less important than the advantages. In addition, iSUPs are cheaper to buy than hardboards.
Length matters, as the sailor says. A longer board runs faster and straighter. So simple, so accurate. The disadvantage: it's harder to turn. No big deal, just take a step back, lift the nose out of the water, do a tight turn and off you go on a wild ride. If it weren't for the luggage in front of us, which pushes the nose down vehemently, and the luggage behind us, which just doesn't let us step far enough back. That's why the length of a touring SUP is not always the deciding factor. A length of 12.6 has become the standard. But shorter touring SUPs can also make sense, especially for lighter or smaller paddlers. You should find the right length of SUP for you. If you want to go faster and accept the less maneuverability, go for a 14-foot board. If you prefer to be a bit more agile and speed is of secondary importance, then you can also enjoy an 11.6 or 12. The happy medium is still a 12.6.
With hardboards, things are of course completely different, because here you can choose between a flat deck, a dugout, with or without a hump, etc. But as already mentioned, we will concentrate on this in this article.
The right width of a touring SUP
In recent years we have increasingly observed that touring SUPs are becoming narrower and narrower. iSUPs with widths of less than 28 inches are no longer a rarity. 26-inch boards are now also called touring SUPs. What was still called a race board a few years ago is now classified as a touring board. This trend completely misses the actual purpose of touring SUPs and shows that many manufacturers misinterpret the touring sector, completely neglect it or have no idea. A touring board can be 30 - 34 inches wide. We can already hear the outcry from the SUP scene: 34 inches? I might as well paddle on a door. Bullshit! We are not talking about sport tourers that are built to paddle against the clock. We're talking about purebred touring SUPs that have to offer enough volume to carry weight, have space for luggage and offer sufficient stability so that the slightest choppy water doesn't send you splashing. Once again: SUP touring is not for speed junkies, but for adventurers. And hand on heart, anyone who is afraid of going too slow on a 33-inch board needs a technique course rather than a narrower board. Also: have you ever tried paddling a touring SUP with luggage in a little side wave? Then you know exactly what we're talking about. That brings us to the next point: taking luggage with you.
Luggage transport on a touring SUP
If you are planning a longer SUP tour, you will of course need to have room for luggage on your board. Almost every SUP has luggage nets on the front third to store your belongings. The classic is the bungee strap, which is stretched between four to six D-rings. With a well-designed touring SUP, you have another luggage net at the rear to store even more luggage.
Some brands offer luggage nets that prevent luggage from rolling out sideways. This is useful if you have a lot of items underneath your luggage, such as water bottles, etc. On a tour, however, you will usually carry your equipment in a waterproof bag, so this feature is only a nice-to-have. It is more important that you can secure all of the items securely and firmly. So tightly that they stay firmly on the board even if the boat capsizes. After all, you don't want to have to go diving for the bag with your fresh underwear and toothbrush after you've hoisted yourself back onto the board.
Ideally, you should choose a luggage system that can be firmly anchored to the existing brackets. Unfortunately, there aren't many really good ones on the market yet, but we're working on it.
The position of the luggage net is also important. On some boards, the luggage nets are unnecessarily far forward, which pushes the nose down too much when carrying heavy luggage and makes the board unstable. It also makes no sense to position the luggage net too close to the center of the board, i.e. close to the handle. This unnecessarily restricts your freedom of movement.
Fin setup for touring SUP
It's hotly debated and yet it's so simple: you only need a center fin for a touring SUP. Here, too, we're seeing trends from various manufacturers that are adding side fins to the touring SUP. We're talking about these small fins, to the right and left of the large fin in the middle. To put it bluntly: this is unnecessary nonsense! The center fin is enough to give your board stability and to keep it in direction. The side fins increase the pack size unnecessarily (when rolling up the board) and are more of a nuisance than a help.
A touring fin is more important, as it offers a little more surface area than a sickle fin. However, this fin only has a moderate influence if the paddling technique is not right.
We favor the classic and tried-and-tested US box fin system. You can get a replacement fin in any surf shop for little money if something breaks. Slide-in fins or even more unorthodox systems generally offer less stability and often have sharp edges. In addition, such fins are often made of soft material and therefore break more easily than even cheap composite fins.
By the way, sidefins are almost never installed on touring hardboards.
We don’t really want to go into detail about individual brands, but in this case we’ll make an exception:
Brand new and only known to us from RedPaddle: Instead of a center fin, two fins are installed next to each other. Both are only slightly smaller than a center fin. The advantage that the manufacturer expects from this: better straight-line stability and less draft. We can confirm both after testing, but it also makes maneuvering more difficult. A pivot turn can help, but this is almost impossible with a lot of luggage on the board. The special feature of RedPaddle touring boards is the V-shape in the hull. This was not invented by RedPaddle (we had already known about the process two years earlier from other companies), but it has been consistently implemented in the new Voyager series.