New year, new things!

    That's right people its's a new year so time for something different! Firstly, I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Year and that Santa brought you everything you wanted. Mine was fairly average... Friends, family, food and of course; paddling.

So let's get to the topic of new things then shall we?

    Firstly lets cover work. I'm no longer working at Lee Valley which as crazy as it sounds, means I'll be able to paddle loads more and enjoy paddling way more too! I've been looking to relocate to Nottingham for a while now to paddle more and eventually hopefully; get better at kayaking. For the meantime, I've been working in Kent Canoes! The best kayaking shop in the WORLD!!!! (Opinion may be biased) This has been a blast so far and already I've been out paddling a lot more.
    So, now the boring subject of work is out of the way. The bit that will make the most difference to life itself... I JOINED TEAM WAVESPORT! This is something that the I've been chatting to the guys and girls over at Wavesport about for a while now. A big thing for me is to support local brands where I can. Whether it be local as in when I'm from or local from the UK. Wavesport is based down here in Kent which basically puts it on my doorstep. So, why have I joined the team? Good question! As well as supporting a local brand I'm also really interested in the design process. Everything from dreaming up a boat, making a model on CAD, to the finished article. Being on the team allows me to be involved in this process and learn first hand how it all works. Having been on a tour of the factory and seeing how the boats were made, I was happy that I and anyone else who paddles Wavesport boats are getting a quality piece of kit. 

So what do I think about the boats?
Apart from the fantastic build quality they also need to paddle well. This bit was always going to be a struggle for me. Going from my GuiGui which I've been paddling for years now to a plastic boat was always going to be strange. I tried the Mobius for a couple weeks, I saw some potential in there but it just wasn't the boat for me. So it was all down to the Project X to make me fall in love. And it did just that! It was a superb machine when it was first released in 2011, and things haven't changed. It felt like surfing on melted butter. Smooth edge to edge transitions on them perfect rails. Wow! My favourite move in that boat has to be a silky Flashback. It just releases so well. And it's not too shabby in a hole either. The balanced volume makes going end to end cartwheeling effortless. Them edges come in to play yet again for McNasty's. It grips and spins on a dime. My one small gripe with the boat is the sizing. It did feel a little on the larger side. That being said, I've always enjoyed a larger boat! All that was needed was some foam here and there to make it fit 'Like a glove'

Well, that's enough rambling from me.
Hope to catch you all out on the water at some point!

   

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