Surfers are generally afraid of judgement from other surfers. It’s kind of engrained in our salty DNA I think. And that stops us from trying and doing a lot of new things that could potentially be awesome, if it weren’t for the risk of looking uncool in the process. As a result we live in this stagnant and safe “bubble” inside the surf community where anything too outrageous had better contribute to surfing more like Dane Reynolds. Otherwise everybody will just point and call you a kook. Sounds pretty jaded, but it’s true.
When it comes to inventions in the surf space aimed at making something easier, faster, or just all around helping you shred, there’s always a similarly fine line to walk. For example, the advantage of wearing webbed gloves is marginal otherwise everybody would rock them. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re counter productive to their intended purpose. So in the end you just look not cool. Again, not worth it. The WaveWrecker though? It’s teetering on something, I’m just not sure what.
The WaveWrecker is a suit that essentially turns a person into a surfboard. Fins built into a wetsuit act as rails and, well, fins to streamline the body and make you buoyant in places your body tries not to be buoyant. The result is you bodysurf like Flipper, which is really fricken cool. Oh, and the result is you also look like one of those memes of the dog on steroids. That isn’t cool. The invention just launched on Kickstarter and based on the campaign’s initial momentum it looks like the WaveWrecker will be made for production. And that’s not a horrible thing. When you watch people bodysurf in one of these suits it’s pretty amazing. So unlike webbed gloves there seems to be a significant pay off for dressing like a Underwater Batman action figure.
Do I hope the WaveWrecker reaches its crowdfunding goal and becomes a real thing? Absolutely. Will I ever be brave enough to put one on myself? To be determined…
