By Nathan Dukes
You wouldn’t usually place something as trendy as paddle surfing in the same sentence as SAP.
If anything, the two are world apart. But not for SAP change manager Andrew Cassidy.
In his spare time, Andrew is a keen paddle surfer, and recently published the first locally produced paddle surfing magazine, Australian Paddle Surfer, with the help of family and friends.
Andrew agrees his work and hobby are chalk and cheese.
“They are very, very, different, I’ll have to admit that,” Andrew said.
“It’s my creative outlet I suppose. I’ve got my technical background which I have with my SAP work, and my e-learning development work, but I think we all need a bit of a creative outlet, and surfing is mine.”
As testament to his ability with a board, Andrew placed second in an invitational paddle surfing competition last weekend at Manly Beach, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
“There were only 16 competitors at that event,” he said. “But we’ve had other comps recently- one in Noosa and another in Port Macquarie. Sometimes we’ll get 30 or 40 guys going to an event.”
Andrew said while the sport is only young in Australia, is has a good following in countries like the USA and France.
“There are some guys that [paddle surf] almost professionally. They might do surf patrol and life guarding as well, but there’s a couple of guys that are almost fully professional. I’m still doing my SAP stuff as well.”
Andrew works as a Learning Architect for e-learning services company CyberLearn, based on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
He spent the last few months producing the magazine in his spare time, and admitted to handling the impressive layout and production himself.
“It’s all very new to me. It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this before. It was a big learning curve for that first issue, but I think the next one will be a little bit easier now that I’ve got things in place and I can build on the design and the layout.”
“I’ll keep doing it as long as I can keep the time available,” he added
Australian Paddle Surfer Issue #1 for Summer 2010 is available now. Andrew hopes the magazine will be able to raise the profile of the sport in Australia.
“It’s very small at this stage, but it is expanding exponentially. A lot of people are getting on board, excuse the pun.”
http://australianpaddlesurfer.com.au/
