From Matt ...

Some hand drawn artwork on a 4GF Standard...cool!

From John ...

This is from a 1996 Action Sports Retailer mag...

More From Jeremy ...

Did he finish 3rd because of his mat...or in spite of it???

Plumber's Crack...Mat Surfing Style!

Rearward looking POV shots off a mat surfer's Go Pro have the unfortunate effluent of butt-dominated imagery.

That said, these vids from Jeremy (top) and Lloyd do have their moments...

Food For Thought ...

From Bob ...

Hi Paul

Heard a good one today at Shell Beach.  A guy checking out the surf saw my mat and said his friend in Hawaii told him riding a mat is like jumping off the roof and landing in your grandmother's lap.

Bob

From Jeremy ...

Hi Paul,

Hope this finds you well.

The new 4GF surf mat is top notch. I have been riding it with low inflation.
It is fast. I trying to trim right ahead of the wave right where one would drop in..

Question: What if the 4GF was 1" narrower and 1/3" thinner?

Recently  I am trying to extend/point my outside leg (going left) 45 degrees. The idea is to get a video of the surf mat from the back of the wave, with only the  flipper revealed above the lip.

Yesterday the fading swell against the grain of the flood tide produced little walls. I positioned my camera on the beach where the set waves ended.

Jeremy

From Bretto ...

 

Hi Paul,

 

Having a great time as usual in Bali. Timed it perfect for a decent swell.

 

Surfmatting seems to be getting popular  They even have a Matsurf restaurant here!

 

:)

 

I only have the i phone with me but we'll see what happens !

 

Best Regards 

Bretto

From Eric ...

Hi Paul

Well we have had relentless swells all 2016. With 3 cyclones & great South swells it sure has kept us all very wet.

I hope you guys have had your fair share also...

Had a few OK slides at Eagle reef, so named for it's resident eagle family, who keep an eye on us.

Seeya inda soif mate...Eric Da Bolt

From Ian and John in Ireland...

All pics below are taken by John Beasley (www.johnbeasley.ie – please respect the images folks and contact him if you'd like to use them elsewhere).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Paul and Gloria,
 

First up, your care package of T-Shirts and art is en-route – give me a shout when it lands so I know it got there are didn't somehow get "lost" by the Irish or US postal service. This has happened before! There's another to come too...
 

We're just back from a week down in the south west of Ireland in west County Cork - our farewell trip to Ireland before relocating to Australia. West Cork has some pretty incredible scenery and as luck would have it, some great waves. I was to meet up with a mate to drop off some artwork to and to share some sliders. When I got there however, he was staggering up the beach with his mat, a 4GF UDT, under his arm – latent back injury truncated his session short. There doesn't seem to be too many matters on the Island of Ireland and though we're only six-hours apart it had taken 12 months for us to finally get together for a session... ah well. He went up and got his camera gear and fired off a few snaps of me riding for the two of us.
 

I've been riding the Standard you shaped for me quite a bit of late and simply having a ball on it – I'm bewildered by the differences between mats. My wife won't let me ride the Fatty you built for her and so I'm frothing to try out the Omni that has already landed in Australia awaiting our arrival.
Farewell to Ireland for now – the past three years of empty or sparsely patronized line-up at long points, hairy reefs, gurgling slabs and fun beachies has scarred me for life. We'll be back at some stage in the future but for now, the new horizons of Australia, first Queensland and eventually Tasmania, are only a week away.

Cheers,

Ian


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Hi Paul,
 

I really doubt you remember but I got a mat off you a few years back. Unfortunately, I've been pretty much outta the water so its never gotten the water time it deserved but I did come across another of your mats in the wild the other day over here in the very SW of Ireland (down where they're filming the next star wars movie!) and I snapped a couple of picks I thought you might be stoked on.

Speak soon,

John 

www.johnbeasley.ie

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More from Ian...

It was a pity John and I didn't get to share a few together - always fun seeing some photos of yourself riding. I'm not sure it's possible to look like a kook on a mat but I'm loving the feeling of being that stoked grommet again every time I take it out!

