The Wizard Stick

 Here is the NEW Wizard Stick paddle from Mega:

http://www.surfkayaks.com/product.php?productid=17774

Disclosure: I am a Mega Team Rider, and I was given this paddle to review. However, like the magical sitar from the movie Moulin Rouge, I only speak the truth. The words in italics below are the official Mega claims. The rest is me.

Mega are renowned designers and laminators of sexy composite boats, most famous for their surf kayaks (market leaders since 1991), but also sea kayaks, open canoes and even a playboat! Now they are trying their hands at the magic of paddles. Weighing in at just 850g, the new Wizard Stick is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Mine is carbon blade with sky shaft (history lesson about pole-vault poles, Google it), and I've gone for a length that I can use for surfing (but it's a bit long) or sea kayaking (but it's a bit short) or whitewater, for which as you might guess it's perfect! Medium blade (745cm/sq).

I've snapped paddle shafts before, including a sky pole; one over the deck of the boat 'cos I landed flat from 40', and another by jumping on it. But unless the shaft is damaged already, a more likely outcome is a catastrophic failure of the blade or joint.

"The carbon paddles are made from carbon fibre multi-directional prepreg laminate."

OK.

"The shafts are 30mm and inserted into a 70mm long sleeve in the neck of the blade for extra strength."

OK.

I can't tell if they're strong, but they look strong. The joint is a bit bulky because the designers have erred on the side of Mega-strong, and the blade looks as if an inch-thick pile of carbon fabric has been put in an autoclave and squashed paper-thin under Mega-tons of pressure. Which it probably has! (See what I did there?)

Hmm, no dihedral... Is this even gonna work? Dihedral is the principle of shaping the drive face like the convex side of a spoon rather than the side you eat from. The slight loss of power stabilises the blade and prevents flutter. The only paddles that don't have dihedral are usually in slalom or other power-hungry applications, and the immense forearm strength of the athletes is relied upon to control the flutter. Until they retire with wrist and elbow injuries. No... we like dihedral.

"The blades are spoon shape tip to tail and flat across the middle plane with a thin profile to bite the water efficiently with no flutter."

Are they now? This doesn't sound right. So I took 'em paddling. The only way to be sure...

I have many sea kayak paddles, from G-stick to long touring Euro blades, but I like to go out fitness training in my Inuk (fast sea kayak) with short slalom style paddles just for the workout it gives me. Enter the Wizard Stick. I put a few miles in on the Tamar estuary where I live. There's no flutter. There's less splash and more power than with my slalom paddle. What is this witchcraft? Damn...

"Very light - almost all flex has been eliminated from the blade, so the power output is immense."

This is true. There is flex in the shaft, though, just the right amount to give the paddle that "living thing" feeling like a wooden paddle and protect my ageing joints! I love sky shafts and have done since Werner first used 'em way back when. They're incredibly strong with just the right (minimal) amount of flex, and the ovals for the hands are much nicer than most. Speaking of ovals, the Mega paddle seems to have less than usual, which worried me until I used them and it felt great!

One problem I've had in the past is with the Skypole having a greasy feel so that I had to use surfboard wax to give me a confident grip. The Mega one is slightly different, with a matt finish almost as if it's been sintered. No grip problems here.

OK, so it's my new favourite paddle. But I haven't exactly tried it in its element. I put the paddle away and kept checking the surf forecast for a day I could a) surf and b) take decent photos, but another opportunity came up first; a massive rainfall on Dartmoor brought the rivers up big, notably the Dart. I was pencilled in to do a boat test, so after the school run, I found myself bowling across the moor with whitewater boats and the new fave stick. 

In my head, I was going to get some photos of the boat doing its thing and some of the paddle for this review. With snapper Kate on the bank with a DSLR, I seal launched into the pumping river, painfully aware that I hadn't been on whitewater for a year (or in this boat ever), and a strange thing happened. I forgot about the paddle. Completely. I was thinking about the somewhat general-purpose boat, how to use it, how to get it to surf a wave that most people can't surf even in playboats, and I forgot I had a new paddle. I think this is the best accolade possible. It just works. And I did paddle the surging floodwaters, and I did surf the difficult wave, and the paddle didn't make me adapt or think or anything.

So, perhaps I'm biased or just lucky (probably), but I think it's perfect.

