How paddleboarding conquered Britain: the delights and dangers of the nation’s fastest-growing sport

Pamela Muirhead had been looking forward to her first paddleboarding session, but the enjoyment lasted all of seven minutes. “Then, pure terror,” she says. She had won a competition for a free session at Maidens beach in Ayrshire, and set off cautiously while her two teenage children and the instructor watched from the shore. After about five minutes, she was attempting to stand up on the board. A few minutes later, “the weather changed very fast”, she says. “The wind really picked up – and the rain.” She found herself quickly drifting out to sea.
Muirhead was swept three miles out, in winds that got up to about 46mph. She tried frantically to paddle back, but didn’t get anywhere. When she stopped, she could feel herself being blown away faster. “The waves were horrific,” she says. The board rocked violently, but she managed to stay seated. “I thought: ‘This is getting really bad.’ I just had to keep myself centred on the board and stay upright. It was my main focus and very draining.”
She was terrified, but kept calm. “I think my prayers were answered and somebody was looking over me, because I was very lucky. I was like: ‘You’re not dying today. My kids need their mum.’ That kept me focused.” Also, she adds with a laugh, “I hadn’t seen the last Line of Duty and I really wanted to watch that, so in my head I was like: ‘You’re not going before that.’”
The instructor had alerted the Coastguard; Muirhead heard a helicopter approach, then a lifeboat operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) appeared. She was freezing cold, exhausted and emotional at the sight of help after 40 minutes out at sea. “I didn’t realise they were voluntary. I’m for ever in their debt for saving my life and for ever grateful.” (Later, she raised more than £1,000 for the charity.) Safely back on land and unharmed except for blisters on her hands from paddling so hard, Muirhead felt “amazing”: “Just knowing that you’re alive and that was not my day to go.”
Last week, the RNLI reported that the number of launches to paddleboarders had nearly tripled in five years, from 52 in 2019 to 155 last year. “Forty per cent of our lifeboat call-outs to stand-up paddleboarders were because of offshore winds and currents,” says Sam Hughes, the national water safety partner at the RNLI. “People are getting caught out in conditions that maybe they weren’t expecting. Offshore winds blow from the land out to sea and they can be hard to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for. It can look beautifully calm and the ideal time to go paddleboarding, but once you get into that wind, it becomes incredibly difficult to return to shore.”
If there are more rescues, it’s because there are more paddleboarders. One report for British Marine, the trade association for the UK leisure, superyacht and small commercial marine industry, found that 3 million people took part at least one or two times in 2022. Muirhead still likes the idea of the sport – the serene images of people gliding through still waters, perhaps with a child or dog on board – but isn’t about to give it another go. “I thought I’d have a new, relaxing hobby, but no.”
Many paddleboarders stress that this is exactly what the activity is like on a good day, with no danger of being blown out to sea. On a warm Wednesday evening, the car park by the River Medway in Tonbridge, Kent, is buzzing with the drone of electric pumps as more than a dozen people pump up their stand-up paddleboards (Sups).
I have joined them for their fortnightly cocktail evening. Fifteen of us slip into the water for a paddle before stopping at a riverside bar for drinks. It is not without drama – one woman falls in and a passing kayaker capsizes and has to be helped by our leader, Julie – but it’s a lovely way to spend a couple of hours. Oak trees shade the river and we paddle behind a flight of dragonflies. On other occasions, Julie has seen otters and bats. Ian, a fellow paddleboarder, has seen lots of kingfishers and a water snake. He used to be a cyclist, but paddleboarders tend to be nicer, he says. Plus, there are no potholes.
Michelle took up the sport 14 years ago to help with her mental health. Her anxiety had become so bad that she could barely leave the house, but paddleboarding with a group helped her get out. Wendy, who has two children “who never stop”, likes it because it’s a couple of calming hours to herself: “It just helps my brain turn off that mental chatter.” I enjoy it for the same reason – being on the water is calming and meditative. I love spotting riverside creatures and peering into narrowboats, while concentrating on staying balanced and moving forwards means it’s hard to think about much else.
Paddleboarding numbers began to soar during the pandemic, says Lee Pooley, the director of recreation and development at Paddle UK, the umbrella paddle sports organisation. “Our membership rose from 32,000 to 90,000 in an 18-month period,” he says. The appeal, according to Pooley, is its relative accessibility. Unlike other water sports, paddleboarding is easy to learn; you can be travelling through water within a few minutes. Hiring a paddleboard costs from £25 an hour and most rental companies insist people have had previous Sup experience, though they may not verify this.
“It’s amazing what you see,” says Pooley. “It’s quiet, there’s no motor, there’s very little splash, you’re not scaring wildlife. I’ve seen more kingfishers while stand-up paddleboarding than I ever have while in a kayak.” He takes his young son out, sitting on the front of the board. “He can stand up, jump off; it’s so versatile, whether you want to have time on your own or have fun with it.” You can race or surf; fish from the boards; some people even do yoga.
