G-Mat 180 - Beluga

This is Beluga. She is a G-Mat Ute built for French mat surfer, Frank Fellous.

Frank hails from France but is something of a multi-national surfing phenomenon, travelling the globe in search of waves. Frank currently has Phileas (don’t worry… we have news on the way regarding Phileas) and is going to whisk her away on a trip to Israel.

As you can see from Beluga, Frank likes to keep things understated. Clean white mat with clean white lines. The observant ones amongst you will notice that the backdrop for these shots is white rather than my usual black background. The reason being, the attempted shots with a black background were so contrasted that it was really had not to blow out the white and lose the detail!

Speaking of detail, Beluga is a 200/70 Ute. She is a wheezer (restricted breather) with free rocker, so stable and predictable and responsive to all conditions. The grip is white Sikaflex EBT. Front corners are gripped which really is the best option for keeping hold of your mat.

Beluga has set off to France so should land very soon. S’AMUSER FRANK!

Cheers

G

A New Hope... The G-Mat Rubber Bucky - JMC

Sooooo then. You will have seen my previous posts about the Rubber Bucky - JMC which I built for Jamie McClellen and then another for Andrew Stephen Buck. Well, I had to build myself one

My new mat named “hope” is very, very, light. 70/70 construction and a super free-breather with crescent ended I'-beams with 7 breather holes each. What that means is that the I-beams give the mat its shape but barely restrict the airflow at all. That, along with the very ligth material, squarer back corners, negative rocker and criminally light weight grip job means that this mat is really fast when ridden at very low inflation.

The other interesting thing about this design is that it responds well to decent waves so is a real all-rounder. Jamie has been riding his RB-JMC in heavy hollow waves and has been out-running hollow fast breaking waves. ASB describes his as “as good as a mat gets”.

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ASB at Rincon. Photo: Beth O’Rourke

Jason MacMurray has ridden ASB’s and says “That thing is next level”. He went on to say “The way it carries through the flats and from behind the peak is crazy. Andrew was making waves that he had no business getting around the section on”.

Jamie says “As a gauge, I would say I’ve owned somewhere around 50 modern high performance surfmats in the last 15 years. I have about a dozen at the moment and 4-5 are in my working quiver being ridden regularly. The performance characteristics of the RB-JMC are highly unique. This mat seems to excel at both ends of the spectrum, from tiny windswell to 6-8ft tropical groundswell racetracks. It has an uncanny ability to track high in the pocket and naturally hold the line I want to take, whilst simultaneously breaking the tail free for unlimited acceleration. Honestly it’s the best fuckin mat I’ve ever ridden by a long shot and it’s basically replaced my entire quiver” Well that seems pretty definitive.

My own experiences have been really positive too. Hope has been ridden in waves between waist high and overhead and has been great! Noteably faster than other mats ridden on the same days. In partticular, the squared tail corners maximise that tail-slip magic with the mat finding its natural resistance free plane easily. I agree with the thoughts from Jamie, ASB and Jason though. Definitely NOT a beginners mat.

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The RB-JMC has performed well in solid good shaped waves

This is definitely more than a Rubber Bucky with a tweak and I am stoked to add the RB-JMC to my quiver of models available to customers. This feels like a break-through mat that I am very, very happy with!

Cheers

G

The Green Hornet

It’s always fun sending mats to the hotbed of modern matsurfing that is the area around Sant Barbara. That stretch of coast with seemingly endless pointbreaks and a community of open-minded and talented surfers is the perfect combo for these things called mats. One of said Santra Barbarans is Jim Griswold. Jim is a friend of Kerry Burns who recently had a mat from me. Jim was looking for a mat to handle fast breaking hollow waves. After a bit of chit-chat, we opted for a 200/70 Nouveau Racer… A Green one!

Given the type of waves Jim is riding we setteld on building The Green Hornet as a wheezer. This restricts the airflow which meansd that, even at low inflation, the mat will keep its shape so be more predictable and handle any bumps more easily.

The colour and been added via a “bucket dye” process where the completed mat is acid dyed in a bucket. This gives an interesting mottled effect do the Green Hornet looks a little like she’s been built out of some kind of radioactive marble!

The Green Hornet will be hitting the Central Cali coast soon so if you’re around that way, keep your eyes peeled for a streak of green.

Have fun Jim!

Cheers

G

All Aboard the Love Boat

All aboard the Love Boat!

Romance is in the air, love is all around, etc, etc...

This mat has been built for Katelynn Pierce. Katelynn and Matt Pierce married earlier this year and Matt got in with an order saying that Katelynn was after a mat for their honeymoon in January. Perfect timing!

Katelynn is a fairly new mat rider and has only ridden Matt's which are WAY too big for her so job number one was to scale her mat to fit. The rest of the brief was a mat that will be versatile and dependable. With this in mind a Ute was the obvious choice.

The Love Boat is a 200/70 wheezer with free rocker. The grip is proper romantic (hence her name) in pigmented heart shaped patches and the logo is a festival of purple-pink glitter that the photo's don't do justice too. Oh...

And the Love Boat has a Heatered valve.

So, The Love Boat sets sail on Christmas Eve to SoCal and then on to Baja mid January for the Pierce's honeymoon trip.

Here's to you and a long and happy life together Kate and Matt!

Cheers

G

Ding Monkey!

A little while back, I built a mat named Jamu Jamu for Mariah Ernst.

https://customsurfmats.com/blog/2019/6/30/jamu-jamu-something-orange-for-indo

Mariah lives for the most part in Indo and on a heavy day lost her mat which got dragged across the reef on the inside with terrible consequences. A huge tear on the bottom, a smaller tear elsewhere on the bottom and then a slit in the deck.

We really thought it was curtains for Jamu Jamu... Mariah sent her over anyway for me to take a look at.

Anyway, it took some planning and a lot of prep, as the damage to the bottom skin wasn't tidy cuts but jagged rips. However, I managed to weld panels of 70d white material into the inside of the mat to stitch her back together. The only job then was a small pinhole at the tail fixed with a Stormsure patch.

Jamu Jamu has been left fully inflated for 7 hours and no leaks so looks like job done. She might not be the prettiest she's ever been but the contours are true so hopefully all good. It's not ideal to have areas of double thickness material on the bottom but it's better than a huge hole!

Let's see how she goes. Mariah is off for a trip mid Jan so we will find out if our surgical intervention has worked.

Fingers crossed! Glad to see you and Jamu Jamu reunited Mariah!

Cheers

G

Let Them Hate Me... So Long as They Fear Me...

That’s right. This mat is named Caligula. She’s the latest build for Andrew Stphen Buck.

Caligula came about through discussion about a mat I built for Jamie McClellan a little while back named Wheezy Jefferson.

ASB was interested by Jamie’s ride reports of levitationesque glide and 5th gear speed runs and the statemet “hands down the best mat I’ve ever ridden” and decided to give this modified Ruber Bucky (which I am calling the Rubber Bucky - JMC) a go.

Caligula has is a very light weight 70/70 mat with very light weave bottom skin and I-beams. She is also extremely well vented so is a complete free-breather and also has a neagative rocker to really maximise the speed. This will be further maximised by the squared back corners.Squarer corners release more easily so offer less hold but more speed.

I’d definitely say this design is for highly skilled mat surfers.

Caligula and ASB have had waves. After the first session word came through….

“Take a bow Graeme. Caligula is World Class”.

That’ll do.

Cheers

G

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