Lodestone Leashes: Automatic Leash – 2026 Product of the Year (Accessories)
Lodestone Leashes paddleboard leashes keep you attached to your board during normal use, but give reliable, repeatable, automatic release when you need it most—when your leash gets caught on a hazard in moving water.
Among the highlights of last year’s Paddle Sports Show was the 2026 Product of the Year Awards, organized in partnership with KS Publishing and the Paddler’s Guide. Each year, the contest shines a spotlight on the very best in paddlesports for the upcoming season. Lodestone Leashes took home the prize in the Accessories category for their automatic leash. To learn more about the product, why leashes are essential for SUPing, and what the future holds for automatic leashes, we spoke with Keith, the founder of Lodestone Leashes, about his award-winning design.
Hey Keith! Congrats on winning 2026 Product of the Year for the Lodestone Leashes automatic leash at the Paddle Sports Show. Can you introduce your product?
Lodestone Leashes are innovative automatic-release SUP leashes that use magnets at the heart of the connector. They keep you attached to your board during normal paddling, falling and swimming, but give reliable, repeatable, automatic release when you need it most, in a leash entrapment situation.
Great one! Before talking about your design, can you tell us why SUP leashes are so important?
SUP is unlike kayaking or canoeing. When SUP paddling, there is inherently less stability, and falling in is more frequent. This is particularly true on moving water. This challenge of balance and movement is one of the joys of SUP! Leashes are important as they keep you attached to your board; the single largest flotation you have. The safest place you can be when SUP paddling is on your board. A leash allows you to quickly pull your board back to you after a fall and re-mount it.
The safest place you can be when SUP paddling is on your board.
We asked the paddle community how far they typically swam after a fall, and used kayakers and canoeists as a comparison group. From over 200 responses, we found that SUP paddlers using a leash on a river are in the water for an average distance of 5 meters, compared to 15 meters for canoeists or kayakers who have come out of their boats, or SUP paddlers not using leashes.
Leashes are known to be dangerous on rivers, with some federations discouraging or prohibiting their use on moving water. Why is that?
The use of SUP leashes on rivers or any moving water, like estuaries, does carry risks. If your leash gets caught around a rock, tree, moored boat, or buoy, the force of water on you can quickly start to submerge you. If using an ankle leash, when in a 1 mph flow, most users not wearing a buoyancy aid can’t reach their ankle against the force of the water to release themselves. That is why there has been such an effort to get SUP paddlers to add a manual quick-release belt to their leash system. These belts enable the paddler to release themselves from their leash, but are not perfect.
Testing by Paddle UK shows that manual quick-release belts on SUP leashes fail to release in about 1% of cases and provide less-than-ideal release in about half of cases. In our own testing, we see similar results and also observe that decision-making to release in an entrapment situation is slow, and further delayed if it is cold.
Are there other alternatives to manual quick-release belts?
There are some early indications from SUP paddlers not using leashes on whitewater of an increase in broken ankles due to falling more vertically to keep in contact with the board.
The obvious alternative is to not use a leash on rivers. This does however, produce different risks. Because, on average, you spend more time in the water, your risk of foot entrapment, impact injury or flush drowning increases. You also have an increased injury risk as there is a temptation to focus on keeping hold of your board during a fall, rather than focusing on falling safely, for example, by falling fairly flat if the water is shallow. There are some early indications from SUP paddlers not using leashes on whitewater of an increase in broken ankles due to falling more vertically to keep in contact with the board, and reports of groups being separated over several hundred metres while dealing with swimmers and loose boards.
So that’s where an auto-release leash comes in handy!
Auto-release leashes sort these issues: you get all the benefits of using a leash, but if a leash entrapment does occur a Lodestone Leash releases cleanly and instantly without you needing to do anything. What’s not to like about that!
Who do you think will benefit the most from this technology?
Why would you not want the added reassurance that your Lodestone Leash could save your life for the cost of a tank of fuel?
We believe that all SUP paddlers can benefit from a Lodestone Leash, apart from those paddling surf, open water down-winders or high-volume whitewater. After all, it is the unexpected situation that catches you out, like falling in when taking a look at the bow of a millionaire’s moored yacht in an estuary, or falling into a canal, not realizing the amount of flow there is, or the submerged shopping trolley. As paddlers, we rarely go out of our way to put ourselves in danger. It is the times we don’t perceive or misjudge the risk that we are most likely to accidentally experience it. Think of Lodestone Leashes like an airbag or ABS in your car, or buoyancy aid or helmet you might wear paddling; you never set out to need these, but you have them in case you do. Why would you not want the added reassurance that your Lodestone Leash could save your life for the cost of a tank of fuel?
How much time and effort went into bringing this product to life?
We started prototyping and testing Lodestone Leashes back in October 2023, before bringing an early adopter version to a small group of users in May-October 2024. From that feedback, we then developed our current product, which we launched in September 2025, which has substantially improved corrosion resistance, auto-alignment, and less than 1% variability in the 200 N release force.
Bringing Lodestone Leashes to life has been a passion project for me, having seen and experienced the problems SUP leashes can cause on moving water, but also seeing and experiencing the issues not using a leash can cause.
Does it build on ideas or designs from previous products you have created?
The Lodestone Leash that won Product of the Year 2026 is our 23rd version that we developed and tested. As soon as we set out on the journey and tested our first prototype, we were sure that a magnetic auto-release mechanism would offer something unique compared to other auto-release systems which use friction or hook and loop materials.
Was there a moment during development when you realized this product was special?
My son whitewater paddleboards with me and once we were confident in lab and controlled real-world testing, he has been using our prototypes from early on. On one trip, as we came down a rapid he fell in. His Lodestone Leash separated because the leash got caught around a rock on the riverbed. The instant release meant he was not held in the flow and was able to focus on safe swimming for a few meters until I reached him. Reflecting on this, knowing he didn’t need to do anything to be released, like remember to pull a manual quick-release belt, was really reassuring and made me more certain that automatic-release leashes give a significant upgrade to safety.
Must be special to see family using products you’ve made! As well as sharing the river with them! What feature or innovation do you like most about this product?
Aside from the automatic release, my favourite feature of our production Lodestone Leash is the automatic alignment when you are reconnecting the two halves. This means you can disconnect and reconnect your leash really easily by grabbing one side of the connector, snapping it apart, and waving the separated connector end near the half on your belt to reattach. This gives a super simple way to quickly separate from your board if you want. This wasn’t a feature I was particularly thinking about during the development, but is such a handy additional feature on top of the reliable automatic release.
Thanks so much, Keith! And best of luck with everything this year!
For more info, visit: Lodestone Leashes
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