Guess What... Black on Black!

The RB-JMC is the mat a lot of people are after and this is the latest, built for Santa Barbarian, Colin McCrindle.

Colin was one of my early customers and has always been a good source of feedback being both a skilled mat surfer and a fella with access to some very fine and very quiet waves as he goes on the hunt on his boat.

This mat, named Vaccine, is a RB-JMC, as mentioned. Colin has opted for a 200/70 configuration, preferring the feel of a more stable deck. As always with this model, it is a highly vented super-free-breather to maximise air movement at low inflation. What this means is that the highly malleable fabric of the hull can morph to the wave and the deck to the rider almost instantly. More twitchy for the newer mat surfer but more intuitive and responsive for for more experienced riders.

Vaccine also has a negative elastic rocker to enhance down the line speed. There has been some confusion around this issue at times so just to clarify, the key word here is elastic. Elastic rockers refer to the favoured stretch of the fabric in the deck and bottom skins. At full inflation the mat will stretch into a rocker but at lower inflation will be flat. The important issue is that a neg rocker mat has a slightly elastic deck and restricted bottom skin so will favour forming a negative rocker when air is forced into the inside rail giving more lift.

Back to Vaccine, you can see that Colin has gone for a black on black colour scheme. These are becoming a thing!

I'm looking forward to seeing how Colin and Vaccine go.

Have fun mate!

Cheers

G

Colin's New Companion

Meet TREAL, a modified Ute built for Colin McCrindle in Santa Barbara. Colin is a very evperienced mat rider who I’ve built a number of mats for over the years:

https://customsurfmats.com/blog/tag/Colin+McCrindle

Colin has an eye for nature and a lust for finding out of the way quality wave around the Santa Barbara Central Cali coast. Just take a look at his Instagram account… Amazing!

https://www.instagram.com/colinmccrindle/

Give him a follow!

Anyway, TREAL is a 200/70 build and very well vented so the internal airflo is lomost completly unrestricted. The corners are squarer than normal too with a lightly stretched plan shape. Add to that the I-beams and bottom skin being made with a very light weave 70d navy taffeta and lighter TPU coating and we are looking at a mat that is going to be very fast.

TTREAL is on the way so Cali right now. The tracking says that wild fires are causing hold ups but HOPEFULLY she’ll be with colin before the weekend.

I’m excited to hear about their travels to quiet coves and reefs.

Have fun Colin!!!

Cheers

G

Two New Friends for Colin

Say hello to a couple of lovely ladies set to head off to their new home with Santa Barbara based Colin McCrindle.  Colin is an accomplished mat surfer who is lucky enough to work on boats around that part of the world meaning he gets to surf some pretty special and secluded spots.  

Colin already owns a G-Mat which is essentially a hybrid of these two so expanding the quiver seemed a good call.

So then, on to the mats. The first is G-Mat 116, a 200/70 free-rockered, free-breathing Ute called "Lefty Loosey". She offers the all-round experience and is perfect for those long walled up points.

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Next is G-Mat 117, a free-breathing 200/70 Ubercat with rocker. As a quiver option, "Harvester" will handle hollow and peaky pits well, offering plenty of hold and tuning on a sixpence (or whatever the US equivalent might be... A dime?)

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Both mats have a 3/4 length grip job and are gripped with Sikaflex EBT. It will be interesting to hear how Colin goes with these in some of his mysto spots. I've seen some photo's (don't ask, I can't share) and he gets into some really good quality waves. Personally, I love hearing how mats lat I've designed and built go in these conditions.

Stay tuned!

Cheers

G

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Bottom shot of G-Mat 117 showing the Ubercat rail hooks and deep concave and rocker curve.

G-Mat 77 (AKA "Righty Tighty")

Ladies and gents, this is "Righty Tighty", a G-Mat Ute built for Santa Barbaran (Barbarian?) Colin McCrindle,

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Colin tells me that he surfs a lot of points and reefs, including Rincon. Given this, we've worked on maximising Righty Tighty's lift and down-the-line speed which I'm very excited to see in action.

As you can see, Righty Tighty is the customary Santa Barbara monochrome. Colin actually went for dark grey, rather than black lettering which seems to disappear in the shots above but is actually visible.

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Colin has gone for Sikaflex EBT grip to maximise traction. The more I use this stuff the more I dig it. It adds a bit of overall weight to the mat but that is negligible once you add a rider. The grip is so dependable.

Anyway, Colin has some boat trips planned so I can't wait to hear back from him on how she goes.

One last thing though, Colin actually named this mat Righty Tighty and I accidentally wrote "Tighty Righty" on the edgelap.

Tighty Righty... Sounds like Ron Paul's new underwear line, am I right!!!

Thankfully, Colin took it on the chin. DOH!!!

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UPDATE:

I forgot to post this at the time of WRITING, accidentally saving it as a draft,  so all of that above is a little out of date. Colin has been riding his mat a bit in good waves and has given me some feedback. He had been riding an extremely narrow mat so had some adjustment to make. Seems like he's made it. 

Here's what Colin had to say:

"The mat has been great. We've had a few really good south swells recently, so I've been getting head high to double overhead surf quiet a bit.

I'm still adjusting to the width, but it's not an issue. The speed it generates is incredible, a new skill I'm working on is hitting the brakes to not completely outrun sections. I got one really good barrel on my last go out, so I'm getting it dialed in.

More later. "

Well, 'too fast' is fine by me.  We can always stall. 😆

Cheers  

G