PADL is leveraging local talent to offer paddle board tours and lessons now from PADL stations across Florida.

From St. Pete Beach to Clay County to Miami local paddle guides are being offered an opportunity to cooperate with the fast-growing self-service paddle board rental company PADL to offer local lessons and tours in their area.  PADL, now with 22 stations around the State of Florida, first ensures that all collaborating guides are accredited through either the American Canoe Association, Professional SUP Association or the Academy of Surfing Instructors. Then, after a training of the PADL-approved methods of guiding and instruction the local guides don PADL gear and take out groups on tours and lessons in their local waters.

All paddle board tours and lessons are led from local PADL stations.  Each paddleboarding tour or lesson is listed as an event in the local PADL group on the Meetup platform.  Riders can arrive with their own paddle boards or kayaks or, of course, rent from one of the four paddle boards at the PADL station.

Supporting Local Businesses

PADL created the PADL-Approved Guides program to support local watersport entrepreneurs. “The paddleboarding business is driven by individuals who know their local waters and natural environment.  PADL wants to support these business people while giving local riders the best experience possible, so we created the PADL-Approved Guides program.”

Local Sights and Sounds

The PADL-Approved Guides program gives local riders an opportunity to experience routes on their waterways, lakes and coastal areas that they otherwise might have missed if they went paddling on their own.  Tours, which have already started in Miami, have snaked through residential canals off Maule Lake, led paddlers down the mangrove-lined shores of the Oleta River, ploughed the Atlantic coast off Key Biscayne and travelled from Miami Beach’s Pinetree Park to South Beach.  Each location sports different flora and fauna as well as varying degrees of built-up areas.  In Miami Beach, for example riders can paddleboard under foot bridges and take their paddle boards through canals surrounded by the bustle of South Beach.  By contrast, if paddleboarding from Deering Point, the natural environment seems untouched by the surrounding city. There, mangroves and shallow waterways extend for miles in either direction while manatees, fish and birds of prey go about their business.

A Variety of Activities

Every tour guide brings their own unique set of experiences to the program.  Guides may have a background in paddle board Yoga, long distance paddleboarding, nature paddle tours, paddle board fitness or urban sightseeing. Whatever the background, riders can rest-assured that they are in the safe and capable hands of a professional guide who can safely and enjoyable lead a paddleboarding group out on the water.

A Call for Guides

PADL is currently looking for guides to operate tours from over 20 stations in the State of Florida.  If you are an accredited tour guide with a desire to lead groups on your local waters, then we would like to speak to you! Reach out to us today via our contact form.