I originally came to Ireland for my sister's wedding in 2005. It was only supposed to be a two week trip but work fell though just before I was due to leave. I had a week to organise a one-year work visa and landed with about four hundred Aussie dollars.  Before leaving Australia I had no idea there were waves to be found and, as it turned out, I've since had the best waves of my life here. I ended up in the north west in County Sligo. The north west has so many incredible setups, some easy to find but so many more that are rarely surfed. It really pushed my surfing. Total immersion is the best way to experience it but that means installing yourself. Winter can be hard. A mate today said that this last winter was the worst he'd had in ten years. Yes, cold. But the wet... And the wind, sleet, hail, storm after storm. So much rain! But the waves.

I've left about four times now and I keep finding myself back out here. I had my final session this morning. It's Spring now and I had borrowed a mate's wetsuit, a 3mm...to put under my 5mm. I thought I might have hardened up to the cold by now. I admit that I've been cheating a bit the last two or so years, since getting on the mats pretty much full-time, by wearing my dive suit. A two piece 7mm - 14mm around the vitals has been a game changer for the cold. I might look like a looper but I'm a UFO anyway riding the mats here.

The decision to head back to Oz however, has been a tricky one. My wife is from here and the parents on both sides aren't getting any younger; we've a little fellah now too. We're not making it easy on ourselves or them. Ah, on the flipside we've no mortgage, no big assets to worry about, no credit cards to pay off... There are advantages, disadvantages and compromises. Muireann's visa for Australia came though in March. It was tough and epensive to get so we had to lay things out and make a decision. Off we go.

Though we moved around a bit, I guess I'd call the Sunshine Coast in Queensland home. About 40 mins south of Noosa. I learned to surf on the Sunny Coast beaches and points. My brother only recently told me about a good swell that oushed in and out local point was firing and about 150 guys out. I just can't fathom those sort of numbers anymore. When my local in Sligo is firing there could be 20 guys out and that is considered ridiculously crowded. That said, the break adjacent to it could be flawless and empty or with one other guy out there. I'm a little nervous about heading back to the frenetic hustle of the frothers back home. Home? In the past ten years I've spent almost a year back "home". It's going to be weird.

So Tassie? I spent four years down there after returning from the first stays in Ireland. I did a marine science degree down there. The island of Tasmania is roughly the same size as the Republic of Ireland; population about five hundred thousand and around a third of the State is wilderness. There could still be dinosaurs in the southwest - predominantly untracked, wild country. When I first got there something about it reminded me about Ireland. Couldn't put my finger on it, might not. Empty beaches, rugged coastlines, the mountains, the weirdos...

It's the marine science that has pulled me back down there this time. I looking down the barrel of a PhD. Tassie is at the bottom of the map and there's nothing much south until you hit Antarctica as such it's a prime spot to study climate change. I'm going to be looking at how well habitat-forming seaweed are going to cope with the rising sea temperatures and acidification. The reseach should help us understand how these ecosystems are going to respond to the predicted changes and how these areas might be managed and cared for. It's going to be challenging work. 

Time off down there will certainly be spent exploring the coastline. Similar to Ireland there's a rugged coastline to explore and not too many folks. There's a few spots in particular down there that I have unfinished business with. Some of them fickle enough so being installed for for a few years will offer ample opportunity to revisit a few haunts and explore others. I'd like to find some, crikey, at least one, other inflatable enthusiasts down there to share some sessions and go exploring with. Ah, I'll take it as it comes. 

You'll have another head to visit if you find yourself down there. I'll do my best to keep the odd report sent out from the wilderness. 

Cheers,

Ian

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More from John ...

Ian is such a lovely dude and it's infectious just even talking to him about mats! I'm in the middle of prepping for a wedding tomorrow, but I will have another look through the images and see if I have any more you might be stoked on.

I actually have a friend interested in getting a mat for himself after seeing the pics of Ian, I think it opened his mind a little. He's tried mine a few times but never "got it" but he's gotten the sniff of it and is looking for more :)

Could you recommend which model would be the right one for him? He's about 5'10 maybe 90kg ish, a fit bloke and a handy enough surfer. He was thinking of the fatty as he hopes to use it with his two young girls come the summer months?

Speak soon.

John  

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It seems NASA is finally catching up!

From today's NPR's "Breaking News" page:

A new era for living in space may be about to start. A prototype habitat is headed to the International Space Station for a two-year trial. What makes the module unique is it's launched folded up, and it's inflated to its full size once in orbit.

The idea for inflatables began at NASA's Johnson Space Center in the 1990s. The space agency was trying to figure out how to get astronauts to Mars, without the crew going crazy living in a tiny capsule for months on end.

