SUP11 City Tour 2018 – Maarten Van Der Weijden

SUP11 City Tour NON-stop event started this morning in absolutely perfect conditions, a huge relief for all organisers and paddlers (after the storms of 2017). The 2 prone paddlers Lotte Spaargaren and Bart Haveman started the 2018 SUP event by heading off into the darkness at 6am on their prone boards.

Following the early prone paddlers start, we had a later start for the SUP paddlers. 3 groups set off at 9am, 10,30am and 12pm respectively, the timing depended on their strengths as well as for organisational safety reasons. The weather was unimaginably perfect and the 5th NON-stop event (of the 10th SUP11 City Tour) set off in great spirits. All paddlers were happy, smiling, joking and ready for their gruelling 200 km day of paddling.

The most exciting part of the day was at Sloten where Olympian swimmer Maarten Van Der Weijden joined us. He challenged himself to swim the 11 Cities 2 weeks prior to our event. He was unfortunately unable to finish the 200 km swim due to illness and his doctor was forced to pull him out of the water at the 163 km mark, swimming a total of 55 hours (let’s just take a second to think about the distance and time in the water – wow!).

Maarten who uses his swimming talents to raise as much money as possible for research into the cure of cancer, joined our event to welcome the NON-stop paddlers as well as wish Mike Kranenburg extra support and luck while on his 6th NON-stop paddle. Mike’s mother is suffering from cancer and he is paddling this event for her and to raise awareness for cancer, and cancer research.

These top sportsmen are united by disease, both doing their best to help fund research for cures and prevent future occurrences. We are so honoured to have them both present at the 10th edition of the SUP11 City Tour 2018 and they are both hero’s in our eyes.

A huge thank you to Maarten for joining the 10th edition of the SUP11 City Tour 2018 event. We wish you well on you next endeavour, maybe we will even see you on a SUP in 2018!

The NON-stop event continues through the night. The water safety teams are on the water looking after paddlers, as well as a land safety team following the journey.

Please take a look at our live page – follow the event. We would love to see you on the bridges tomorrow morning and at the finish from 1pm onwards in the Prinsentuin, Wissesdwinger 1 in Leeuwarden.