At last the Omni arrives!

So finally after months of leaks and hints, PG releases his latest mat design - "The Omni". I am beginning to think he has taken a leaf out of Apple's marketing manual! Damn lucky nobody accidentally left one in a bar somewhere! What a rich place the mat riding world has become in the last few years. Surfers from everywhere around the globe taking up mat riding with a terrific range of mats to choose from. Now we have yet another and I will be very interested to hear how it goes in more extreme waves than it seems to have been tested in mainly to date. (Isn't it awesome, whilst over 70 years of age, GG can still claim the wave of the day!). I am most interested that PG has produced a great mat by changing the tail of the Roundtail Tracker considering this post I wrote back in August this year. The main point I mention was, that in my limited experience, I had noticed that the very square tailed MT5 seemed to release earlier than the very round tailed Tracker. So it is great to hear PG report that once he had made the critical change to the i-beams, the prototype Tracker Squaretail "wanted to break free and glide with no provocation". Kendog also notes that it has a great capacity to come off the bottom turn and up to speed on the wave which is a hallmark feature of the MT5 that MT demonstrates many times in the Turbo Time II video.
I think the Blue Streak version of the Omni might be a ripper of a mat. I am really looking forward to PG getting them across to G so he can whack some grip on and get them out to riders with access to good sized powerful waves. Get those reviews in boys and gals!

"The Mat Wrangler as seen by King Waka!"

Thanks to Adam "King Waka" Williams for allowing me to extract the mat riding footage. A little taste of what the Australian bush is like at the end for your edification. Check his great blog out at http://kingwakaskorner.blogspot.com.au.

A Smorgasbord of Surf Mat Images

One of the great new features introduced in IOS 6 was the ability to share PhotoStreams. Yesterday, we heard that there are 200 million devices using IOS 6 and that their users have shared 70 million images with each other!
So I am adding to these already huge numbers by sharing 2 streams containing my collection of over 1000 surf mat related images with you guys and gals. The first has 1000 images and is full but the 2nd only has 290 and I will continue to add to this one as my collection grows.
If you are in the Apple ecosystem, you can subscribe to this 2nd stream and enjoy automatic notifications as images are added. Send me your email so as I can add you to the subscription list and you will receive a subscription invitation.
Those of you in the Windows and Android world can bookmark the two public links below so as you can visit 'em anytime.
I would also like to invite you to please do send me any pics you have to ramsnake53@gmail.com so as we can get them out there for all to see.
So, if you could do with a little inspiration you can check the pics out anytime and especially also encourage anyone you are introducing to mat riding to do so as well.  When you get there click on any of the photos to view them in full size and use the controls to continue viewing them at your leisure or automatically as a slideshow. Enjoy!

Surf Mats 1 - https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A2GWZuqDGmmcrV
Surf Mats 2 - https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A25qXGF1JqrUv

This means that the Surf Mats and their Riders in action series has now come to an end.

Rob Machado joins Team Krypt!

Unsurprisingly, as a great surfer and exponent of all kinds of surf craft, Rob Machado has elected to join Team Krypt as a surf mat ambassador.

Recalling how learning the alaia was at times frustrating but ultimately so worthwhile, Rob feels ready for the challenge of learning to ride a surf mat and expects that there will be a similar payoff.
Good friend and Ironman exponent Daniel Thomson happens to live nearby so it is not likely to take long to figure out.
Keep your eyes peeled around the Cardiff area of the US for a pair of high speed sliders.

And yep, here is yet another Tube ride of the Year entry

I got an email today from Central Coast California resident Jim Brady. He attached this great sequence of images which start off with a barrel before he moves out on the face and performs a great drifting cut back. The image quality is not brilliant but there is something very Greenoughish about them that I really like.

Howdy Robin,

That day I was riding one of my 4thGearFlyers.
I've got kind of a fleet with Dale's Pneumatics and some really old Greenough/Gross ones.
45 years of surfing boards, and I've returned to the source: matting now exclusively for the past 8 years or so.

This wave was at....well, I guess I should say along the central coast of Calif.

Jim

The photog was Lauren J. McFarland and thanks to both of you for this contribution to the competition.

Another tube ride of the year entry

The irrepressible Adam Williams again with his generous photog Paul"Oily" Newman again also!

We now have 7 entries for the competition and you can check them all out here in the News section of the Global Surf Mat Riders Resource.

The video footage of Tanner Gadauskas

I posted a pic of Tanner on this wave here back in July, Now I can post the video footage that it came from. Short but very sweet. Enjoy!

Da Bolt gets out again and discovers more mat riding secrets!

NSW mat rider Eric "Da Bolt" Bridges seems to be getting the mat riding bug bad! But many of us would not be surprised as we know just how insidious it can be!

