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.

Top Secret

Hazel is working on something very exciting. Can you guess what it's going to be?

Composite Creeking

Last week the rivers were all very full here in Devon and so I decided to add some spice to one of our local runs which when high is a good grade 4+. To make it more of a challenge I ran it in a 3 metre glass/kevlar composite Pyranha Stunt Bat built in 1993. Compared with modern river boats this behaves in a comletely different manner due to its rounded hull and narrow profile. I had to relearn old turning techniques and indeed run the rapids in a different way. I also had get to grips with the tippy feeling of a rounded hull. I chose a big water day so there would be less rocks to hit however there were more holes of which some gave me a good deal of sporty action. The best buzz about this boat is the feeling of real speed as it fires down the rapids and of course the bemused looks of other boaters (in creek boats) as I pass them by.

Steve Whetman

Team Rider Ben White's latest

Its not quite the broken nose footage i'm still waiting for that to turn up! But heres what we were up to before work this morning...

http://www.ben-white.com/pages/Gallery/Recoil.htm

Some times when its grey and dull outside it really isn't that depressing! A week of rain has meant swollen rivers all of the North of England, taking the opportunity we grabbed the new Pyranha Recoils and went for a pre work spin...

Ben White

Someone gave me this vintage book today. First published in 1936. Nice one. Strangely it suggests that the highest point one should ever get in on the Dart (our local river) is well downsream of the lowest point we'd ever considered getting out!

Spraydeck(skirt) Sizes Debacle

Like pretty much all our competition, we make about four types of neoprene spraycover, in about four sizes. Unlike most of 'em we also do some more specialist products like special skirts for squirtboats, surfkayaks, kidz boats etc.

And we thought we were pretty cool because these all worked really well and (most) everybody thought they rocked.

But here's the thing. Kayak manufacturers seem to have forgotten that they have to design their boats to work with existing spraycovers, or else supply their own. Most of them don't supply their own in any meaningful way, which I take to mean that they realise how difficult it is. So why do some of them just make some random cockpit shape and ship it out into the market place expecting us (and every other softwear manufacturer) to work some kind of miracle and make everything watertight?

It's REALLY annoying for us as spraydeck designers but it must be doubly so for the boater who needs a deck for their new kayak... we sympathise.

F%^&* Lifetime Warranty

I'd like to say that much has been written about our (unique to this industry???) lifetime warranty but, well... it hasn't, has it? Despite being printed on the swing tickets of everything we've sold for the last two years, it doesn't seem like anyone's got their heads around it yet. Which is a shame. I'm gutted in fact. In a field where durability is most people's biggest concern when making a purchasing decision, one would assume that a lifetime warranty offer would be of interest to most buyers. Apparently not. In the two years since its introduction there's been no significant impact on the number of warranty enquiries, and most of the (thankfully) tiny number of people who do contact us with a problem have been blissfully unaware of our policy on these matters. Which in BLACK & WHITE is basically this:

IF YOUR KIT IS FAULTY, WE WILL REPAIR OR REPLACE IT FOC. IF YOU HAVE TRASHED IT, WE WON'T. NO CALENDARS, STOPWATCHES OR ANY OTHER TIMEKEEPING INSTRUMENTS WILL BE EMPLOYED IN THE MAKING OF THIS DECISION.

If you have any queries about this, please ask. If you think I'm BSing about the whole thing I'd be glad to hear your views, too. If you think I should stop typing and go boating now, our thought processes are fairly closely aligned... and I'm off now. Enjoy.

Introducing the latest addition to the Nookie Team. Here's Helen's baby Joe modelling an exclusive micro T. He hasn't actually been seen kayaking or surfing yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if he sneaks out for a session when Helen thinks he's asleep. We're going to get the ESP paparazzi on his case and see if we can catch him shreddin'.

Here's a shot of the Welsh Surf Team in Nookie clobber - we've got a 5 page report in the Ceufad- Welsh Kayak Magazine- with a cover shot of a kayak with a large prominent Nookie logo across the front!
I'm off to Sri Lanka in 3 weeks, so I hope to be able to send blog reports for you guys from outta there.
Nathan Eades

Just because it's kinda funny - Hazel beta-testing a new whitewater shell. It's November, in England - it's freezing. And she still claims to love her job ;)

Sometimes blogging can lead to browsing, and then to unexpectedly finding photos of oneself. Here's one I found on the Valley Sea Kayaks website... That's fine, but then someone pointed out that Knoydart have used the same photo in an advert. What? Could they not find a photo of anyone paddling in Knoydart gear?

I'd just like to thank Nookie for donating towards the raffle at the Wet West Paddlefest. We managed to sell around 2000 tickets for the raffle, and approximately 300 people turned up! Even better, we broke even and made a slight profit to go towards next years event. For a full report, see the blog section of my site (below), or keep an eye out for Scottish Paddler.
Thanks once again for your generosity; without you the event would not have been such a success!
Thank you,

Martin Higgs (and the rest of the WWPF organisers).
http://www.bigwethuck.co.uk