After yesterday's unprecedented terrorist attacks on Paris, i wasn't in a good mood, i stayed awake quite late trying to get more information about this horrible event and making sure my friends were safe. Anyways, this afternoon felt better as i drove to Mille-Isles to meet with the JuMana ladies. Martine and Julie have recently received a few interesting packages from a Chinese manufacturer, because you know... we've actually been working hard on their forthcoming inflatable SUP line in the last few months ;) the 3 boards you see below are the early prototypes with temporary colors, shapes and equipment.
After thoroughly inspecting the boards, bags and paddles for a while, we already have a long list of useful information and ideas concerning the final products. We had a good time debating the pros and cons but the goal of the day was to paddle and that's what we did despite the unfriendly weather (outside temp around -4°C). However no flurries would stop us from our mission: to test-ride those brand new paddle-boards at Lake Noel!!!
Shit it was cold and windy to be honest, of course i forgot to bring some warmer underlayers, the drysuit is great but not so well insulated (it's only a shell). The girls were wearing their new mere 3mm wetsuits, how risky is that? Mind that we did not plan to risk bailing into the dark waters, we just wanted to paddle for fun.
The green all-around board is super stable and fast, i think it'll certainly be their best-seller with minor adjustments and the final graphics, the blue one is a whitewater oriented stick, it works well as it is but we'll have to tune it a lot more before it becomes operational (especially the rocker line). The red is a race board and it is fast, fast indeed but not stable at only 25" (63.5cm) wide! It takes some time getting used to it as we soon realized, Martine fell directly as she was trying to stand up. I did too later on, but that's fine it's part of the mission right :) it took me a few minutes to adjust but it was worth the sweat, with its needle design the board glides effortlessly on the surface in comparison to the other ones, a good sensation of speed indeed.
We eventually got tired of our frozen fingers and decided to head back for a little apero with a good bottle of Muscat de Rivesaltes in front of their fireplace, and surrounded by needy dogs. Quite a privileged day really, far from the violences of this sick world!
I also received my package from Aquabatics which contains some removable fins from NRS. One set of 2" (5.08cm) flexible fins and a set of four 5" (12.7cm), i plan to resize and cut some of them to a more classic fin shape like an FCS M-5 ITF. #SUP #JuManaBoards
Peace & love...
T.
