Paroz Paddling the Planet

The summer of 2015/16, as the season drew to a close it was time to reflect at what 2015 brought for me. It was a wild year with a lot of ups and downs, but one of my highlights was I completed my ‘rookie season’ of ocean ski/ Surfski racing, for me its been an epic experience, I’ve met new friends, I’ve travelled parts of the world and I’ve also proved to myself that it can be done. When the results came out and I was ranked 25 th I was excited to see what I achieved with only doing 3 out of 4 qualifying events, and it now has allowed me to set goals for this year. After doing the final race of the season, The Perth Doctor I decided to take some time off, to relax, work and hang out with friends. As some of you know I’m a professional Lifeguard in Australia and it being summer, here on the Sunshine Coast we had an extremely busy Christmas and New Years period. Over the holiday period I specialized on the jetski, travelling from beach to beach along the coast line and assisting...

This year I had the privilege of going over to the United States of America, twice, to race in it’s major competitions, both times I met incredible people. In May, I was fortunate enough to meet Mr Randall Taylor while in Hawaii to compete in the 2015 Molokai Challenge and World Surfski Championships. At my first meeting with Randall, I was greeted with a warm ‘how do you do,’ and we hit it off straight away. Randall is an avid paddler, and has recently started up the North Florida Waterman Club, for all disciplines of paddling (Prone board, SUP, Ocean ski, and Spec ski). He also has had some of the best competitors, Lee McGregor and Sean Rice, pass through town and give tips and pointers to the paddlers and Club Members. Randall is also an Epic Kayaks Expert, which means he has a few demo boats on loan for paddlers to try out. He also helps promote the sport any way he can, by running demo days, and hosting clinics, he is continually searching for new ways to get the name of Surfski ...

Over the past few weeks and months, I have been extremely busy, competing in surf ski and kayak events around Queensland and Northern New South Wales and also assist coaching in Mentone Surf Life Saving club’s (from Victoria) annual Maroochydore training camp. Coaching the young guns from Mentone is something I will never forget, sharing my experience’s and knowledge that I have learnt over my short career thus far and working with Clint, has shown myself another side of the surf lifesaving moment. For the majority of the time, all the athletes had big smiles one their faces and were eager to learn and ask questions, and for the rest of the time we all were having a laugh and enjoing being at the beach. I could not be more impressed and happy for the group that I was in charge of because not only did they give me a nickname of Ryan the Lion, but they also improved and grew in confidents in what were tricky surf conditions. Well done and thank you to all of the athletes, parents, wat...