A NUMBER of representatives of Bude Canoe Club will represent England at the British Surf Kayaking Championships in Northern?Ireland this week.

Nathan Rossiter, Archie Clarke, Jack Davies and current world longboat champion Jack Barker, are all looking to make their mark on the competition as part of the 14-strong squad.

It’s been an incredible rise for Nathan who only took up the sport in March, and just seven months later will compete in the junior class (under 19) for his country.

Until then Nathan had always surfed or kayaked, but his father, Trevor, has been kayaking for over 20 years and Barker encouraged Rossiter into the boat.

Trevor said: “Nathan realised he was quite good almost straight away and his confidence took an even bigger boost when he beat the UK number two Harry Salmon.

“He loves the sport already and we’re both so excited to get over to Northern Ireland.”

“Nathan will look to do his best and although I’m expecting him to focus on enjoying the experience, you never know he may surprise even me and pull of something really special.”

The sport as you might expect, combines the two sports where the competitors ride waves in a boat and are judged on their skill.

In the team events (Home Internationals), which started yesterday and finish today, four paddlers go out at a time for 15 minutes.

However they are only judged on the first ten, with the best two counting for each individual.

Each wave is worth a maximum of 20 points and are added together so the team are graded out of 160.

The competitors are judged on their ability to turn on the wave, the length of the wave and the difficulty of the maneuver.

After a rest day tomorrow, the weekend kicks into life with the individual competitions (British Championships) which like the Home Internationals are in four categories, junior, master (over 40), open and ladies.

Surf kayaking is also divided into a shortboat (high performance class) and longboat category (international class).

The shortboat’s do have fins while the longboat don’t have fins.

This summer, Nathan and Archie have both done well with Nathan finishing second in the IC longboat event at the Cornish Open while Archie was the runner-up in the HP shortboat category at the Devon Open.

While these two haven’t been in the sport for a long time, a couple of the other Bude stars have.

Seventeen-year-old Davies is the current British Champion in both the shortboat and longboat for the junior class, a quite brilliant achievement.

However 22-year-old Barker who runs the club at Bude, is the current world champion in the IC Longboat.

Surf kayaking sounds like an exciting sport, and Trevor believes that surfing has absolutely no patch on it, and is urging people to get involved.

He added: “Now that surfing has got into the Olympics I am hoping that the profile of our great sport will continue to increase.

“Surf kayaking is ten times better than surfing as it’s a lot more radical and exciting and tests you even more.

“In surfing if you fall off on a wave that’s it, but with our sport you have to have the strength and skill to pull yourself up from inside the boat and get going again.”