Hydro Uwh News

It's been a while since I've tried to do an update for happenings with our business, I've been spending any spare time blogging the diary from Worlds of which you can find the first post here...

But in the time from August 2018 to now, we've had a bunch of stuff going on.

We released our Tomahawk Ghost sticks which have proved very popular and are getting great feedback.  We're about to receive a load of new materials for these and they will be available in the shop again in the next couple days.  I used a set at worlds and where I got a bunch of knockdowns all through the tournament I totally credit most of that to these sticks...  they make it so much easier to move the stick through the water to get to that puck it's amazing.

Here are some Ghost Tomahawks along with some smaller prototype Ghost Rockets which we have also been developing.  If you want some Ghost Rockets to try, please buy some Ghost Tomahawks and put in the order notes that you would like them made up as Ghost Rockets.  No problem.  We will have them officially on the site pretty soon.

We have added some spokes in the hole to prevent teeny tiny sticks being able to go through the hole and getting trapped.

We also have added a giant 95R size to our Ninja gloves.

Here's Danni modelling the new size.  She's size 75 herself.  These are going to make some giants happy.

We've also now made available our cut-proof liners on the Ninja gloves.

This means the liner material of the glove is upgraded to grade 5 cut-proof fiber, similar to kevlar.  It's what butchers use sometimes when chopping stuff.  Essentially you can't cut it with scissors, and it lasts forever.  It's slightly thicker than our regular liners and reduces wiggle-ability slightly, so bear that in mind, but it increases the padding strength too and basically makes the glove bomb-proof.  Highly recommended if you go through gloves fast.  Here's a pic of my glove after camps, pre-camps, worlds and 9 months of wear, and I generally go through gloves fast.

There's some small fraying on the edge that hasn't got far but almost no wear to the liner, only wear showing is on the padding.  Pretty good going!

We've also introduced a new handle option for our Rocket sticks, you can have original Slim handle or a thicker Thumb-reinforcing handle similar to the handle of our Chunky Rockets.  We are calling it Strong Thumb.  The thicker handle keeps the thumb in a bent neutral position rather than straight and reduces risk of the thumb joint being over-extended if you get a hit from an awkward direction.

 
Original Slim, and Strong Thumb

Nice to be able to give people some options.

We also have some cool new masks, our Curve masks.  These are taking over from our Wrap masks, have plastic lenses very similar.  But they have a cooler box!

Up on our site soon will also be some new fin-keepers, in lots of bright colours, so that'll be exciting.  It's so difficult to have good colour options with all the issues around legality but we try our best.  Sometimes it seems like one day, every single piece of equipment will be a mid-grey...  

Ooh yeah and we now have Lanyards available, and can drill your holes too.  Buy this option separately in the accessories collection, or link to it here.

Till next time!

We made it to 2018!  Incredible.

Hydro has now relocated, and we are firmly established further up New Zealands Northern Island.  Looking back....   moving is hell.  It really is.

We have a wee garden here and there's a psychotic Pumpkin plant already making a bid to take over the place, but the kids are obsessed with finding worms and ladybugs so it's all working out.

It's a sunny corner of the country, but can get a bit warm working conditions...

Enough babble.  Hockey!  That's what you tuned in for right, to see what's been happening on the workbenches in our mad gear kitchens! Well...

soft Soft SOFT  it's all about soft here.  Soft covered sticks, that is.  We have made some good progress updating more of our range of designs to have that amazing grippy comfy covering...

Tomahawks and Katanas are now soft...  Style points for the best name we've had the pleasure of personalising...  kudos to you, SPONG.

We also have Katana 260 soft in Left-handed, might not be on the site but email about it and we can make you some up lefty people.

Here we have one of almost every soft design we have... Katana, Pixie, Tomahawk, Numbat, Rocket and Shiv.  These fellas are heading to Belgium to a fantastic new club ZZO there that have done a great job getting some local sponsorship.

Had the opportunity to try to make a copy of the stick of the legendary Kelly Geddes, Australian bulldozer and all-around nice guy....   here's his original, the prototype shape and final plastic stick, it's got soft coating on the handle for comfyness.  It's a bit heavier than the pine wooden original, but we have been working on something to combat that down the track.

Beautiful eh?  You only get the full effect when you see it coming at you underwater...  then it's burnt into your nightmares forever afterwards.

