Stand Up Paddling World Record in the Amazon!

Mr Naish sets a new world record - Bank to bank: 1476ft!
If we told you someone had set a new world record for stand up paddling, in the Amazon on a tidal bore. You would be forgiven for assuming we were talking about the longest ride of a wave. Well sorry, that’s not it, but the feat is notable (if not more so) none-the-less.

Robby Naish, (yeah, that old guy who owns a pretty big stand up paddling company) broke the world record by surfing from one bank of the river to the other, a distance of 1476 feet, or almost 500m in Aussie measurements. That’s almost half a kilometer wide, and he did it while surfing one wave. The challenge of achieving such a feat is as follows:

First, the tidal bore is a phenomenon that only a few places in the world ever get to see, and even fewer get big enough to surf. What happens is the incoming tide is so strong, and the river is shaped in such a unique way that the incoming sea water rises up over the still outgoing river, it forms a wave that runs slowly upstream until it eventually dissipates or the tide turns, whichever comes first.

Tidal bore waves are strongest near the shoreline, or near any section of shallow water. This makes riding them along the rubbish-laden shoreline easy, but as soon as a stand up paddler (or surfer) tries to get away from the bank, they face the problem of a wave that gets weaker and weaker. Not a problem if the river is only 50m wide like most that feature tidal bores, but when we’re talking about half a kilometer, that’s a long way.

So congratulations to Mr Naish for achieving one of his life-long goals of setting a world record. Watch the video below to see how he did it, and may it inspire you to think of new ways to set world records on your stand up paddle board.