Kriss Kennedy was a NASA engineer working on the problem. It essentially boiled down to this: How do you pack a large living structure into a small rocket cargo space? The solution: inflatables.
"Well, there are several advantages for inflatable habitats; one is you can package it in a smaller volume," says Kennedy, and then expand it once you get into space.

The inflatable is not like a balloon. Folded up, it just looks like a cylinder. Expanded, it grows upward and outward so it looks more like a watermelon.

It's made of multiple layers of Kevlar and other materials resistant to micrometeorites. And even though it's inflated, Kennedy says you shouldn't think of it as squishy.

"It's very rigid," he says. "Once you get even a partial pressure it's extremely hard, as hard as aluminum."

But as enthusiastic as some at NASA were for this new approach to building space habitats, Congress wasn't sufficiently impressed, and in 2000 legislators told NASA to kill the program. Enter billionaire Robert Bigelow, a man who made his fortune in budget hotels. He saw a future for inflatable space habitats, maybe even space hotels.

He got the rights to NASA's inflatable technology and created Bigelow Aerospace. After more than a decade of development, the company has produced BEAM, Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, and NASA has agreed to attach it to the International Space Station and see how it performs.

Folded up, BEAM is about 6 feet by 6 feet. Inflated, it's about 12 feet by 10 feet, approximately the size of a small RV.

NASA wanted extra room that could be transported to space in compact form and expanded upon arrival.

Jason Crusan is in charge of BEAM for NASA. He says when it arrives at the station, astronauts will remove it from the cargo rocket with the station's robotic arm and plug into a node on the station.
Once it's securely attached, the astronauts will start to inflate it.

"It could be done as fast as four minutes," says Crusan. "We're not going to do it that fast. We'll do it over the course of several hours."

It's not that expanding it too fast might make it pop. BEAM's layered design won't let that happen. He says you could poke a big hole in an outer layer "and it will leak, obviously. But it's not going to puncture like a balloon."

While it's attached to the space station, the plan is for the crew to go inside the habitat from time to time to see how it's performing. Crusan says there are no plans at the moment for the crew to have a sleepover.

BEAM will be attached to the space station for two years. After that it will be detached and allowed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Crusan says NASA now sees a future for inflatables, and it's the same future as in the 1990s: getting humans to Mars.

"We do want to look at the use of expandables in what we call our Mars transit architecture," he says.
What goes around comes around.

From Jeff ...

Hi Paul

Here's the email I sent you back in November...

 

 

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True personal story I wanted to share with you as it has been a really uplifting experience. I had an old friend show up who went down the wrong road and went through alot but has managed to beat the demons and keep to the straight and narrow path. 

Well into clean living, he would go down and watch me surf.We surfed together as kids. I got him on the Vespa and he was blown away. Had tears in his eyes exclaiming I'm like a little kid!! He catches waves finless, gave him some UDT's but he still paddles in and rides waves the hard way anytime there's surf.He's in really good shape.

 

Being good and doing the right thing,going to church,the gym can be hard work and a bit boring compared to the alternative.Mat surfing has been a huge release for my friend.And a hell of alot of fun!! Now if I could only get him to put the damn fins on!!

 

Jeff

 

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 I finally got a pic of my friend Ed with his Vespa. Today he used the UDT's fins

 for the first time and it was a game changer for sure! He rides every wave to the beach

 and is having a ton of fun! He is taking his mat to Hawaii on a family vacation this summer as well.

 

Jeff

   

From Googlefog ...

 

 

Hi Paul,

 

After riding right points in Baja all winter I had to come really far south to see if I could still go left.

The new mats are great! 

Hope the pics make it to you -

 
John

From Captain Jeff ...

 

 

 

 

Paul,

 

Howzit? Just thought I’d contact you...

As I was down surfing at El Capitan the other day, trying to hide from this wind, and there was a guy out on a new’ish ‘Omni’ I think he said it was...? I was pretty sure you might know him, so I thought I’d send along the photos for your amusement, and to pass on to the guy if you know his email addie. Who doesn’t like to get photos of themselves surfing over the email...? They’re nothing special, but that next-to-last one is pretty classic, and shows a nice moment.

 

Thanks, and hope all is well.

 

Best Regards,

Jeff