STAND up AND be counted
PADDLEBOARD PRO CHRIS BERTISH IS ON A
LIFELONG MISSION TO RECONFIGURE THE LIMITS OF WHAT IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, AND LITTLE THINGS LIKE THE ENTIRE EXPANSE OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN AREN’T ABOUT TO STAND IN HIS WAY
66 | SUMMER 2017 | ONBOARD
S
tand-up paddleboarding (SUP) of any kind requires a specific set of skills: balance, upper body strength
and technique among the most essential. Chris Bertish isn’t just your average paddleboarder, however, and that’s not just because he’s a champion surfer who triumphed at the 2009 Mavericks Surf Contest in the big wave surf competition after arriving without any equipment and then tackling 40ft plus waves on a borrowed board.
All things considered, when the South African-born Bertish sets his sights on achieving something, it’s rarely a run-of- the-mill matter. But where does a man who crossed the English Channel on a paddleboard, and who holds the unofficial record time for a 12 hour open ocean paddle, go next? For Bertish, the answer was clear: a solo SUP crossing of the Atlantic Ocean itself.
“I wanted to redefine everybody’s perception of what’s possible,” explains the 42 year old. “To help people challenge themselves, follow their passions and achieve their goals and dreams and to raise huge amounts of money for local charity initiatives that I’ve set up.”
“This project isn’t just about raising 6.5 to 10 million rand, which will be paid out to the charities in the next couple of weeks, but to feed 10,000 children every month for the next 25 years through The Lunchbox Fund, pay for cleft lip operations through Operation Smile, and Signature of Hope Trust is going to build five to eight schools to educate and inspire future leaders, doctors, lawyers and teachers for generations. That is an incredible legacy to leave behind, and that was the driving force for me with this project. No matter what it was going to take, I knew I had to get to the other side because I had the lives of millions of kids on my shoulders. The world records and paddling across the Atlantic Ocean are just details for me.”
Mere ‘details’ or not, the statistics behind Bertish’s SUP crossing are no less staggering. Paddling the equivalent of a marathon every day for 120 days, over 4,500 miles of ocean, Bertish took 93 days (and around two million individual strokes) to make his way from Morocco to Antigua.
“I wanted to depart from the African continent, because I am deeply patriotic and an African through and through!” he enthuses. “I also wanted to follow the
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