Starboard NZ Dream Team

SUPSNZ are proud to support and encourage a great team of riders who are living the SUP dream...
standing up.  Chosen for their performance and passion for the sport, the 2010/2011 Starboard NZ team are:

Campbell Farrell

Jeremy Stephenson

Troy Huston

Gavin Houghton and Mark Houghton

Annabel Anderson

Barbara Kendall

Greg Barfoot

Sean Hovell

Gizzy Styles

Gisborne’s Sean Hovell saw in the New Year up the top of the East Cape, Te Araroa, with his fiancée and three of his brothers, fishing, surfing and paddling his new Starboard 9ft 8in Superfish SUP Board, which came in very handy when he went diving for paua.

“I just put my board on a rock in the middle of the ocean and went for a dive.  Got my quota of legal paua,” says Sean in his unhurried, laid back way.  “It was a bit of a murky, rough day, so you couldn’t really see much else.”

The second of five boys, 26-year-old Sean grew up in Wairoa, a rivermouth with a bar and a beach about an hour south of Gisborne.  They waterskiied in the river, went fishing and diving.   “That’s how I got affiliated with the water.  I didn’t really start surfing until we moved to Gisborne when I was about 13.  I started bodyboarding for about six months, then just surfing with normal shortboards.  

I became just addicted to it, loving it.  If I had my choice I’d always be surfing.”

At 16 Sean started competing in Surf Lifesaving events, going on to win a NZ title, three medals in the board paddling and two in the three-man canoe boats.  Now he’s into it socially, doing the Nationals each year, and has just started doing IRB racing, winning the National Senior division title for Wainui in his first year. Sean was introduced to SUP by local waka ama coach, surfer and fellow surf-lifesaver Peter Boyd, and sent his first sponsored board only a month ago by Starboard.  Since then he’s hardly been out on a shortboard.

“It’s pretty addictive, and it’s a challenge, where your surfing is only getting slow improvements, [with the SUP] every time you go out you notice big improvements. I think SUP’s going to be huge.  It’s a good way of keeping fit.  I’ve been running and swimming when there’s no surf, now I can stay on the ocean and paddle for exercise rather than going to the pool, with the same sort of results. And of course you’re standing up, which is an advantage.  I seen my first stingray when I was surfing the other morning – I was just coming off the end of a wave and I seen him just lying there.

We’ve got an island just off Gisborne [Sponge Bay or Tuamotu Island].  It’s about 2km over to it, and if there’s no surf I’ll just paddle over there.  Chances are you’re going to get a couple of little waves over there and paddle back, so you’ve got exercise and a tiny surf on that. “There’s a lot of places you can’t get to, it’s good to have the stand-up so you can paddle around.  I’ve had a jetski for the last three years and I’ve done missions all down the coast between south of Gisborne to Mahia where there’s just no roads, its about a 2-hour walk through the bush to get to there, and probably about five different good breaks you can surf.”

Sean is looking forward to more SUP adventures, SUP diving, some big down-winders and, naturally, some big sucky waves.  “When it gets real big the mile buoy in the middle of the harbour breaks – four times overhead the last time – those are the type of waves I want to try the SUP on.  And I’d like to go fishing off the SUP – I used to fish off my ski – just paddle out into the workups with the birds and catch kahawai,” he says with a grin.

“I was around at Pete's (Starboard's Gisborne reseller) the other night and he started talking about the whitewater side of it, because we’ve got some good rivers for that coming down the gorge too.  My little brother - who’s mad on pig-hunting - reckoned we might see him coming down the river with a pig on the front of it one day…”

Barbara Kendall