It features eleven fins and is heralded as the world’s first bodysurfing suit, but it’s undeniable that the WaveWrecker makes you look like the love-child of an X-men character and a Mexican walking fish.
Inventor and CEO, Nick Gadler calls it, “A combination of bodysurfing and boogieboarding … another way to battle the waves different from anything else.”
In the high tempo promo clip Gadler somehow succeeds in turning bodysurfing into a kind of gladiator sport. “The suit puts you right at the centre of the action … you are the one taking the fight directly to the wave.”
The WaveWrecker, and the speel that goes with it, seems a long way removed from the puritanical ethos we’ve come to associate with bodysurfing. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine bodysurfing guru, Mark Cunningham, donning a WaveWrecker and swimming out at Pipe.
Despite the WaveWrecker’s creepy, amphibious aesthetic it does give the user a kind of indestructible, super-hero look. We’d certainly love to see someone test-drive one at Ours or any number of mutant slab waves.
However, if it ever takes off and you start getting dropped in on by those who have embraced the suit, then it might just become the most appropriately named surfcraft in history – The WaveWrecker. Raaa!
Watch the clip and laugh.
