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Paddle boards

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CC_PA

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Anyone have a paddle board?  Any recommendations on brands and regular vs inflatable.  I googled them and it seems there are many, many sellers: amazon, REI, LL Bean, West Marine, Dick's, etc.  A little overwhelming.  I'm looking for a general use one, nothing special.  They are long and take a up a lot of space, so I was considering an inflatable one, but wasn't sure how it would hold up, or if it would be more of a pain to have to inflate and deflate.  Thanks for your opinions.
 
Some of this depends on the types of bodies of water you use them on, calm flat water vs waves and surf, how far you want to travel, etc. Quite a few people here have the very stable 8-10' ones around here, but our lake is generally calm, and they don't have to carry them on their boats. There are lots of choices, but I'd go for something stable and easy for as many guests as possible to learn on so they can join the fun.

SupATX is what we've used. They're very nice for the money, shipped right to your door.

http://checkout.supatx.com/stand-up-paddle-board-bundle/sup-atx-two-paddleboard-special-deal-model-journey-colors-green-red-length-11-6.html
 
In 2012 when I retired we went to Hawaii to celebrate and to visit family we haven't seen in a while. I have a cousin who makes surfboards so of course he took us all out to teach us and we actually learned on the much bigger, wider more stable paddleboards. So we fell in love w/those and we decided to get one when we got home. We were already thinking of ways to mount brackets on the side of our Benny to transport it because those boards are huge and wide. We were looking to buy an 11 1/2 ft. one. You figure that's half the size of our 22 footer.......The best advice he gave us........Don't buy one just yet. He said that it was still new to us and we were pretty excited about it now but are you going to want to do it 2, 3, 5 yrs. down the road????? Let's face it these boards are expensive. The one that Tom showed you was over $1600. Anyway we are fortunate to have a shop on our lake that rents the boards out so that's what we did in the summers of 2012 and 2013.............Well we only rented them 2 times this past summer. We have the perfect lake for the paddleboards. Lots of coves and no wake zones. But our excitement for them just wasn't there this past year so we're glad we didn't actually buy one.............

I'm not trying to deter you from buying one. I just wanted to share the experience that we had.............  

One more thing...........we did tons of research when we were thinking of buying one. We came to the conclusion that we were going to go with the rigid stand up paddleboard as opposed to the inflatable. Read a lot of negative reviews and talked to some owners about problems with keeping them fully inflated and problems with them flexing under weight...........
 
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Those boards are actually $1600 for 2 of them with paddles, so not quite that bad, but you are absolutely right, we RENT them every time!
 
I have friends that had 2 boards and set their boat up to carry them.......very nice set of hangers on the side....

Truth be told, they NEVER use them
 
I happened to come across this page .

http://www.forums.carrackresources.com/car-rack-product-categories/surfboard-racks-sup-racks/pontoon-boat-rack-stand-up-paddleboards-3847.html

875d1339589688-pontoon-boat-rack-stand-up-paddleboards-2011-bennington-2275-rcw-pontoon-boat-stand-up-paddleboard-rack-thule-sup-taxi-67.jpg
 
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Absolutely stick with the rigid paddle boards!  I would agree that renting for a couple of years makes sense until you get some history on how often you use them.  Another suggestion is to look on line for used boards from those who bought and then found out they didn't use them much.  Good luck!
 
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