More added to Nookie Streetwear collection

We have added a new range of mens and girls tops to our streetwear collection. For the men, there is now a Sweat Jacket - Turtle neck collar with ribbed cuffs and hem, a Beach Sweater - a pigment dyed lightweight sweatshirt with reversed raglan sleeves, deep rib hem & cuffs (this one is my favourite), and for the girls a new, unique Wraptop - Once more pigment dyed for that lovely beachy feel, this hoodie wraps around your body, rib trim around the hood and along front edges, deep rib cuffs and hem. Also the new girls Fern Sweatshirt - a pigment dyed sweater with reversed fabric neck, cuff & hems. A girls V-neck hoodie - Pigment dyed, shorter cut top. For more info look at the Nookie Online Store here.

Kate Middleton in Nookie 3/4 Neo Strides

...and doesn't she wear them well! Kate Middleton seen here wearing the awesome new Nookie 3/4 Neo Strides!

Kate Middleton wearing Nookie Makes HELLO Mag

The Scion Sisterhood and Nookie made a HUGE spread in the latest edition of Hello Magazine. Nookie logos are clearly visable on the frontpage and throughout the centre spread as the girls from the Scion Sisterhood keep raising money for the charities! Kate Middleton can be seen wearing the (now famous) 3/4 Strides, with some of the other sisters also wearing the new Nookie Thermalcore Pants!

Team Rider James Weir and I just spent a gruelling 3 days near James' Swiss mountain hideaway, charging around testing and photographing all the things the English weather had so far conspired to prevent us from doing. Some of the material is now uploading to other parts of the Nookie site, so I won't replicate it too much, but here are some shots to be going on with. We were joined by James' dog Ekmek, who is an ex-World Champion in his own right (2003, Husky Sled Racing) and the most well-behaved dog in the world.

James is seen here testing some little understood features of our awesome Rivermonster.

Pics are funny, video is even funnier - I'll Youtube it and stick it up here too...

Kate Middleton wearing Nookie hits headlines in all National Press

The Scion Sisterhood made headlines this week when they realeased who their latest member was. Kate Middleton has joined the girls and is seen here wearing a pair of the famous Nookie 3/4 Strides. The Nookie logo on all the paddles was about as prominant as we could have hoped. Keep an eye on the Sisterhood, and the national press as there will be much more in the future.

Sjoa fest:How was it? Emotional!

The Sweet Rumble Extreme race was cancelled due to super high water levels.Ugg elected to take his plastic Bullet rather than the composite. On arrival the locals said it was a small boat. The Amot section (class 5) of the Sjoa was very high. During the festival only 6 paddlers ran it: Ugg said it was an emotional humbling experience and in Amot gorge he disappeared deep underwater to emerge spinning in a seam with only 4 inches of bow showing above the water. Rob Coffey got caught in a shed size boil and had many roll attempts - "reminded me of Zambezi in flood". Local Pete Vickers styled it with a cool reverse screw on a bus size pillow but said only ran it once before at that level.

The new latex free Zone shell was put through four days of ww testing from pluggin waterfalls to super long work outs in big rapids to deep meltdowns. All awesome results so far. Next Bill is takin one for another shakedown.

Ugg has a new kayak/V shock Test.
Teamrider Vickers tests out the Nookie V Shock deck last week on Moneydrop in Norway. The landing sends the boater deep under water applying heavy pressure on the deck. On this test the deck held the pressure and did not implode. Previous boaters that day had run the drop with another brand of deck and they all experienced deck implosions!

Ugg has a new kayak which is a Lettmann production "Bullet" made in composite kevlar/carbon. The boat has a semi flat hull and is narrow compared with the latest ww river kayaks and so more unstable but much more responsive. The superlightweight material and stiff hull makes it very fast and its acceleration is a huge grin factor. The challenge is to have the skill to keep up with its speed and avoid the rocks! Ugg is off to Norway to test it out at the Sweet Rumble Extreme Race. Latest reports are of huge water levels which should be interesting! he will also test out the next generation of Nookie dry top which has many unique features...more on that later.

Jungle Hat Monsoon Testing

As we near the longest day (Summer Solstice) and the official start to the British Summer I thought it only appropriate to do some product testing. Listening to the noise of the rain I decided to grab the nearest Guinea Pig and chuck them outside in a lovely New Nookie Jungle Hat and the New fully taped Nookie Bank Jacket to make sure he stayed dry underneath. And he did : )

So as you can see, we're all fully prepared for summer at Nookie, just don't leave home without your Jungle Hat and Bank Jacket.