What else...   well, we have been experimenting with holes and cutouts all the way back to 1993 making our first sticks.  Well I remember those woody things, and how long they took to carve, and how quickly the things broke....  finally our technology seems able to support the idea, so at Aussie nationals Liam trialled a "Ghost Tomahawk" with a cutout to reduce weight and surface area.  It turned out pretty good, so we are looking to develop this further.  Here's a prototype Ghost Rocket (chunky!) ready for Rob Tinkler to destroy at the upcoming Nz camp in the name of progress.  There's some super materials behind these designs, the main benefit being much faster handspeed.  75% reduction in surface area, which takes the surface area resisting water when you move sideways down to significantly less than if you were using a Pixie.  We'll see how it goes.

Ready for a Bert-bashing.

That's about all for now, more later.  Happy hockeying!

Introducing our brand new(ish) HYDRO MOUTHGUARD!

Easily attaches to your snorkel for non-facial-injurimenting simplicity!!

Makes a great chin guard...    right?  Surely!

This most amazing of protective utilities also doubles as a hard-hat, with OFFICIAL INDUSTRY APPROVAL*! (*in selected Papua New Guinea Villages** only) (**not really even)

Also recommended for stunt bikes and motocross! (not recommended)

Vague studies PROVE* hydro mouthguard use boosts _unspecified_ hormones proven(unproven) to improve swimming speed.  Proven!    ....(proof pending)

For the semi-cautious cricketer!

For the cricketer leaving nothing to chance!

Also useful as an elaborate blindfold!  The utility never ends!

Especially effective at drowning out the sounds of widespread condemnation and criticism, (both national AND international, unlike inferior products) when used as earmuffs!

Don't wait, get yours today!

(can also be used as an underwater hockey mouthguard)

https://hydrouwh.com/collections/headgear/products/standard-mouthguard

So there's crazy, and there's really crazy, and then there's how things are round our household right now.

We just moved towns!  Moving madness yet again.  This was my driving partner for 5 hours a couple weeks back.

  Thats just par for the course at the moment.

  Just as well the handling characteristics match my driving skills.

But, in the midst of the madness, we've popped out some sweet custom gear...

I've improved our process to allow our colours to be neater and more precise, for these first two duo-tone gloves, and the third is a sweet metallic number which we can do in a bunch of different colours now.

I also grabbed some shots of a very old soft rocket, this is Jake Hockings, it's 2 years old and counting, and these pics show how the rubber wears on the edges to let the hard plastic come through underneath, protecting the soft rubber on the flat playing areas...  nice.

I also found, during our packing (oh the horror), a white soft rubber coated Shiv I left out on the garden bench pretty much 2 years ago when we arrived in Wellington...  it's been in the sun every day all day there's been sun, and here's how it looks...

...the soft rubber is as crisp and bright white as it was on day one!  Really stoked with how this material is working for us with it's UV resistant properties.  You can see a little yellowing around the edges, that's the hard plastic underneath which is yellow as a banana after so much UV exposure, which generally yellows almost all plastics over time.

Then, we found the local dog park for Gus and it is totally awesome and huge!

  Very exciting, new mud!

Next on the what-have-we-been-up-to list, PUCK!  PUCK!

Here's our prototype on the left, and a real one in beautiful banana yellow on the right.  If we keep pucks yellow like refs vests, maybe they'll let us have pink gloves, right?  And the more glove colours we can have, the more colourful the poolside.  Surely a good thing.

So we finally got tired of waiting for the current NZ puck to be improved, as has been promised every year for the last...   ...  well, ages and ages...  so we had a crack ourselves with the help of a fantastic Uwh parent from Wellington College who used to make his own pucks back in the 90's...  this is his old puck re-born.  Cheers David!  It's got enough weight to keep passes very long and low, slides fast, very stable on the break and sits down quickly for handling, doesn't bobble....   performing very well, and we still have options with different materials if we need to tinker, could do a super-soft version for pools nervous about hard pucks and tile breakage.  Light version coming out for testing soon too, to see if we might be able to cater a light puck to junior grades or girls grades for smaller players.  Will be available in a couple weeks, and we will be selling them at 2 for $90NZD in NZ, that's $45 each!  As a launch offer, just for our NZ customers sorry international peeps.

We also had some badges made up for Schools Nationals, and some are now available on the site...

We have a bunch of designs with some wee jokes for fun.

Last item, in our move we forgot the cutlery drawer, so had to pull out a set of grandmas silver to eat with... 

...Because our kids are all about classy when they are covered in yoghurt, which is about 25% of their time lived so far it seems.  Gotta use it right?

Over and Out
Liam

The new year dawns, but some things never change....

...Like this guy.  His never-ending wait for scraps from the dinner table that will never come, it will never change.  Bless him.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised.  When we got him, his stomach was his largest bodypart at 7 weeks.

...so cute.

Some interesting snaps from the workshop this week...  interesting if you're an uwh nerd, that is.  Let's not be ashamed guys.  Let's embrace it.

