Paddleboarding is a water sport in which participants are propelled by a swimming motion using their arms while lying or kneeling on a paddleboard or surfboard in the ocean or other body of water. This article refers to traditional prone or kneeling paddleboarding. A derivative of paddleboarding is stand up paddleboarding also called stand up paddle surfing. Paddleboarding is usually performed in the open ocean, with the participant paddling and surfing unbroken swells to cross between islands or journey from one coastal area to another. History Polynesia Ships Artist John Webber accompanied Captain James Cook to the Sandwich Islands in 1778, and in the lower left foreground of his 1781 engraving is depicted a paddleboarder/surfer. Thomas Edward Blake Thomas Edward Blake is credited as the pioneer in paddleboard construction in the early 1930s. While restoring historic Hawaiian boards in 1926 for the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Blake built a replica of the previously ignored olo surfboard ridden by ancient Hawaiian alii (kings). He lightened his redwood replica (olo were traditionally made from wiliwili wood) by drilling it full of holes, which he then covered, thus creating the first hollow board, which led to creation of the modern paddleboard. Two years later, using this same , board, Blake won the Pacific Coast Surfriding Championship, first Mainland event integrating both surfing and paddling. Blake then returned to Hawaii to break virtually every established paddling record available, setting and records that stood until 1955. In 1932, using his drastically modified chambered hollow board, now weighing roughly , which over the next decade he would tirelessly promote as a lifeguarding rescue tool, Blake out-paddled top California watermen Pete Peterson and Wally Burton in the first Mainland to Catalina crossing race— in 5 hours, 53 minutes. During the 1930s, Blake-influenced hollow boards (called “cigar boards” by reporters and later “kook boxes” by surfers) would be used in roughly equal proportion to solid plank boards for both paddling and surfing until the new Hot Curl boards led wave-riding in a new direction. For paddleboarding, however, the basic principles of Blake's 1926 design remain relevant even today. Renaissance Paddleboarding experienced a renaissance in the early 1980s after Los Angeles County lifeguard Rabbi Norm Shifren's “Waterman Race”— from Point Dume to Malibu—inspired surf journalist Craig Lockwood to begin production on a high-quality stock paddleboard—known as the "Waterman." Its design, which has arguably won more races than any other