Cheerio
Hazel
PS. The Nookie Jungle Hat has also been fully tested on sunny summer days! A great success in the sun and rain.

The Sisters in Venice

The Sisterhood survives The 33rd Vogolonga- 30km regatta round the canals of Venice with 1500 other boats. For more photos of the gorgeous girls in their nookie clobber visit www.sisterhoodchallenge.com
See below for their calender of events:
May 27th Vogolonga Venice
June 29th 100mile overnight bike ride Exmouth
July 20th @ London Rowing Club party
Aug 3rd @ Adam Street private members club channel crossing party
Aug 4th London Triathlon Team relay
Sept 21st Jersey dragonboat regatta
Oct 5th-7th- VoTwo survival weekend and adventure race, Dorset
Nov 1st @ Jumeirah Carlton Towers Ball for babes in Arms
Nov 4th VoTwo Adventure Race, Dorset

Dakar Race Training

Ugg has been on an adventure in Romania with British riders FrontrowGB who are training for the Dakar Race. Romania was to be used for race endurance training on extreme terrain. Day 1 saw an exhaustive mix of extreme technical ascents and descents over dramatically changing trails with continuous torrential rain and flooded conditions.
The following seven days saw a spectacular improvement in the weather allowing the expanse of the Romanian mountains and forestry to be exposed. As the ground dried the terrain would become more extreme promoting a mixture of fast endurance riding along with the physical and mental torture of technical ascents.

9 to 10 hours on the bikes followed by food and sleep, only to get up and do it all again the next day, proved to be great stamina conditioning for the riders.
The whole group worked well together, and there were no complaints, no matter how harsh and difficult the riding became, including the ascent of Mount Tarcu at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Check out the Dakar riders at www.frontrowgb.com

A MESSAGE FROM THE SCION SISTERHOOD

Dear fans, family, friends, groupies, boat-lovers, (and the guy that lurks in the bushes waiting for the sun to come up over our wednesday morning training sessions)...During the weekend of August 31st 2007, sixteen intrepid, fearless, toned-to-perfection girls will dare to go where no woman in her right mind has ever gone before and dragonboat across the English Channel, sponsored by Scion Films, Collins Stewart, Nookie, EDS and Pindar.
It will take us not only many hours to cross but will involve every single one of the days, weeks and months of training we have undertaken since November 2006 if we are to make it across there at all and not capsize in Dover harbour, to the chagrin of our sponsors. For once, we cannot rely on our looks, cleavages, fabulous hair or glorious wit to get us to this particular finishing line, and although seducing french fishermen will be an excellent pastime for those long hours in the boat, we know that the only thing we will have on that day is our determination, our strength and our training...
...And your help.
In the lead up to it the sisters will compete in various events from The London Marathon to adventure races to Venice regatta to triathlons.
We call ourselves The Scion Sisterhood and we are raising money for two hugely valuable charities in the UK. 1) The CHASE Ben Hollioake Fund supporting life-limited children. These are children who are not expected to live past the age of 19. 2) The Babes in Arms Appeal, carrying out research into cot death, still birth and infant abnormaltiesEvery penny raised goes straight to the charities. There are no overhead and admin costs to sap your kind donations. Over the year there will be several fundraising events organised, all will be posted on our own website which is listed below. And you will get to come and hang out with the Sisterhood, who in times of social rather than sporting need, never fail to showcase their aforementioned talents. In the meantime....dig deep, followers, dig deep.... Do hand over your pennies or your millions and continue to encourage us in this most important and critical mission.
Let the channel challenge begin.
Yours The Scion Sisterhoodx

http://www.justgiving.com/sisterhoodchannelchallenge

CONGRATULATIONS BEN WHITE!

We all at Nookie would like to say a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Ben who won the Mens Squirt Boat Category 2007 in the WORLD FREESTYLE CHAMPIONSHIPS at Ottawa River!

Nookie Team Rider Ben is pictured here doing what he literally does best! Watch out for some photos from Canada soon!

NEW 2007 NOOKIE CATALOGUE

The new 2007 Nookie Catalogue can now be downloaded. Found easily in our website or by following this link Nookie 2007 Catalogue
Here you'll find not only info on the latest range of Nookie products, but also more info into the fabrics we use (if you really are interested), size info and pix of some of the awesome stuff our team riderz have been up to!
Enjoy!

Congratulations Chris Harvey!