This was a custom glove I made a while back for the legendary NZ referee, Muzza.  He had a pretty serious break in his hand/finger, and this was to try to provide some protection while he was healing up.  It's a piece of heat-mouldable plastic, tough as anything, shaped over the busted finger, and then cunningly covered in a layer of silicone until the thing is a crazed mitten.  You'd hardly even notice anything was different! (holes drilled in the thing connected the silicon through, so it wouldnt get bashed off, hopefully.  I need to find out if this worked or not.  Someone let me know if Murrays family actually let him into the water with this on?

Reminded me of this, that I found in my archives...

This monstrosity was the glove I played 2004 worlds with.  It's latex, and I made it just before the comp, as I had a fractured index knuckle...  THE hockey knuckle, yes.  In the language I currently use as Dad to a 3 year old, this was a really really hurty ouchie.  The white stuff is a piece of Marley drainpipe heated and bent into shape and cunningly buried under a mammoth latex finger.  This shot is from just after the comp, when I cut it open to see the state of it.  Was it legal?  I dunno.

This wasn't taken in the workshop.  But I can really relate.

We now have a size 95.  It really is giant.  I think our 8 month old could crawl in there.  Or use it for a sleeping bag.

We had a fire drill at the workshop today, the business park we are squirreled away in did, at least.  It was ok, but did feel a little like this

The guy told us all to hang our tags on the evacuation board, which numbered all units up to 32.  We are unit 33.  There was no 33.  I think we will chat to the landlord about this.

These fashionably themed samples are headed to Tauranga, to take up the mercenary life in a communal gearbox somewhere.  Go well little buddies.  Make friends out there! 

Because nametags are cool.  Aren't they?

This little fella is a stick in a very french style, requested months ago by a french player I met in SA.  Finally I got to it, on my list of things to develop...  got a prototype made up, tested it in the pool, works great actually.  Got in touch with the player who requested it...  "oh don't worry, she's been using Hydro Rockets for weeks" says her English speaking friend (remember, I am sadly a simple monolingual kiwi).  Funny old world.  It's a nice stick though, we will get it into a nice design, and celebrate the differences.  It's back on the list.

After months of feverishly reworking thousands of complicated algebraic equations, we have finally been able to... stick more names on more stuff. Including cuffs of gloves.  Won't rub off!

And, just cos I've sunken so much time into developing the Ninja gloves, here's a green one.

Camp coming up this weekend... early mornings.  Hooray for coffee!

November is here, and turns out all those crazy people who have been saying it forever were right...  the world is ending.  With the most unlikely Apocalypse ever.

No-one thought it possible, but an orange hair-piece is now leader of the free world.  And unfortunately, for us that live down here under the world, that was just the beginning of a bad week.

Earthquakes hit all over the south of NZ.  Shaky in the extreme.  Poor folks down south got it the worst, but we still had damage and scariness here in Wellington too.

Yes, the entire country is on a massive faultline.  Damn.

This was us the other night, when the first big one hit.

Then, in some exceptional timing from mother nature, we have some nifty storms and torrential rain!  Brilliant!  Now my firewood is wet and I am grumpy about it.

But, the silver lining has been that I've had to go and check on our NEW WORKSHOP SPACE after all these sub-optimal happenings...  which we have moved into last week!  Very excite!

People with very small humans in the household may understand that at times, it can be a bit hard to keep things organised...

But our wee converted workshop under the house, being scarcely large enough to turn around in let alone swing a cat in (which I wouldnt!), has been so crammed full of construction equipment that frankly, as our product line has developed, its been getting a bit out of hand.  We have shelves on shelves and tables in/on/under our tables down there.

So, more space in our new workshop is amazing.  Here it is in all it's current glory, a work in progress. 

Pumping out Rainbows and Unicorns!  Still small ay?  You should have seen the old one.

With all this space, we will be able to push out our newest products, super awesome polyurethane gloves!  We have been through about 4 different design prototype iterations, and what we have ended up with is very sweet.  We call it the NINJA!  Here it is...  coming to an internet near you very soon.

The padding is low volume, but the material is very dense which gives good protection. The segmented design gives good coverage and incredible flexibilty, and the rubber is much stronger than silicones, making it durable on rough bottoms.  We can even look at putting a super-tough shell over the contact surfaces for very rough pool bottoms.  Very excited about getting these cranking out.

Coming into the Christmas season, we will be holding a wee sale next week for black friday, so look out for that.  Cant believe how fast this year has gone.  And we are also in the process of getting some gift-cards available, for the odd stocking filler that can beat the inevitable postal collapse.

