I took my Mustang out for the first time this morning and I haven’t stopped grinning since. It is absolutely fantastic!

My previous surf kayaking experience has been in the Riot Boogie, the Mega X-ray (plastic version) and the Futurekayaks Response (carbon kevlar spec). The Mustang beats them all hands down.

On the way out the Mustang is easy to paddle and does not suffer from the inertia of the other boats I have paddled. The other kayaks have always taken two or three paddle strokes to get going - the Mustang starts to accelerate immediately. This leads to excellent take-offs. I did mess up the timing of my boof on the paddle out, at one point, and the nose consequently kicked vertical. Fortunately, the Mustang is very stable on its tail and it did not loop as I was expecting. Bonus!

Catching waves is very easy, as I said earlier; it has an excellent turn of speed.

Once on a plane the Mustang has a very smooth feel to it (and you’ll like this one), “like riding on a cushion of air”. It carves like dream and it is very eager to carve up the wave. My first experience of carving and turning speed was very surprising. I caught a wave just to the right of the peak and carved to the right before initiating a cut back towards the break. Things were going well and the thought of a lip turn entered my head. Unfortunately, as the thought appeared it was already too late, the speed of the turn and carve up the face had caught me by surprise and I was already punching off the top of the wave and over the back.

When I first saw the kayak I had dreams of consistent lip turns and vertical moves. Now I think it won’t be long before I’m getting air!

Oz