Orange Bomber

Here's a new ride named "Orange Bomber", built for Hayden Tanner over in North Carolina.

Hayden had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted. A stable mat that will perform on a wide range of conditions but would manage hollow beachies such as the hollow waves on the outer banks. With that in mind, his choice to go with a 200/70 Chino Racer with wheezy venting made perfect sense. We talked about colours and Hayden was keen to match his orange, blue and black Yucca Fins.

With that in mind, an orange deck, navy bottom and black grip was an easy fit.

Hayden came with the name in mind too and we came up with a stencil idea which has turned out pretty well I think.

Hayden says:

“When I first moved from Wyoming to the coast of North Carolina I began hanging out with a childhood friend and got pretty heavy into boogie boarding. One day at the local pier he told me about this mysterious thing called a surf mat. He explained how they were built and worked, my interest was immediately caught. As my second season on the east coast came a guy walked up on the beach holding the mysterious surf mat! Immediately we ran over to him to talk about it and finally get our hands on one. He let us take it out and catch some waves, 2ft surf if we were lucky that day. But still nonetheless I finally got to feel the glide everyone described. When I got home that day I jumped on the wait list, I missed the slots for the next year but I finally got one. Now here we are and I’m excited to finally get the chance to own the mysterious surf mat.”

— Hayden Tanner

Hayden has also gone for a mat bag which I've done on royal blue and orange with a black G logo. He's also gone for a sexy tee. Lovely stuff.

So, Orange Bomber is en route to NC. Hurricanes seem to be warming up in the Atlantic so I'm excited to hear how things go.

Have fun Hayden!

Cheers

G

Crazy Horse!

G-Mat 192 (AKA “Crazy Horse”) is a new mat for San Francisan, Josh Edwards.

Josh told me that he was looking for a mat to get in to fast barrels. Chunky Central Californian waves where getting a good line and holding it are paramount. To this end, there was only really one candidate that came to mind after our discussion.

Crazy horse is a 200/70 Nouveau Racer built with 200denier white taffeta weave deck and light weight 70d I-beams and bottom skin. The grip is Sikaflex EBT with a strip pattern. As well as looking sexy, the aim of the strips is to reduce resistance (a bit) end to end and to maximise grip laterally. In short, easy to get on, harder to slide off!

The corners are gripped and I’ve run it back a little further than usual along the rail to account for Josh possibly being back a touch on the mat in hollow waves.

Back to Josh, I wasn’t aware of his work prior to collaborating with him over Crazy Horse but through this process I came across his artwork. Here what Josh has to say about it:

“My work has been all over the place for so long, mostly because I have always tried to be more than a one trick pony. It gets a little tricky to tie it all together, but the pieces always tell a story of normality through industrial symbols.

These usually come in the form of things we encounter on a daily basis; workers, vehicles, household objects, buildings. The process in which these get created, and the people who create them, tend to fall by the wayside while the name of a brand sits in the spotlight. ”

— Josh Edwards

Amazing work.

Cheers

G

PS. I’ve added a gallery of some of Joh’s work bellow and please take a look at his Instagram feed @one.time.twice

Clone to the Bone!

Meet G-Mat 174 (AKA “Dolly”). She is a G-Mat Nouveau Racer, built for James Harvey, down in St Ives, West Cornwall, UK.

So why Dolly? Well, on a recent stay down West I hooked up with Jamo for a couple of very fun surfs. I was riding Unity, my Nouveau Racer on the first day in low tide, hollow, fast breaking waves. James had a crack on her and his feedback was that she was “…the best mat I’ve ridden”. We had been talking about building James a mat for some time and when he got in on ordering one this time around he immediately said “just copy your Nouveau Racer. I want the same dims, materials… everything!”

So there we go… Clone time. Clone to the Bone. Clone Alone. ET Clone Home. Clone Armatrading. Papa was a Rolling Clone. You get the gist... So Dolly is the perfect name for her as Dolly was the first cloned animal:

https://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/index.html

So what did I clone? A 200/70 Nouveau Racer, free rocker, wheezer with full length grip including the front corners. Not an exact clone as the grip is clear Sikaflex EBT for durability and the logo is smaller, closer to the tail and orange so perhaps more of a non-identical twin.

All those qualities make Dolly the perfect mat for Jamo. He primarily surfs Porthmeor which for those who don’t know it is a fast and heavy beach break so a mat that gets in quick and has a load of hold is just the ticket.

Enjoy Jamo!

Cheers

G