How to Repair A SUP Puncture - Paddle Board Repair

How to Do Paddle Board Repairs?

Each of our SUP packages comes with a repair kit. Let’s go over what’s inside. First as you open up your repair kit, the largest item is going to be your valve wrench. Now the valve wrench only has one application. That’s either to tighten or or loosen or repair your valve. This is not to be used to deflate your board.

Before starting to do paddle board repairs, you need to find out where the air's leaking. After you’ve inflated your board, if you hear air coming out from around the valve or while there’s water on the board and you see some small bubbles, that may mean that you need to tighten your valve. So to do that, you are going to use your wrench, deflate your board completely before applying the wrench to your valve, you are going to open, the wrench teeth will insert firmly into the valve, and to tighten, we are going to turn clockwise, until you get a nice snug grip. Once you remove your wrench, you can re-inflate your board and ensure that the leak has stopped and there’s no air coming out from around the valve.

So let’s talk about patching. If you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation where you have air leaking out of your board and you’ve punctured the side of the board or a solid surface, you can use your repair kit. In your repair kit are two different color patches which should match your board. Now again, I said solid surface, you can’t repair a seam on your board, only if you have a puncture on a solid surface on the side, bottom, or top.

So with these patches, as I said, you’ll have two, we recommend not using the entire patch for a small puncture, but rather using your wrench to draw a cap size or a quarter-size circle, recommended on the rough side of the patch because that’s the side that’s going to go onto the board. So once you’ve drawn the circle, we’ll cut that out, and we’ll apply it to the board.

Once you’ve cut out your patch from the larger patch, you’re ready to use glue. Glue doesn’t come in your repair kit, you’ll have to buy your own at any marine store. And just make sure that it’s marine-grade glue that’s made for PVC. So with the glue, we’ll apply a little bit onto the rough side of the patch, a little bit to where the puncture is and we’ll apply the patch to the board.

Once you’ve applied glue to the patch and to the board, give it about one to two minutes in order for the glue to get tacky. Once the glue is tacky, you’ll apply the patch to the board, and apply pressure with either a weighted object or a clamp. Let that patch sit there for about 12 to 24 hours before inflating your board again.

Please remember that this is an inflatable paddleboard and it’s not indestructible. The most common causes of scratches and punctures we see are rough handling around docks and dragging or in very shallow areas with sharp rocks and oyster beds. Also when paddling with your furry friend, we hear a lot of people ask if our deck pads and the top parts of the board are going to be strong. Our EVA deck pad is a separate layer from our PVC underbody. So if you see a scratch or a puncture on your deck pad, more than likely that does not mean that you’ve punctured or have created a leak on our boards.

When maintaining your board, we recommend that you thoroughly spray off your board after each ride, especially if you’ve gone on salt water or in brackish water or in the intercostal, thoroughly spray off the top and bottom of your board. If there are areas on the board that have stains or darker areas, you can use soap and water and a nylon brush to scrub those off. Or if that stain is really not coming off, you can use mineral spirits. We’d say apply the mineral spirits into a rag and then apply that to your board.

Before rolling up your board, make sure it’s completely dry and free of any stains or dirt or debris. Other than knowing how to do paddle board repairs, you should also know how to maintain your board properly. If you use and protect your board properly, you should be able to use it for very long.