I was trying to get some pictures of the old "Crocker Skis" that were popular in Durban in the 1950s and came accross some interesting articles

www.sunworship.com.au/stand-up-paddling/

http://www.surfingheritage.co.za/site/1938_fred_crocker

Here are some extracts from these links:

"The Crocker Ski came in when I was in the war. That was about 1943."

"It is not really known when SUP boarding first originated, but I first became aware of it in the late 1940's.

Living on the eastern seaboard of South Africa in a little town very well known for its excellent surf, East London, I was attracted to the sea at a very early age. Australia was always well ahead of South Africa in the experimentation and development of sea craft and about 1950 we became aware that the Australian Surf Lifesaving Association had developed a craft which closely resembles the craft that we are now riding.

It was 9ft long, 36 inches wide and 4 to 5 inches deep with quite a good front and back lift with a fairly large centre keel. The Australians used it for rescues - the patient would lie between the feet of the paddler who would have to hold on for dear life. The craft was also used for pleasure, of course.

In 1949 the South African Lifesaving team competed in Oz and brought back the dimensions of the craft. I immediately started experimenting making proto types -firstly using wooden struts and canvas and progressed to wood veneer covering the wooden frame of struts and then eventually blowing my own blanks using the exothermic characteristics of caradol and carodate and covering with fiber glass.
There were a very small group of us in East London who surfed at that time.

The Kroker Ski, as we called it, became a popular craft during the 1950's and persisted into the mid '60's until the popularity of the long board took over and towards the end of the '60,s , the short board.

The Kroker ski was confined to the back of the garage and eventually disappeared. With development of lighter and stronger materials, the modern SUP made its appearance in Hawaii - where else? It quickly caught on across the world and especially in Australia as it is the ideal versatile sea craft."





Intresting...

I used to have one and it was a lot of fun. My brother and I used to do tandem on it as it was a pretty big beast. A friend of mine had a "high performance" model and he used to rip on it. I used to wonder why more people didn't surf them. They just kind of faded away. Now we have the modern SUP craze so its all happening again - paddle assisted surfing.