Here are 3 emails received in the last week.

Hi Robin

Have enclosed a couple of piccies from our latest episode to “No Toes” a fairly heavy reef break on the south coast, although quite tame on this outing.

You may remember that I am a “bit” caffeine intolerant..well after being given a double strength latté by the boys I was desperate to get into the water and burn off some energy…

We arrived at no toes and I saw a wave and in my hyped up state said..I AM SSSOOO OUT THERE…my kneelo mate Oily (ex-submariner) joined me as he had not surfed this spot before..

As you know I like to throw the Vespa around …well as you can see in the piccies I got a little too excited and ended up just hanging on. Would not have been a good place to loose the mat with lotsa rocks and currents.

Still have not learned to have the finesse required to mat ride eloquently BUT hey its my style and I have a ball, even though mats do not have a rail.

We still crack up laughting and give lotsa older guys a trip down memory lane when they see us.

Da Bolt

Yo

Had a day off yesterday.

Stopped at backside Gerroa at 9 am and with one guy out decided the matman should do his thing…then the amazing thing happened..this guy says to me ..WOW is that a paul gross 4gf standard…NAH…it is a vespa roundtail….WOW…how many models does he make…blah blah…seems he recently wore out his standard and is getting another…so I say where do ya surf it…at latte corner (sand)…he thought I was nuts riding it over the reef…anyway had fun gotta couple and then committed myself into another awful drive thru Sydney traffic…crazies everywhere.

See ya …looks like another BIG swell for the weekend.

Da bolt

Yo fellow matman....had a stack of fun mat waves at backside yesterday...had to roll on my back a couple of times as I got rolled right onto the shallow ledge so that was different.

Now every time I go out I learn something new...i have found that if you can ANGLE into the wave on the take off and not drop straight down the face you keep ya speed up and remain more stable...i have even tried not stop kicking even when I take off...there is a difference between a board and a mat where on a board ya get up and turn away building speed with a mat you have to give it a bit more push.

I noticed in some of the piccies taken of me how I seem to go backwards after I catch the wave...this is due to drag etc...

So yesterday I kept kicking and angled in, made 9 out of 10 waves and got a couple of great "little" cover ups...

So this is why mats are so unique cause you have to adjust ya method for each type of wave..

Backside was slow so hence the extra kicking....once I was getting the wall lined up and had speed up I was able to put my flipper in for stability ...once I did it to hard and did a reo off the wave...one to deep and I slowed way down...so just a gentle edge is enough.

Shared thoughts...da bolt

Love ya work mate!

Surf mats and their riders in action 11

Here we go again. Plenty of smiles in this one and as it should be as surf mat riding is indeed "Exceptional Fun!"

My feet are wrecked!

Well, at the moment my right foot is. Ugly I know, but this is a warts and all blog. I have been mat riding so often of late that my swim fins are eroding the soles of my feet. I have a split under my big toe that has turned into an open wound. I have resorted to an old fart's corn dressing to protect it a little. If I want to go surfing it will have to be on a board in order to give my feet a rest. The only trouble is that I don't have any boards to ride so I am going to have to rely on Michelle lending me one of hers. When my feet have recovered a little more, I am going to have to go back to wearing fin socks. This is a pain in the butt as I was really enjoying using the new super comfy Duck Feet with bare ass feet!
Damn, damn, damn!

Eva in a tube on a Krypt MT5 at Nias!

I got an excited phone call from MT yesterday telling me he had just received an email with some pics of a fantastic tube ride for the Krypt Surf Technology 2012 Tube of the Year competition. The rider is Margaret River resident Eva Darcy and that is a cranking and perfect wave that she has found herself in! While researching the Nias wave I was interested to read that the usual tube ride has now increased from 7 to 9 seconds since the devastating earthquakes moved the sea floor up. If these images don't get you fired up to keep those entries coming in then I don't know what will? Here is what Eva had to say about her Nias mat riding experience and this particular wave.

Hi Mark, 
I have just returned from a 3 week holiday in Indonesia.
As luck would have it I got to boat around the Talos on my friend's boat which was very special because it is beautiful and very quiet. There I matted Churches which was fun.
Further fun instilled on my arrival to Nias. What a beautiful wave. However, I was also very much challenged here because you see I do not surf with that many people ever and I realised that surfing with crowds with individualistic agendas has a much different dynamic than for instance surfing with your own pod. The next day I took my surf mat and paddled out to the main wave. No one but 2 Aussies had ever even heard of a surf mat. I surfed 3 waves. This sequence is the second wave that tubed.I felt free and happy and totally elated from this surf and this is my measure as to wether I am on the right wave or not.
I hope this email finds you healthy and makes you happy.

Eva

It sounded to me like it made him happy Eva!