From Southport to Jennings beaches, paddleboarders take strides against cancer

Editor's note: The following is Fairfield Citizen reporter Paul Schott's first-hand account of the local paddleboarding event, the P to P Paddle Experience.

Almost 90 degrees, cloudless skies, pristine blue waters. It could almost be Hawaii. The setting, however, was the Long Island Sound.

But there was a distinctly Hawaiian feeling in the air when I arrived at Southport Beach on Sunday for the first P to P Paddle Experience. Participants journeyed from Southport to Jennings Beach in Fairfield on stand-up paddleboards. This novel way of seafaring -- riders paddle standing atop 11-foot, 6-inch by 30-inch boards -- originated in the Aloha State in the 1970s, and is now growing in local popularity thanks to Patrick Neary.

The Fairfield native picked up the water sport on a visit to his daughter in Kona, Hawaii, last year and soon decided he wanted to import it to his home waters.

"I'm trying to build awareness of how wonderful a sport this is," he says.

With the help of Connecticut Challenge founder and president, Jeff Keith, Neary's vision rose to the surface on Sunday as a group of 12 came out to take part in the Paddle Experience, which raised money for a new cancer survivor center in Fairfield, due to open at the end of this year.

Riding along in a 1977 Mako boat with Keith, his children Madison and Justin, and skippered by Keith's father-in-law, Bert Andren, I watched as the small flotilla of paddleboarders traversed the gentle waves of the Sound.

Reflecting on the novelty of this scene unfolding on the Connecticut coast, I thought it was fitting that Neary's Hawaiian hobbyhorse should be transplanted to the Long Island Sound.

The Sound is an estuary -- a body of water where ocean saltwater mixes with freshwater draining from rivers from the land -- and also a place that thrives as a confluence of human communities and ideas. It is where coal barges chug in from Malaysia to deliver shipments to power plants in Bridgeport; where fishers come from nationwide to harvest oysters, crabs and lobsters; and where ambitious residents take a sport that originated some 5,000 miles away and tap into its fundraising potential to better the lives of cancer survivors here in Fairfield County.

Of course, it is no coincidence that the Connecticut Challenge encouraged Neary to launch this new fundraiser. Jeff Keith is one of the nation's most outward-looking and inventive social entrepreneurs. A 35-year cancer survivor who lost his right leg at age 12 to a malignant tumor, he has since organized three nonprofits dedicated to supporting cancer survivors and cancer centers. He also was the first amputee to run across America, raising more than $1 million for the American Cancer Society in 1985.

When I asked Keith whether stand-up paddleboarding had a place in the Challenge's fundraising future, he answered effusively: "Absolutely. We think this sport is going to grow very quickly, so we think it can be a great way to fundraise for [cancer] survivors in Connecticut."

The paddleboarders -- a mix of dilettantes and experienced aquatic athletes -- also expressed confidence that stand-up paddleboarding can more than tread water as a fundraising and recreational force in Fairfield County.

Said Michel Finzi, who works in software sales in New York: "Anyone can do this. You can do it for fun, you can do it if you're a serious athlete. It's a sport that really brings people together."

I relate especially to Finzi's point. Last Friday, I embarked on my inaugural paddleboard ride -- a short jaunt up and down the shore at Southport Beach -- with Neary, Finzi and David Keith, brother of Jeff.

As we sauntered over the waves, I immediately felt a strong sense of collective purpose. The next morning I was still feeling that sense of purpose -- but literally -- as I rose stiffly out of bed. This was the obvious after-effect of the "core workout" of abdominal and upper-leg muscles that stand-up paddleboarding provides. Of course, this was a price I was more than happy to pay for my induction into this brotherhood of boarders.

Tapping into this spirit of solidarity, Neary sees this year's Paddle Experience as the foundation for a larger-scale race in the future.

"Next year I want to have a hundred people here!" he exclaimed to the paddleboarders when they arrived at Jennings Beach.

That goal is ambitious, but plausible, considering the history of innovative events at the Connecticut Challenge. And Neary's brainchild may have a talisman as well. The name of the Mako boat on which I traveled with the Keith family: "Mor Mor," Swedish for mother's mother. A fitting moniker, given that the annual Challenge bicycle-ride fundraiser was a "mother" to the P to P event, which could beget other fundraising events one day.

As Keith gazed out at the paddleboarders who dotted the waters in front of us on the Mako, he welcomed the notion of an "estuary" of ideas flowing into the Connecticut Challenge.

"We want to create a movement with the Challenge," Keith said. "There's no better way to do that than to give people different avenues to raise money."