Crack on my Epic Wing

Hi,

I jumped into surf ski last month, after 20 years of whitewater and slalom paddling. I bought a used Epic V10 sport ultra and a new Epic Signature Hybrid (small wing).
Unfortunately, on my 6th paddle (and 1st real downwind!) I saw that one blade had a crack
Since I'm sure I didn't hit any rock, it seems just as if it didn't handle the pressure I putted while bracing in the pretty big conditions we had in the bay area these days. So I wonder if anybody had a similar issue and if the Signature Hybrid construction is known to be particularly "fragile"?
Indeed I hesitated with the full carbon version but I only considered rigidity and weight, I didn't expect to break it

You can see the crack is quite important on these pictures:

Take it back Jokey, it will be under warranty with only 6 paddles on it. I recently broke the shaft on my Epic small mid hybrid but it was about 4 years old and well out of warranty period.

Yeah I already asked my reseller (CCK Oakland, they're great, BTW) and they'll sent it back to Epic for inspection. I still wonder if the hybrid build is weak "by design" or if I was just unlucky with this one...

I've just checked the shaft on my other Epic hybrid and it has two cracks just outside the hand placing, I won't be using that paddle again, I was 15km off shore in the weekend with this paddle, sure glad it didn't break on me then. The hybrid is supposed to be their strongest shaft, I'll be checking my two carbon Epics closely tomorrow.