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Seattle Paddle Rave gathered hundreds of boaters near Gasworks Park on Tuesday.
Not to brag, but I own a boat. My very own seafaring vessel that I use for recreation, launched from any port that suits my fancy. It’s also only 11 feet long, two and a half feet wide, and six inches thick. It is, of course, a standup paddleboard.
I’m not the only one to embrace paddleboard ownership in the last decade; on Tuesday, more than 800 people (at least by one count) took to the water near Gasworks for something called the Seattle Paddle Rave, a new event meant to thaw out the Seattle Freeze. The flotilla gathered offshore, a giant blur of turquoise blue sidewalls and exposed shoulders just waiting for a sunburn. Watching them, it was clear that paddleboard culture has changed the face of Lake Union.
Lake Union, the city’s central water park, was formed by the Vashon Glacier thousands of years ago and was used by the Duwamish Tribe for centuries—for fishing and transportation but also, inevitably, for recreation. White settlement brought lumber mills and pleasure craft, and eventually Lake Union became home to “every single kind of boat that possibly exists,” says Josh Anderson, executive director at the Center for Wooden Boats, which sits on the lake’s southern shore. Oh, plus seaplanes.
Though stand-up paddleboards date back centuries to Polynesia, the 2010s brought a revolution: the inflatable version. When Amazon debuted its Treasure Truck in 2015, its signature launch deal was a $477 inflatable paddleboard discounted to just $99. I scored one of those myself and a water hobbyist was born.
Lake Union hasn’t ever belonged solely to the yacht-owners of the world, even if they do park their insanely large luxury barges on the docks near Duke’s Seafood. Various outfitters rent electric vessels, kayaks, and even hot tub boats. The Center for Wooden Boats has a free program for wooden rowboats. But before the dawn of the age of the inflatable paddleboard, storage fees or awkward roof racks were required to ride them. Today, you can literally fit a boat inside an amusingly large backpack.
Though the first Seattle Paddle Rave was largely a young crowd, organizer Erik Hillesheim stresses that his goal is to see a broader swath of Seattle at future events. “We’re a group for all people,” he says.
Living in Minneapolis, Erik Hillesheim picked up a board and a new passion during the pandemic. Once he relocated to Seattle, he decided to launch Seattle Paddle Rave to gather people on the water. “The idea is to get people better connected to nature and to friends, and doing that in a way that democratizes these fun experiences for people,” he says. After a trial run on July 4, the event launched widely July 15, with paddleboarders gathered around a small motor boat armed with speakers and a DJ playing house music.
Tuesday was also the weekly Duck Dodge night, when the 50-year-old sailboat racing series peppers the surface of Lake Union with wind-powered craft and a party atmosphere of a different kind. As scrappy and informal as the long-running Duck Dodge may be, the sailboats used in the race still represent many thousands of dollars in worth and upkeep. The paddleboard rave was full of people on $200 vessels, myself included.
The Duck Dodge Facebook group warned participants about the expected horde of paddleboarders ahead of Tuesday night, but no conflicts ensued. Hillesheim notes that overlapping with Duck Dodge night was a scheduling error and says he won’t do so again. “We’re trying to show how we can be good patrons of the lake,” he says. “Make sure there’s room for large boats, respect the rules of the water.” The next rave is planned for tonight, July 18.
Not every attempt at sharing the 580 acres of Lake Union goes as smoothly. In 2019, Kenmore Air, which operates a seaplane base on the south end, pushed to maintain space for its aircraft to land and take off on the water. Advisory buoys mark an area about 3,000 feet long, flashing yellow when a plane is imminent; boaters are asked to clear the area when the lights go on.
The airline said in 2019 that the requests were soundly ignored, and asked for a permanent ban on paddleboarders and human-powered boats in the zone. After pushback from a community coalition, the no-go zone was denied.
Perhaps it’s no accident that the paddleboard boom was fueled by two Seattle companies that sell the craft: Costco and Amazon. Prices have dipped so low that even now, midsummer, you can get a basic version for less than $200. The new must-have add-on is an electric air compressor, negating the need to hunch over a manual pump. After a decade of paddleboard ownership and just two weeks with the plug-in inflator, I can personally vouch that it’s a game changer.
But access to a (relatively) cheap piece of plastic doesn’t necessarily make for an informed boater. Like any other craft, “People on a paddleboard are required to have a personal flotation device with them while on the water,” says a Seattle Police Department representative; the SPD handles most investigations and enforcement on the water.
The 2024 Recreational Boating Statistics Report from the US Coast Guard notes that year had the fewest boating fatalities since they began collecting statistics more than a half-century ago, but that deaths involving stand-up paddleboards were up. Among those victims, 87 percent were not wearing life jackets. The millions of people who have adopted the sport in recent years might not recognize the dangers that come with owning that $200 piece of floating plastic—much less the rules of sharing water with industrial vessels and actual airplanes.
Josh Anderson, the CWB executive director, runs an organization dedicated to historic and classic maritime craft, and he’s a wooden boat builder himself. But he owns a standup paddleboard, too. “They’re really affordable and accessible,” he says, and he thinks the rise in individually owned boards led to a drop in boat rentals at CWB’s satellite location on Camano Island a few years ago. He looked around, he says, and realized, “Holy cow, everyone owns their own boat now.”