Lindsay
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This is Lindsay, a mat built for Californian Mat surfer Cameron Weaver. Cam is the son of Longboarding maestro Robert “Wingnut” Weaver and is a highly accomplished waterman himself. He has been riding mats for some time in good point break waves and was keen to get a mat with good speed and hold. We had a few conversations and as is often the case with experienced mat riders, he chose the RB-JMC model with negative elastic rocker.
We had a few conversations around venting and after a bit of discussion concluded that a Free-Breather rather than a Super-Free-Breather would be the best option. Free-Breathers are very responsive but will hold their shape a little better than completely unrestricted mats and as some of the waves Cam surfs can have a little bump at times we felt that going down the middle would maximise the overall speed/hold balance.
When it came time for Cam to name his mat he went for “Lindsay” after the author of the essential book “Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls”. Such a perfect name! It inspired me to revisit this book that I had in PDF. When I have tried to find a hard copy of this I have always come up against a list of books over £100 GBP. As luck (or fate?) would have it, I asked Jeeves and the next thing you know a copy of the 3rd Edition was in the post to me for £15 GBP. Happy G!!!
Anyway, back to Cam. I asked him about his journey into mats and he said:
“Caught the mat bug the last couple years as a byproduct of trying to avoid the crowds around my local and finding ways to surf windows nobody else wants to….been surfing as long as I can remember, riding whatever I can get my hands on….lately smaller planing hulls have been on the menu, a custom mat was the next logical progression….”
I had a couple of conversations with Wingnut about mats as he wanted to surprise Cam by paying for Lindsay. Wingnut has tried mats a bit and is keen to join Cam in the water so I squeezed in a 200/70 5 Star General for him. For those unaware, this was my original stock mat and the predecessor to the RFT. I think the green deck, black grip and logo combo look pretty sweet! I bumped into Wingnut’s good friend Sam Bleakley recently and showed him Cam’s mat.
So Lindsay and the green 5 Star General are off to California as I type along with a Lilo Life hoodie.
Looking forward to hearing the ride report from team Weaver. Have fun fellas!
Cheers
G