James Instance, a divisional commander of the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Falmouth, has seen tuna, dolphins and all manner of jellyfish while out on his paddleboard. “To be able to go over the top of a reef and look at what’s underneath is incredible. I love that you’re out in a marine environment, with nature, and put your worries aside, just to be able to focus on the exercise in the moment. I love the physicality. It’s good for your mental health.”
He would like more people to enjoy it. “But you want them to be able to do it safely,” he says. “As always with the sea, things can go wrong very quickly. What people tend to do, particularly when the water looks flat because it’s blowing offshore, is jump on their boards, then get blown or assisted out to sea and find themselves struggling when they look to return.” A Sup is “essentially a large inflatable – it can be quite difficult to paddle back into heavy winds”, he says. “We get a lot of that type of rescue.”
Wearing a buoyancy aid, or a lifejacket, is essential. So is a mobile phone in a waterproof pouch. “Keep it around your neck, tucked into a buoyancy aid or in a pocket,” says Hughes. “We find people put it in their dry bag at the front of the board. If they become separated from their board, they can’t call for help.” The advice is to go with other people and tell someone where you’re going and when you plan to be back. It’s often people onshore, who are expecting someone back, that raise the alarm.
It’s advisable to know your limits, says Pooley: stay close to the shore or riverbank and check the weather. “The most important thing is wind strength and wind direction,” says Pooley, but tides can also pose problems. “They can produce flow, especially in estuaries, and if estuaries are running fast, things happen a lot quicker.” Tide times, currents and local dangers can be difficult to get to grips with, so Pooley advises asking a local – a lifeguard, if it’s a lifeguarded beach, or a water sports hire centre – for advice. The weather in the UK can be unpredictable and extreme, he says: “Heavy downpours can make rivers flood quite quickly, which increases the pace of the water.”
The leashes that tether you to a Sup can be lifesaving – but there are different requirements. In the sea, a standard ankle leash should be fine (although there has been at least one tragic incident where a paddleboarder became tangled with a buoy and couldn’t release their leash). “Anybody paddling on inland waterways, any moving or flowing water, should wear a quick-release belt,” says Pooley. “If you fall off, you can become entangled in branches, trees, buoys, moored boats, pontoons. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, we’ve had several fatalities because people haven’t been able to release their leash.” In whitewater, leashes are not used at all, although beginners are unlikely to be taking to the rapids.
Nobody intends to fall off their board – tell that to Ed Davey – but if you do, knowing how to survive is important and the RNLI’s “Float to Live” campaign is a good place to start. Cold water triggers a gasping response and you can easily inhale a lethal amount of water – about a litre and a half – within seconds if you can’t keep your airways clear.
“We know that about 60% of those who die going into cold water die in the first minute or so, either from an inability to hold their breath as waves break over their face, or as they fall in,” says Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth. Thrashing around, calling for help and trying to swim – panicking, essentially – “is just about the worst thing to do at a time when your breathing is out of control. It’s about knowing that you’re going to have a gasp response, you’re going to hyperventilate – but also, importantly, knowing that this response disappears after about a minute,” says Tipton. Another potential problem of sudden cold-water immersion is an increase in heart rate and blood pressure; those with underlying health conditions are at risk of “some form of cardiac event”.
In cold water, once your breathing is under control, try to get back on your board. “There’s no situation in which you’re better off than on, even if you can only lay across the board,” says Tipton. Cold water affects muscle function, particularly in your arms, and you need your arms to tread water, haul yourself back on your board and find your mobile phone. “You’ll see things such as grip strength reduce, while speed of movement and manual dexterity are impaired.” In summer temperatures in British waters, you may start to see that within 10 or 20 minutes. In such conditions, hypothermia is unlikely to be fast – at 15C, an average person has a 50% chance of surviving for up to six hours.
On a recent Sunday, the lifeboat crew at Hope Cove in Devon were so busy that they stayed out at sea for several hours. “It felt beautifully calm onshore,” says James Richards, one of the crew. “But we had an offshore breeze. Once you get just a little way off the shoreline, that breeze starts to build.”
After they had escorted a couple of paddleboarders back to safety, they went out to a popular Sup and kayak spot. “There were 30 to 40 people, all getting blown out to sea. In that situation, your challenge is: who do we rescue first? A lot of people were unaware of the situation they were in. Some were aware and were struggling, others were still heading out, oblivious to the dangers.” The crew were on the scene for more than two hours, shepherding about 20 Sups back to shore and encouraging others to turn around and head back. Some had drifted up to a mile out to sea.
Later in the day, the team rescued two teenage paddleboarders in difficulty alongside a man who had called 999, as he should, then paddled out to try to rescue them. “It was a brave thing to do, but he then put himself at a degree of risk. So the number of rescues goes up from two to three,” says Richards. He repeats the advice to check conditions before going out. “The crew all got up on Sunday morning, looked at the weather and went: ‘We’ll get called today.’”
Far less perilously, out on the Medway on Wednesday night, with the sky starting to darken after cocktails and conversation, we paddle back towards the slipway, limbs nicely tired and minds as calm as the gentle river.