Just a quick update on my latest competition result…

On 17/18th March I was competing in one of the largest events of the year. The Santa Cruz World Cup Class Surf Kayak Event. It’s one of the hottest competitions of the year with most of the worlds top surf kayakers. The opening rounds were tense with few waves, but I kept a cool head and won both my opening heats, knocking out legend Jim Grossman. I also won my my quarter and semi-final rounds knocking out 3 more big players, former US Champion Vince Shay, reigning Santa Cruz Champion (and former world champion) Rusty Sage and British Champion Dessie McGlinchey. An aerial in my semi-final also secured me the highest score of the day. With only the final to go there was really only one more player to beat…current world champion and santa cruz local, Dave Johnston. The final heat was close but with my more dynamic style I scored a few extra points to clinch the title.

Serious Testing Conditions

Team Rider Nathan Eades pictured here in Sri Lanka, has been putting the new decks through serious testing for the past 3 months. See the blog below for more.......................

Living the Dream

Nathan Eades has just returned from an epic 3 months in Sri Lanka, his trip completed his quest to surf all the southern coast of the island. He's spent the last three months ripping up shallow corral reef breaks in the hot sunshine with just board surfers for company!! Look out for the full report coming up in Canoe and Kayak...

Spraydeck Rant

I'm pleased to report that we have lots of exciting new product filtering thru during '07. It seems like everything's changed chez Nookie and the product range, of course, is where most of you out in the wild are going to notice the difference. What's more important than the changes, tho, is everything that hasn't changed. We aren't in the business of randomly superceding products that consistently outperform the competition, so in many instances it's just a case of restyling an already superb product to keep it in line with the current brand "look".

That isn't the case with the Nookie spraydeck range. We contend that the outgoing line has always been super-dry, super reliable, and less prone to damage than the competition. However, the boat manufacturers (see earlier rant) have been playing silly b***ers with their cockpit sizes and hence we felt we had to revise our sizing right across the board. Combining that with the future needs of several other incoming technologies and a new production facility that can make our Hardflex" reinforcing layer have even smaller gaps in its armour than ever, we ended up with a substantially revised version of a product that was already almost perfect. Which is a bit weird, but that's what's happened.

Now, I know there are gonna be people out there saying "What's so special about Nookie decks? All shockdecks are much the same aren't they? Aren't the new rubber rand decks loads better anyway?". To which I say read on, no, and no.

Anyone who's used y2k+ Nookie decks will know that they are easy enough to fit to all whitewater boats, super-dry, and basically never leak or blow if fitted correctly. It's very hard to get a deck to work this well, and it relies on careful sizing and quality/materials control. We are firmly committed to pulling this off. Or should I say on?

In addition to this our durability is second to none. Kevlar decks? Completely flawed concept in our view. Kevlar is friction/abrasion resistant, not puncture resistant. You can put a sharp rock thru a Kevlar deck as easily as any other. And Kevlar doesn't stretch significantly, which makes it THE most pointless material for a spraydeck. Your Kevlar deck will only fit perfectly on a cockpit the same shape as the deck - so on most boats the performance will be massively compromised. Furthermore, because it doesn't stretch, a Kevlar deck will be more prone to blowing even on a boat it fits perfectly. So we don't use Kevlar. We use our Hardflex layer which is abrasion resistant, paddle-pinch resistant, and puncture resistant, but still stretchy. Cool, huh? Some other decks out there have a thin screen print on them to imitate this reinforcement. Not the same. We offer a product lifetime warranty on everything we sell, and we can't do this unless we make sure everything's solid.

The concept of rubber rand decks isn't new. In fact it was the prevalent technology in the early 90's. It can work adequately but most of the ones we've tried are either a bit leaky or really difficult to put on. Or both. And in combination with Kevlar they are, in our opinion, expensive and useless. So we're not making rubber rand decks this year.

Of course a spraydeck is such a crucial piece of equipment that every paddler should try out all the options and make a personal choice. Don't listen to me. I'm lucky - I get to have the exact decks I want to paddle in, ones that won't let me down when I'm getting trounced in a giant hole, subbing-out in my squirtboat, or when 30' of ocean decides to fall on top of me. Believe me, if it wasn't working right I'd go right home and design another one. Final tip - don't buy based on the fact that your mate likes his deck - it might not fit as well on your boat even if they're both supposedly "keyhole" cockpits (thanx boat manufacturers). Unless it's a Nookie one of course ;)

Well, we're back! Hope you all had a wicked Xmas/NY. We've got tons in the pipeline for '07, it's all very exciting. In fact we're on fire.... at least, we will be as soon as our heads stop hurting.

Tequila Frenzy

Nookie-sponsored Nile local Geoffrey upholds the rodeo tradition of yester-year... (more like yester-decade actually - Ed) by transitioning seamlessly from the rapids to the attentions of the Tequila girlz at this year's Nile freestyle festival. Geoffrey rocks.