Zanoza. Flat water cruiser

You’d truly enjoy Zanoza on a calm water, whether it is a midday solo trip to a wild lake shore, foggy morning walk or a lazy stroll into the sunset

ZANOZA (Splinter in Russian) got its name for a reason: by choosing this name we emphasized the recognizable shape of the nose, which dissects the water surface like the bow of the ship. This board has its own particularities – however, like every wooden board that we have ever built

There are two things you need to know about this model. First – it’s reactions are sharper than the usual all-round board. Second – it is much faster. Both features are coming from the design: the displacement hull ( * ), sharp rails and pointed nose – all of these result in nice yaw stability and excellent speed

By the way, the process of assembling such a board is also different from the construction of an all-round: straight and high rails can be assembled from solid panels instead of 9 mm rails which are used to build the round rails. On the other hand, the specific hump at the front of the deck, which is needed to increase the internal volume and, accordingly, for greater load capacity, cannot be made from a single panel, so the bow of all Zanoza boards is assembled separately from 1-inch strips.

It was a ZANOZA board that we chose for one of our experiments, which did not always lead us to the original goal, but always opened up new opportunities and taught us something important. A couple of years ago, we counted all the man-hours required to build one wooden SUP board, then carefully and scrupulously included each process into a six-week plan. The goal was to build 6 identical SUP boards in a short period of 1.5 months.

In fact, it was an attempt to turn handicraft into manufactory – to work out every action, minimize downtime, optimize, improve, speed up, simplify, and so on. We had to try, and we did it.

We need 2-3,5 months to build one board. This way we don’t need to rush and have a time to do everything at the only level of quality that we find acceptable

Technically, it is possible, because each process by itself is simple and clear: material preparation, assembly, sanding, epoxy applying, sanding, varnish, sanding again, varnish again and, finally, polishing. Working with four hands on several SUP boards at the same time, dividing the operations – that’s how you can build a conveyor system.

But the truth is, we built only four out of six SUP boards within the allotted time.

The conclusion is simple – each process can be brought to automatism and performed in minimal time, but it is impossible to ensure such repeatability, because we are talking about manual operations with wood. Therefore, now when approving orders, we call the terms from 2 to 3.5 months – the cushion time is needed to not rush ourselves and have opportunity to do everything right, without haste, at the level of high quality that we find acceptable. Sometimes it turns out faster, but no customer has been upset by this very fact yet 🙂

Oh, right, back to the Zanoza. We left two 10’8 ” Zanoza boards for ourselves – one participated in the event called Fontanka-SUP (more than 2000+ SUP lovers dress up and paddle down the Fontanka river in Saint Petersburg – it is carnival party and SUP festival at the same time) and went down the Volga river, the other one participated in the some local marathons. Both boards traveled with us through the Urals. Our trips with friends now often end in a heated argument about which SUP board is better – ZABAVA or ZANOZA.

To me this argument does not make sense – it is a matter of taste and habit. Yes, Zanoza is less maneuverable comparing to all-round SUPboards, and yes, it will not be happy with long sea waves (although it will cope with them – we checked, not mentioning small waves of little lakes), so if your home spot is located on the sea or a large lake, it is better to choose Zabava, and Zanoza, after all, has been created for another purpose.

It’s made for calm water and only in this conditions you’d be able to truly enjoy it. It can be a midday trip to the wild shore of the lake, an energetic exercise on a foggy morning or a lazy stroll before sunset.

We make ZANOZA boards of two sizes: