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Tunnskär - a tiny Swedish island |
Allemanesrätten in Sweden
Literally ‘The All-Man’s Right ’, this is the right to roam, or sleep, almost anywhere. It is an act of law that carries much responsibility for the beneficiary, and it is fantastic! After a few years of missing nights under canvas (technically silicon-coated nylon), I have started to sleep outside regularly again, and my tent collection has grown to include a red Hilleberg, because … Sweden. It is almost a requirement.
Islands
I love to combine my tent obsession with my SUP obsession. My first overnight on an island was a few years ago, then there was a long gap until last autumn when I took the NSP Carolina Evo out for a hot date in my local fjord. I was on the wrong island, but shhhhh, don’t tell anyone. I did do a good beach clean to make up for my error.
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| Tent, Carolina Evo and a great view |
And that went well; the board was great, but the spot I slept in was less so, lots of noise from all the houses only a few hundred meters away. The spot was chosen by the board: a big sandy bay where I didn't have to clamber over slippery rocks to get to my sleep spot.
Now I needed to get back to the sea, further out away from people. Where there are no beaches to park a carbon board.
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| NSP Touring LT |
iSUPS
I was in discussion with the team at NSP on adding D-rings, but they wanted me to keep the racer aspect of the board and, to be honest, I wanted something a little wider and slower if I am taking equipment with me. In the conversation, I asked if there might be a touring board I could get my hands on, and ...
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| NSP Touring LT loaded and ready to go |
NSP Touring LT
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| NSP Touring LT |
The nose is pointy, the waist is wide, and the tail is square-ish.
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| NSP Touring LT |
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| Touring fin for a Touring LT |
Underneath the hull is plain, other than a D-ring at the nose and an NSP logo. At the tail end there is a two-part US box fin. This makes folding a little easier, and it will accommodate a standard ‘FCS’ style touring fin, perfectly! The fin from the Performance Race FSL slotted straight in.
That evening I found a parking spot at the coast, pumped it to 18PSI (the max advised), securely attached my two dry bags, one front and one at the rear, and headed out to sea to a tiny island in the Kattegat 2,5km from my starting point and approximately 1,5km from the nearest people.
Paddling the NSP Touring LT loaded
There is no hiding that this is a wide board, a full 10 inches wider than my NSP Ninja. And this shows in stability. I’m not sure how you quantify stability, but paddling out on a busy late-summer Tuesday evening when it seemed everyone from Gothenburg who had a boat was on the water was easy. On my stability index, it scores 10+ out of 10 for stability. It is off the positive end of the stability scale.
Speed suffers, but this is not a Ninja, a Carolina Evo, or a Performance Race FSL competitor. It struggles to keep up with any of them, but they struggle to carry the load that this can carry; compromises. Speed, however, is important, and I did take this Touring LT to the lake for a training session; read on for that.
The need for speed - Touring board edition
The day after my little adventure, I took the Touring LT to a tiny lake near me, pumped it up to 18 psi again and got on with my Booth Training session.
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| The NSP Touring LT at the TL, Tiny Lake. |
This was fun! Resistance training. Without a load on it, the board is lively and responsive; turns are done with ridiculous ease, as they should be on such a wide board. Speed was actually OK; this is an 8,5kmh board if you put the effort in, but I will not be trying to beat my SUP My Race TT best on it, as maintaining those speeds requires a lot of effort.
Is speed important for a touring board? Maybe not so much, but that this board can move fairly quickly implies that the shape is efficient, and that is important if you plan on paddling a long way.
It is fun to paddle, great for exploring and for practising drills, for example, footwork.
Now, back to my adventures…
Welcome to Tunnskär, population 1.
Back to my island, Tunnskär. I mentioned that the paddle out was easy, as it should be. I didn’t have to think about any of the messy chop from boat wake or bounce back from islands I passed; the board just lets that slide under as you progress. Tracking, with a touring fin, not the 9” dolphin fin supplied, was straight and true, and once I got to my spot, landing on a wide flat rock was uneventful; no need to worry about a carbon hull against the rocks. The forward handle was a huge benefit for getting the board up onto the shore so I could unload.
And we spent a magical night under the stars together. A great first date.
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| Breakfast with the LT |
Breakfast and coffee in the morning, and a quick top-up of the board; this is important. Always take a pump.
Paddling back the next morning was easier; no one else was up, and the sea was calm with a slight offshore breeze. And this is where I noticed something: bubbles.
My board had a hole!
In the deck!!!!
That morning, it had lost just over one PSI. I had put this down to inflating it with air temp at 26° the previous evening and paddling back with air temp at 12° after sitting on cold rocks all night; no problem, as I topped it up with my pump before heading back. But it would appear that it was actually from what looked like a stab wound in the deck. I am 99% sure that there are no knife-wielding inhabitants on the island, so I reported back to NSP, and an investigation started.
And it seems this poor board had one final adventure before it got to me; someone took it to a knife fight and used it as a shield. Or, more likely, on its journey from a demo centre to me via Germany, it was damaged in transit, and no one noticed. NSP offered to replace it immediately with a new one.
But then the guys at NSP had an idea: I should try to fix it.
I was quite happy with this change in direction; I dislike waste and am usually quite good at fixing things. So there I was, sitting in my garage with some tools, some solvent and glue and the internet, looking at what to do…
Fixing an inflatable SUP
Step 1: Do not do what I did!
The internet said to remove the deck pad around the leak using a knife. The internet said that this was easy if careful and that the hull was robust enough for this.
The internet was wrong. Or maybe it was right years ago for cheap, heavy boards. But iSUP technology has moved on, and this is not a cheap, heavy board. This is a light board made with lightweight materials, and I messed up. Despite being very careful with a very short blade, I managed to make two more tiny holes in the hull. I was distraught.
My advice: if you have to do this, do not use a blade. Underlined and in bold, to make sure you get this important point.
Instead, use a blunt plastic or wooden implement and work out from the hole in your deckpad that you are going to fix. It will take a little longer, but you’ll save time in the long run; you will only have one hole to fix!
After having a word with myself, I borrowed a butter knife from the kitchen (shhh, don't tell anyone!) and used that to enlarge the circle in my deckpad for my now bigger repair. Then I used safety scissors to cut the pad away.
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| Testing my patch. One week at 15PSI |
Step 2: Clean and Glue
From this nightmare start, the fixing went well. A trip to my local boat supplies shop to get appropriate glue from Polymarine, lots of cleaning to remove all of the old glue, careful application of the new glue, and then wait- 6 hours to bond, 48 hours to cure properly and 7 days for full strength, if my translation of the Swedish was correct.
After leaving the board for 2 days, I tested my repair. And immediately went into a panic when there were yet more bubbles!
This freaked me out a little more than I would like to admit, and I hastily removed more deckpad, only to find that I had caused an air bubble under the edge of the pad when removing the first bit. Relief! And a bit annoyed, as my carefully cut hole in the pad was now a ragged mess that needed to be tidied up.
Now she is fixed; it isn’t pretty, as I now have some more glue to remove, and I am waiting for a new bit of deckpad, in grey, to hide and highlight the repair.
Why didn't I see the bubbles earlier?
A good question that I have asked myself several times. I suspect I can blame the board for this; on the way out, I was busy keeping an eye on all the boats that were on the water with me, not getting in their way. And I did not look down at my feet or think about the board at all; I just paddled. And I think the deck was dry all the way.
On the way back, the sea was calm, only commercial boats heading out to fish, and I caught a wave from one; then the deck got wet and ... bubbles.
If you are paddling an inflatable on an overnight trip, always take a pump. Just in case!
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| Repaired and ready to go training |
The Future
I have tested the board at 18 PSI at the tiny lake for a Booth Training session, and it was 18 PSI when I got back to the van. So my repair, although a bit bigger than necessary, works. I will be keeping an eye on it!
This board will be used for social paddles, lessons and overnight adventures. If I get the time and inclination for a longer trip, maybe further from shore, then maybe I will enquire about getting a less-used version from NSP. It will look much better in images!
NSP are one of the leading SUP and Surf brands and are active all around the world. You can find out more about their SUP Range on the NSP website https://www.nspsurfboards.com and on their Facebook and Instagram pages. They have recently launched a dedicated SUP Race Instagram account - NSP Racing.
You can find me running the Facebook group SUP My Race and now, occasionally, on Instagram.
You can read the previous training logs here Training Logs and you can get to individual blog posts using the labels in the sidebar.