I copied my post on my uae sup blog for this one, just another weekend in the UAE!

Four paddlers from Abu Dhabi took to the road early Friday morning with a crazy idea to paddle the entire UAE in 36 hours. Of course this didn't mean paddling the whole way around the Emirates, but at least making a stop in each one.Cars packed with our portable C4 isups, it was such a treat to actually drive around 140ks the whole time instead of adjusting our speed because of boards on top.

1st stop was Dubai. The plan was to get there early enough to be out on the water to watch the sunrise with the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in the background. It definitely was a chilly start to the day, but well worth the early drive to see the sun come up with the shadow of light reflecting against the Burj.


We drove up to Ajman, where to our surprise.... was some proper surf happening! We thought about ditching the idea of our 7 Emirate paddle to play in the waves the rest of the day, but we all decided we had a mission to do. 3 hours was enough, right? Empty waters, just us out there and while there is no swimming allowed the police didn't seem to mind that were surfing! We even got our pic snapped and our names taken by an Ajman freelance journalist, not sure where that photo ended up.


After Ajman continued north to Umm Al Quwain in search of our sea turtles. Unfortunately, there were no sea turtles, but plenty of flamingos! We paddled here for about an hour against a strong wind that was starting to pick up. I think we were a bit disappointed by the lack of marine life here especially with all the coral. Oh well.


Our last stop on the West coast was Ras Al Khaimah. It was about 4pm by this time and the winds were really up, waves were choppy and it was cold! At least for UAE and us wusses who have been here way too long. We got our our boards pumped them up for the last time Friday and hit the water. While we can pretend we enjoyed this paddle and stayed out there long, in reality we were done in about 20 minutes and were on our way out in 25.




We drove across the country to the East coast where we arrived in Fujairah near Snoopy Island to camp for the night. We set up camp, enjoyed some real sausages (pork!) on the fire and drank a few well deserved beers! Buggered from a day of driving and paddling that started almost 14 hours earlier, we were ready for bed. Unfortunately we didn't realize that at 1 am we were in the direct path of the fishermen who were bringing in their lines and nets for the day. Eventually we all fell asleep.


In the morning we got up extra early before the sun came up to get the boards pumped up and headed out for another sunrise paddle to Snoopy Island. Our sunrise paddle was followed by breakfast (reheating left over sausages) and warming up by the fire. By 7:30 we had paddled 5 Emirates and only 2 more to go.


Around 9:30 we took off after we explored more of the marine life around Snoopy Island and headed south to Khorfakkan, which is technically Sharjah. We paddled out to a beach that is only accessible by sea while taking in all of the fish swimming below. Again no sea turtles, shame. About an hour later we were all deflated and packed up ready to make that long drive back to Abu Dhabi for our final Emirate!


We arrived in Abu Dhabi and while we had planned to get some good shots of the Mosque between the bridges, there was a sandstorm and was far to hazy to see anything. This combined with the fact that we were running late and I had a lesson at 19th street beach, made this the location to finish her off! So at 3:30 just shy of 36 hours we paddled in Abu Dhabi and celebrated conquering all 7 Emirates. Next time? 24 hours ? possible, but I think these two days were busy enough.