How to Fold up a MISSION Reef Mat From the Boat
The number one question we get about the REEF Inflatable Water Mat is: How easy is this really going to be to manage while I'm out on the water?
We love getting this question because it's exactly why we came up with the REEF Mat in the first place.
Back in 2015, the foam floating mats were everywhere – and our kids really wanted them. But they were a huge pain to manage and frankly, we just didn't want a big roll of foam hanging off the back of our boat. We wanted something that would fold up and store nicely and neatly on our boats.
So, that's what we made. And it turned out others also thought that the inflatable experience was just so much better overall. The rest is history.
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In the video below Mark, co-founder of MISSION, shows you how he folds up the REEF Mat while out on the boat – with the hope that you can steal some of his technique and be good-to-go when you get out on the water!
"So, as you can see I'm starting by getting the mat either up onto your swim platform or in this case up onto the sundeck –and I'm gonna go ahead and use our little 12-volt electric pump, it's an awesome little pump it plugs right into the cigarette lighter adapter, and I'm gonna remove most of the air from the mat.
I want to leave enough air into the mat so it'll float on top of the water – just remember to click that valve closed when you're done taking the air out.
Now i'm going to fold a third of the mat in and you can see I'm starting to rotate the mat around.
Two reasons here – one, to get a nice flat fold. The other reason, I want the valve away from me when I start folding the mat up into its final roll
Now, I'm starting in on the second side, we'll pull that in, we'll try to make a nice neat fold here. Neatness kind of matters at this stage if you can get this to lay nice and flat and you get the edges all straight together, it really makes a difference on being able to get this back into the bag at the end
So, here I have the valve is away from the boat – it's going to be away from me – and I've got this in thirds, and then I'm going to take about a foot of the end of the mat and I'm going to fold it over.
We're doing this so that we create a flat fold here instead of a roll. We'll just fold, fold, fold, and we just keep pulling the mat into the boat as we go.
When you get all the way up to the end, you may have a little air left in the mat, you can just open up that valve let the final air out and then remember go ahead and put the dust cover and close it and put the dust cover back on.
So don't worry too much about making it perfect there's enough room in the bag for a little bit of messiness but you can't be perfect every time, so give yourself some grace in the beginning. With a little practice and technique, you'll have the hang of it in no time.
It's a very manageable mat and I know you and your family and friends are going to love them as much as we do.
If you have any more questions you can always give us a call directly we're here to help."
