Rob Mousley

San Francisco: 96 athletes from 11 countries will line up later today to race the new US Surfski Championships course, among them a fair selection of the best surfski paddlers in the world today.

Picture it: you're surfing down perfect 4ft waves, linking sequence after sequence with a cracking 25kt breeze at your back... on a river!  On the Columbia River in Washington State, USA to be precise.

It's that time again - for the next few days the surfski.info back-end is being updated to the latest version of Joomla...  We have to do this in order to fend off the hordes of evil spammers and hackers.  The forum has to go down while this happens.  Thanks for your patience.

If you're ever on the water in Sydney Australia, and you see a large red blob thrashing its way towards you on a surfski, odds are that it's the famous (or is it infamous?) Fat Paddler... It was my privilege to meet the Fat Paddler a few weeks ago - thrashing its way across the crystal clear blue waters of Mauritius and this week's video is the story of how FP and his PO (Propaganda Officer) found themselves about to be crushed by the notorious monster waves of Le Morne...

This is a great little video from the Epic training centre in Tarifa, Spain.  What stands out for me is the look of the conditions - beautifully shaped, big waves, cracking downwind...  

Here's a great little clip from Vancouver, Canada.  I'm not sure who the paddlers are but I think I recognise a certain Think-er in there and I'm guessing Bob Putnam is on the water too.

The monthly paddling magazine show Best 4 Beyond the Paddle is broadcast on SuperSport to its subscriber base and is now partnered by a monthly live web streaming chat show that is designed to compliment the satellite broadcast. Largely talk driven, it features a studio guest and the opportunity for viewers to interact with the studio panel via Twitter Facebook or email. Catch all the details at www.beyondthepaddle.co.za

What do you get if you take a tiny South Pacific Nation, mix this with a (borderline obsessive-compulsive) national fervor for all-things-adventure-sport, add a pinch of tight exchange-rates, stir in a very precise quantity of hi-tech engineering prowess, and ladle in a generous dollop of gutsy, dogged determination to out-perform countries 10 times their size (and budget!) on a world stage?

The answer is quite possibly Flow-Kayak’s latest offering, the long awaited Superstar!

The email was brief: “Newsflash - Richard was attacked by a shark. He is safe, but his surfski is seriously damaged (entire rudder system trashed).”  Later came an update: “Richard is safe, though he had to stop 3 times on his paddle today to empty his boat. “

Transcribe the accumulated wisdom of two of the best surfski paddlers in the world, add some truly stunning photographs, and in case that’s not enough, make things even more clear with beautifully executed diagrams.  That’s SURFSKI with the Pros in a nutshell.