Happy November!  Here's to mother nature easing up a bit as we head into Summer!

Time for the next very first ever Tournament Report!

Last week or so ago, clubs in NZ converged on Rotorua to battle out the National titles.  There were teams in 4 grades, C, B, A and Prem.

Joining them were two teams from Australia to add international flavour and intrigue, a Mens team in Prem grade and a Womens team in the A grade.  Who they were and where from exactly?  ...I think a mix but mostly from NSW?

Your blogger here played with the Phoenix club from Wellington, and travelled with the majority of the 4 Phoenix teams in a bus.  To start the weekend, we thought we were going to have a wee bus, 30 seats with 29 people

But thankfully when the bus turned up it was actually a proper one

...without the luxury of course.  We can't afford that!  Or the top floor.  The best feature on the bus was our intrepid driver, who was a funny dude and pretty good in a crisis as it turned out.

And I guess the skylight emergency exits, which a few of us were dying to try out later on but unfortunately never got to experience.

More than half the bus, OK nearly everyone was extremely young people (ie under 20), so I was having nightmares about this trip from the beginning.

Our first excitement was stopping at our first rest-stop, for our driver to let us out for a food and after-food-relief.  Only the doors didnt open.  Either of them, and the wee buttons marked "push in emergency" LIED to us!  They did nothing.  Nothing!!

So, with a busload of bursting bladders and rumbling tummies, we ended up forced to drive over to Palmerston North to the bus depot for the engineer to let us out and change to a less-faulty bus.  Palmerston North. 

  It's a great spot.  I lived there once.  For 3 months.

But at least they had a Wendys!  For when they dont have Burger King.

Anyway so when we finally made it up to Turangi, an actual Burger King had just closed along with all the toilet block doors, so 30 busting kids flowed out into the darkness to water bushes, fences or a dark patch of grass, while Camp Mother led a search party to a public toilet.

  Camp Mother

They made it back unmolested, and we made it to the accommodation at 3am or some such hour to find the motel block covered in named bits of paper showing us our rooming arrangements.  ...Somewhat like the passive/aggressive post-it notes all over the food in the cupboard from that flatmate you had who was sure you were stealing his (delicious) home-made peanutbutter that time.

This labelling was actually incredibly useful, the work of the organising fairy of the group, to whom we were all very grateful on a number of occasions

Every group needs one of these.

We were to find that we also had a cleaning fairy too, which was also awesome and caused many of us to feel guilty for being such slobs.  Others didnt notice.

On to the tournament, which was hotly contested in the only grade I can talk about with any knowledge, Prem grade, with no team scoring above 6 goals in a game I think?  Many games were only decided by a goal and there were draws as well.  Brillo!  Great to have so much competition.

In fact, the top 4 teams happened to be playing very similar styles, and any games between any of the 4 looked a bit like this

  Only with a lot more water, scowling and straining.

The classic "Sure, we'd love to take the puck wide if only you'd put us under a little less suffocating pressure please" was in full effect for the 4 top teams, resulting in games where the puck was violently spit or squeezed into space and then ruthlessly hunted down by both teams immediately so they could continue their game of puck-wrestle.  Fun times!

Mostly evenish games on the first day, then a nice sleep where we were constantly warned about undesirables hanging around our motel place.  Just to make sure we didn't get a wink of sleep fearing for our possessions all night.

  Undesirables roam free

Back to the hockey the next morning,

The bottom 2 teams were playing a completely different style of game, valuing possession, passing to each other, looking for space to take the puck into, and other crazy mad-cap schemes.  These were the Aussie team and KOM, who had a great game in the RR that led to a draw and another close game in the playoff which was drawn and went into golden goal, when the refs suddenly decided to make up for not binning anyone all game and binned 3 players at once, and the game then collapsed immediately from a thrilling contest to a confused 20 second goal, with KOM winning in the end.

Our round robin game against the Aussies brought me back to a distant past, when I looked at my white stick in the subs bench and saw it was covered in black smears...  ha!  That's right!  This is what it was like to play against dudes with wooden sticks and last-minute spraypaint.  Amazing the things we forget.  2007 was the last year I played with wooden sticks, so it's been a long time since I was leaving my own spraypaint smudges.  How time flies, and in terms of NZ Uwh culture, how things change.

And how some things don't ever change, too.  It is always nice to play against the Aussie style, so reassuringly different and yet familiar.  And funny to see little young guys on my team learning the hard way that yes, those Aussie bats are big and yes, the hooks are large but YES, they hit so very hard with them and YES, it makes it so difficult to tackle them and stay not-tackled.  Brilliant.

