Hey all, just wanted to share a few photo's from the trip my wife and I took today on the Huon River in Tassie. Jess's mum minded our two boys for the afternoon so we decided to do the 11km run down from Judbury to our place 
It's a great spot with some simple rapids interspersed with flat water:
Well, theoretically they are simple rapids but they are hell fun on a sup
Jess and I having a bit of a relax as we float downstream between rapids:
The trickiest rapid on the run is usually called the mushroom farm cos of the farm near by:
Jess's face says it all:
My turn, starting upright:
Getting lower:
Even lower:
In the water 
Back on board
As the summer goes on the water is getting pretty low, it'll be great in winter when the flow starts picking up again:
Almost home, tired but very happy after a great trip 
Great shots.....thanks so much for sharing. 
Agh, Tasmania, it is heaven on earth and after exploring it in 2001, Tassie remains the best holiday and most beautiful place I've seen by a long shot.
I surfed the island on McCoy Nuggets back then, can only dream of the set ups on SUP's !
Thanks again. Keep them coming.
Thanks everyone, yep Tassie is a great spot. It is a C4 board, an inflatable 12-6 River Runner
I've only had it since Christmas (and I've only been suping since then) but so far it's done everything I've wanted it to and more
That's looks like a hoot - makes me want to go whitewater paddling again!
Tassie sure is a beautiful place, thanks for the pics/story.
was it a conscious decision to paddle without a legrope?
Just wondering how you weighed up the pros and cons of not using one
I'm pretty sure most of the whitewater crew OS don't use them because of the risk of getting snagged on a log. I've lost a couple of friends to rivers due to trees/logs.
if you fall off your board and it gets washed away from you is it easy to recover or are you looking at chasing it miles downstream and hoping it gets washed into an eddy or something?
Hey Lobes, yes I made a conscious decision not to use one, pretty much for the reason's that Goatman mentioned
At this time of year the rapids I paddle are fairly interspersed with much slower moving areas of water, so if I lose the board I can catch it pretty quick. I also never paddle moving water alone, so if I do lose the board my wife or whoever i'm with can paddle down and catch it pretty quick.
Having said that, I did come off earlier in the day and missed grabbing my board, and there was no way I was gonna be able to catch it until I came out of the rapid
In the long term when I have a bit more experience with my river in the lower water range, I will start wearing one in winter but NEVER a leg leash. Why would I risk wearing one in winter? My run in winter becomes very high volume, and if I came off I wouldn't have a hope of getting my board back. As it's high volume, the risk of entanglement is low, particularly since I'll be familiar with what is in the river under my feet as I'll have seen it at lower volume. Of course, the river changes all the time especially with logs etc but there is always a risk with this kind of sport.
Why not a leg rope? if you do get an entanglement or worse you may not be able to get down low enough against the pressure of the water to pull the quick release from your leg. I will be using a coiled leash (to keep it short, and out of the water) attached to a coast guard approved quick release chest belt such as are worn on rescue PFD's. This is what a lot of the river rats are wearing in the states, I'll see if I can put a pic up of it later and some links to a couple of posts.
I'm still thinking about it anyway, for me in the end it will be to do with river level, and whether the risk of losing my board and having to swim anywhere up to 10kms or so home outweighs the risk of entanglement
Hi again, here the links to posts and videos about using leashes on rivers I was talking about earlier.
This first one is a great discussion about the pro's and con's of using a leash on the river, and towards the second page starts to talk about the QR chest release system. As you can see there is a fair bit of for and against, but mostly against from the looks of it
www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=4259.15
Here's a quick vid showing an experienced guy using his chest QR when his board gets caught on a small drop, I think his fin was too large or something?
