Involves

Moment

Nine hours across open water

Santa Cruz Island to the California mainland, September 2013

NBA player Kyle Korver had never used a stand-up paddleboard when Marcus Elliott proposed a twenty-five-mile crossing of the Santa Barbara Channel. Korver, Elliott, and artist Nelson Parrish launched from Santa Cruz Island with a support boat. Side swells knocked Korver off within forty-five seconds. Shoulders locked, toes bled, and a sunfish looked like a shark. For nine hours they reduced the ocean to the next stroke until they reached the mainland.

Distance
25 miles
Time
9 hours
Support
Boat

The caveat

The account comes from Outside magazine and the participants themselves, not a controlled study. A support boat accompanied the group, and they still faced injury, exposure, drowning, and ocean hazards. Their success does not make the crossing safe to imitate.

Korver later said the crossing taught him to discard excuses and perfect the smallest repeatable action. He linked that focus to his shooting, and the next season made a three-pointer in his 127th consecutive game, extending an NBA record. The channel did not prove that danger creates greatness. It gave him a memory he could reuse when pressure narrowed his world.

The next year's underwater rock carry made the danger more literal. Asked for the principal risk, a neuroscientist answered with one word: hypoxia.

How it connects

A first-time paddleboarder reduced the Santa Barbara Channel to the next stroke until certainty returned ashore.

This moment appeared in A challenge hard enough to change you, the Involves connection for August 11, 2026, which asked: Why choose an ordeal that brings failure, fear, and death into view?

Check yourself

What was Kyle Korver's 2013 misogi with Marcus Elliott?

A roughly twenty-five-mile stand-up paddleboard crossing from Santa Cruz Island to the mainland, lasting about nine hours with a support boat.. Right. Korver had never used a stand-up board before; side swells knocked him off within forty-five seconds, and they finished only by reducing the ocean to the next stroke.

What the sources establish

  • In 2013 Korver, Elliott, and companions completed a roughly twenty-five-mile stand-up paddleboard crossing from Santa Cruz Island toward the California mainland over many hours with a support boat.

  • Korver later linked focus learned on the water to his shooting streak, including extending an NBA consecutive-games three-point record the following season.

  • Even with a support boat, the crossing involved injury, exposure, drowning risk, and other ocean hazards; participant success does not establish that the ordeal is safe to imitate.

Sources

  • The One-Day-a-Year Fitness Plan (Outside, 2014), Korver and Elliott's Channel Islands paddleboard misogi and later underwater rock carry

  • Kyle Korver's Everest (ESPN, 2015), Korver's annual misogi practice, including the Channel Islands paddle and underwater rock carry