Phoenix had a tight semi with Makos, going down 3-0 early but getting back to 3-2 at 45 seconds left and then getting the puck into the Makos bin with 1 sec remaining, only to have a ref huddle pull it back for an earlier infringement, and putting Makos through to the final.

The final itself, I was in the shower for the first half of it until I remembered it was on, but apparently someone went up 2 goals early (Makos?) and then Crocs clawed it back and went up 3-2.  It finished full time 3-3 anyway, and in golden goal Makos were attacking on the goal only to have Nick Healy, who I was assured by his team-mates had literally done nothing all tournament long, swim off for a length of the pool breakaway to win it for Crocs and redeem himself.

Off to the function, where our group of kids crept fearfully past the security at the venue who crushed thoughts of underage schenanigans or overage debauchery with steely glares.

Being sleep-deprived at the best of times, I skipped the party after prize-giving to snooze back at the motel as the undesirables prowled around and tipped rubbish into bathroom windows (who does that?), but in the morning saw some good indications a good time had been had by a few.

And we went home.  And the doors worked.  Thank goodness.

So what's been going on around here lately...

Well, Gus was delivered at the front door this morning by one of our neighbours in a towel...  He found a hole in the fence due to the temporary scaffolding and somehow got into the neighbours house, and then bedroom, and woke them up by licking someones face.  !!!  I spent some time this afternoon mending the fence.

Also I feel like I have neglected the bold function for too long in my life.  We're our own bosses now, so here goes.

Our Hydro is a family business and we are expecting a new addition to our little family any day now...  Likely to be a girl.  There's all sorts going on including a new roof going on the house here, so it really is May madness.  That's what the scaffolding is about.

Back-tracking just a little, Worlds in SA was great, some great games and open hockey.  After being scaled down for a couple of weeks during the comp, we are now back up and firing on all cylinders.  We have been going for more than a year now!  Thanks so much for supporting us, Global Uwh Community!

We are still working to develop and improve all our products as always, and thanks to some great feedback from our customers (thank you!) we have made some recent innovations.

SKELLY AND TANK GLOVES...  We have upgraded the silicon lining layer of our Tank and Skelly gloves.  The new silicon is slightly softer, extremely flexible, tougher and has made the Tank and Skelly even more comfortable.  As if that were possible!  Well...  for real.  From as comfy as your slippers, they are now as comfy as your slippers that have been nicely worn-in.  We have included more information for our customers packaged with the gloves to spread awareness on how best to use and maintain the gloves, which is super important, as they aren't like most other gloves out there.  We have also for quite a while been reinforcing the front knuckles of all our gloves to increase durability in those very high-wear areas.

TRAINING GLOVES...  We also have a shipment of new liner gloves arriving very soon that we will be using for our tank training gloves, which are a great product at a great price which we will be pushing with a sneaky sale later in the year.  They are thinner than the standard nylon/cotton weave which is universal to almost all commercial Uwh gloves, but still tough and we are able to coat the palm and fingers with a thin coat of silicon with these gloves, making the training gloves more comfortable, better fitting, more durable and allowing better feel for the stick.

STICKS...  We have a new requested design that's in the works for some keen players in france who like a particular handle, so we will have some new designs out soon, which is exciting.  We have a bunch of gloves sent over the Tasman for the Australian age-group squads which will see action at the Trans-Tasmans in Hobart coming up, which we hope will go well.

VIDEOS...  I have not had time to collate the footage I have shot and put together a proper How-to-backflick tutorial, apologies to those that have requested this, but it's coming soon!

Thanks for checking in on us, all the best in the pool, and remember if in doubt....   dummy-punch.

Liam

Hydro Uwh

So, I just got back from the CMCs tournament in Milwaukee, thanks to our friends at Canam Uwh.

Turns out it's a great place, with great people, and balls-freezingly cold at this time of year.

We ran a cozy little clinic for people on Friday, and then the comp was Sat-Sun.  A good time, on the sport-court pool bottom, super slidy and fun.

Got home after a casual 19 hours flight home and back into the swing of things...  we have launched our new soft coated rubber sticks.  So excite!  We have had some hardy and brave pioneers testing some of these for us for a while, and after much tinkering and improving we are now letting them into the wild.

This here's the handle of one of our soft pixies.  Super-awesomely grippy and comfy in the hand.

And this here's a special skin on one of our soft shivs...  the happy skull themed stick!  The normal texture is nice too, only a little more conventional.

Katanas and 260s versions are just around the corner too.

People have been asking for more vids with passing and coaching tips etc, so I'll get onto that in our next technical blog...  people keep asking about inside flicks, so I think we will cover that first.