It's also available with glass blades, carbon shafts, bent shafts, bla bla... But mine is the best. End of story.

I will use it for surfing when the right day comes. But in the meantime, I'll use it for everything I can!

Sorry about the radio silence...

It's been a while! I decided I would shift the emphasis of this blog to my then embryonic personal training business, and then there was a toddler, and then Covid-19. I seriously underestimated how time-consuming toddlers are, especially when you're stuck with 'em 24/7. But no regrets. It's been great to be able to spend so much time with her.

Now, onwards. I'm writing some PT and personal development stuff; it's very progressive and closely aligned with my philosophy, one that regular readers are probably familiar with. If you're new to my ramblings, it may or may not be for you. The next post might be called something like "Your goals are not the answer".

Watch this space, and in the meantime, don't forget to breathe...

Soul, baby...

It's past Easter, and in the northern hemisphere that means more people start to think about the upcoming watersports season. For me and my whitewater tribe there's no off season - in Britain, unusually, the whitewater boating happens in the rainy (ten) months of the year, most of which are concentrated in the autumn and winter. But for most people, now is the time. Now that we've got the snow (!) out of the way, it's the season to dust off the toy cupboard and realise that the correct number of boats to have is always n+1, where n is the number you have already...

I'm excited about the new crop of slicey playboats, like the Mixmaster and whatever Shane's called the LL boat I said he should call Slicey McSliceface. But I'm getting a Soul 303 and F Bomb, for reasons that may become clear if you read to the bottom.

My daughter, on the other hand, is three years old. She knows nothing of slicey, of three-dimensional hydro-gymnastics or anything else of that ilk. She just wants to float in wonder, look at ducks, and bounce over little waves shouting "Wheeeee!" So I got her the Terrible Two (tandem whitewater kayak) and the Minime (toddler upwards kayak). Here's my experience of them.

I knew the Minime was going to be small but I didn't picture quite how small. It's tiny! But as soon as my 2yr old got in (she got it for her 2nd birthday) I could see that she was only just big enough to paddle it and won't grow out of it for years, maybe not until she's eight. It is a beautifully made boat with great styling and graphics and simple yet effective outfitting drawn from Corran's own experience with his kid. It looks at first glance as if it's a playboat, with a planing hull and rocker breaks, but the overall volume and its distribution is more practical than that. I reckon it will look after the little ones when they finally transition to solo white water boating. The really magic feature though, is the flip down skeg. At the flip of a switch the long skeg swings straight down and keeps the tiny ones, who initially paddle entirely in sweep strokes, from the frustration of zig-zags. The skeg kicks up easily if they paddle into shallow water.

It's hard to picture what kind of paddle a little person is going to need so we got a supercheap (£7) plastic thing online to get started, knowing that it can break down into oars for her raft or be modified to make a better paddle. It was too long and too thick so I transplanted the blades onto a bit of plumbing pipe and we continued to experiment at low cost. Currently she has a wooden squirt-stick style paddle I made out of a broom handle and some plywood!

Initially though, she was much happier going out in the tandem Terrible Two with Daddy. The TT is very different from whitewater doubles like the Topo Duo / Dynamic Duo. The front cockpit is the same as the Minime, which works as a big open cockpit for a toddler but will soon work to brace and roll with a spraydeck on as they get bigger. The volume has been distributed accordingly. Because of this, it doesn't paddle like the Duos. Those boats are reminiscent of end cockpit C2's with a big effort by both paddlers required to make the moves. In the TT the boat turns around a point somewhere under the rear paddler's knees, which means that it can be controlled entirely from the rear with good effect. As someone who paddles pretty much in a constant bow rudder/draw/scull//pull fusion on rapids, I appreciate that a lot. I'd be happy to put a cockpit cover on the front and paddle grade 4 in this boat. When the munchkin is in the front it makes little difference to me - I just wouldn't take her down big rapids for her sake. Grab handles for the front paddler are a cool feature though. If she gets alarmed she can drop her paddle and grab these - Brace! Brace! Brace!

On the side is what I call the "suitcase" handle. Basically I can just pick up the boat and carry it like a suitcase. Which brings us to weight. It's not heavy. The yellow ones are a bit lighter than the others. The TT comes in at 19kg. That's awesome. Because realistically I will be carrying that and all my kit, plus the Minime in the other hand, probably, whilst my babygirl toddles alongside.

