The Head of the Dart SUP Challenge is an annual event in South Devon. The 14km course runs between Totnes and Dartmouth, and it changes direction every year. Each event now welcomes 300 paddlers. 

Our ethos

We welcome paddlers with a broad range of capabilities and water conditions can be challenging, depending on the weather, so paddler safety always comes first. We will never run the event in dangerous conditions and we’re committed to ensuring that appropriate water safety cover is provided. 

We want to make the event open to as many as possible and encourage those new to the sport to take part. As well as race categories we also have a leisure class and even dragon boards. All we ask is that you:

• Treat everyone with respect, follow the advice and instructions given to you by the event organisers.
• Support others taking part – whether that is encouragement on the water or cheering on from the side. 
• Can paddle standing and unaided for 14km in choppy conditions, within 3 hours.

Our commitment

• We will communicate in advance all necessary details and will respond to queries in a timely manner. Any decision to alter the course will be communicated 72 hours before the event.
• We will ensure our safety providers (water and land) have the appropriate training and insurance.
• We will provide timings for everyone, regardless of category.
• We will provide details of all risks and hazards at the safety briefing.
• Where possible we support local businesses, and we’ll ensure our suppliers and sponsors follow a similar ethos.

Sustainability

Protecting our waterways and reducing our impact on the environment is key for us. So we aim to run the event in a sustainable manner.

We’re working to reduce paper use and eliminate as much single-use plastic as possible.

In previous years we have partnered with Starboard SUP, who are also committed to off-setting the carbon footprint of the event through the planting of mangrove trees. In 2023, Starboard SUP planted 474 mangrove trees in Myanmar to offset 15.77 tonnes of CO2e. Find out more.

In 2022, the Head of the Dart SUP Challenge was awarded a Gold Level certification from Sailors for the Sea – the world’s leading ocean conservation organization that engages, educates and activates the sailing and boating community toward restoring ocean health. Here’s the full report.

Event history

The Head of The Dart was historically an 8-mile rowing event between Totnes and Dartmouth, in South Devon.

In 2008 Devon’s John Hibbard – CEO and Co-founder of Red Paddle Co and one of the UK’s prominent Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boarding competitors – enquired about adding a SUP division to the rowing event.

Here he explains how it came to be included, and then grew into its own annual event: “The first time SUP was included in the Head of the Dart was back in 2009. Over the winter of 2008-2009 I was training for the Devizes to Westminster (DW) Kayak race – I’d persuaded the organisers to let me do the race on an SUP. The DW is 126 miles over 4 days, so I was putting in some long training paddles. I was discussing these training paddles with the warehouse manager at Tushingham Sails (the company Red Paddle Co grew from) when he mentioned the HoTD. He introduced me to the committee and they agreed I could recruit 10 paddlers to take part. 

On the morning of the race, my training partner Anthony Cooper, who was doing the DW with me, decided that 10 miles was not far enough, so we launched at Dartmouth and paddled upriver with the tide to Totnes to get to the start – this also solved the issue of needing a car at both ends of the race. The conditions were perfect – no wind, which is very rare on the river, and some early spring sunshine. It was the  week before Easter and a week before the DW, so this was the last decent training paddle we’d get. We were made to start before the rowers, and they started each of us in 30-second intervals. We’d expected to all cross the start line together, but this was an alien concept to the rowers – it would be carnage if they all started together.

Most of the SUP entrants were on 11’- 12’ boards as that was mostly what was available at the time. There were a couple of people on 12’6” Race boards and Anthony and I were on 14’+ boards that we’d bought for the DW.

The race was completed without issue, and we finished much quicker than the organisers expected. From that year on we steadily increased the numbers, to the point that we had to start running our own scoring/timing as the rowing event crew couldn’t keep up. 

I raced for 2 more years but then jumped in the safety boat – we needed more coverage on the water due to increasing numbers. By 2013 I was so busy running Red Paddle Co that it became too difficult to give the event the time it deserved – we’d created a bit of a beast and it needed looking after. 

I was very grateful when Paul Simmons, at Tushingham, and Alan Cross, who was at the time running the National Windsurfing Festival, took over the event. They eventually teamed up with Fiona Batson to turn the Head of the Dart into one of the must-do events of the annual SUP calendar.

For me it’s a special event. Not only was it the first longer distance race in the UK, but you get to paddle through some amazing scenery. I like how the event is more of a challenge than a race. This is how I envisaged SUP racing would evolve – more about completing the challenge and maybe beating your mate or your Personal Best, rather than who won. I see it like a Half Marathon or a 10k race where the vast majority are entering for the challenge and couldn’t give two hoots about who crossed the finish line first.”