Finish. Most plastic kayaks look a bit disappointing, in my view. Like something that fell out of a Christmas cracker, but with a mysteriously stratospheric price tag. These boats are quite simple but so nicely finished, with a mix of shiny and textured areas, great 3d graphics, and handles and fittings that look very robust and high quality. The moulded outfitting for the standard seat is attractive and functional. The kid's seat looks a bit simple and thin/cheap, but it's in effect a baby power-seat, and doesn't need to be heavy to support a child's weight, and allows us to stick foam pads in there to stop small people from falling to one side of the boat. It adjusts fore/aft and up/down without tools.

Other brands are available. They just don't make boats for toddlers.

Press-up Challenge

Press-ups (or push-ups), 200 per day. Simple. Earlier in the year, inspired by something I saw online @gymfcks I thought I'd pump the pecs and sort out my lower back lordosis in one fell swoop; spring was coming, planks are boring, and this is a great way (for me) to get through the day; interspersing it with endorphin-boosting intervals.

If you'd like to join me, just go for it! Film each set on your phone or action-cam (with or without toddler hindrance) join 'em together and speed it up - tag me @itsmattos on Instagram, Twitter, FB or whatever you have! Looking forward to seeing other people's sets. Any type of press-up - you might be a minor deity doing one-arm push-ups on a TRX strap or a starter for ten doing them on your knees. I'm going for a mix of wide, narrow, assymetric, incline and decline - doing about twenty on the hour through the day. It works wonders for my mental health and it can't hurt on the fitness front, either!

Sitting, standing, kneeling...

Canoe & Kayak UK - photo © Pierre Mellows 

Only because I  found it on the internet, to be quite honest, but this lovely photo by the talented Pierre Mellows was shot for my first foray into writing about SUP for print. Interesting composition works really well here (it's a DPS so there's a fold down the middle), and the canoe shot is not what anyone expected. Thus lulling the canoeing and kayaking readers into something or another and circumventing the expected backlash from the anti-stand-up-community... maybe. Why people can't all play nicely together is beyond me. Sitting, standing or kneeling, it's all fun...

Dynamic Duo Paddling

I thought it would be a marvellous idea to take my buddy Mitch down some rapids in a double kayak. He's been kayaking before, of course, but never on moving water. And I've never paddled a duo with someone in the front who weighs as much as me (or a bit more even)...

So, with very high water levels on the Dart (through the third arch if that means anything to you) it was always going to be an adventure.

Safety boating, filming, commentary and wind-ups by Steve Whetman (Ugg) from Whetman Equipment

My favourite part is actually Ugg running the somewhat rowdy Lover's Leap rapid backwards so that he could film our descent. Awesome work!

Hammerhead Land SUP Boards

Land-based training and lots of fun!

We have UK stock of the Hammerhead board and paddle available at the new competitive price of £339 including mainland delivery and VAT. The US price is $389, but that does not include tax or carriage so this is a bargain. For comparison the only other carbon paddle we know in the UK is £129.99 with the nearest comparable longboard coming in around £220, so at a similar price but including delivery and a host of unique and arguably superior features, the Hammerhead looks pretty attractive.

Unpacking the stock and checking out the boards, Kiah liked the Natural board colour with the Sandstorm deck pad. I kinda wanted to like the Black with the Rasta pattern, but I think I have to agree. All the boards including the Ocean Blue (pictured above) look pretty cool though - the foam deck pad looks a lot more exciting than just grip tape, as well as being warm and allowing us to ride in bare feet!

Natural//Sandstorm

All the colours we have

The unique things about the Hammerhead board are its sheer size (it's much more of an SUP experience than just a normal longboard), its deck shape that prevents the paddle from fouling on the wheels, and the foam deck pad. If you want to feel that you are riding an SUP board, rather than just skateboarding while waving a stick, I don't think there is any other combo that can replicate it. The paddle is carbon with a dense and grippy rubber ball, perfect for drive as well as braking, support and slides. The paddle is adjustable too. With the massive, robust Caliber trucks and the smooth as silk 70mm wheels, we are having a lot of fun with it!

For more information or to order a Hammerhead board please contact UK Brand Ambassador Bill Mattos - mail@billmattos.com

Big thanks to Kiah from skatesisters.com Instagram @kiahskate