Angulo Shaka Review

I recently had the opportunity to try out the new Angulo Shaka XLT in Santa Cruz harbor and would like to give you my impressions of it here.  I found out about the Shaka on the standupzone.com forums where owners always had good things to say.  I also read Gary Niblock's blog and watched all of his downwinder videos over and over and over.  You have to check out his blog, he's a long-time surfer and is super stoked on SUP and in particular downwind runs with his Santa Cruz buddies.  You can find his blog here:  http://srfnff.blogspot.com/

A facebook buddy hooked me up with Kyle Wade at Angulo Designs and Kyle was nice enough to meet me at the harbor last Saturday AFTER finishing a 16 mile ocean paddle!  This guy loves to SUP.  He brought a few boards for me to try out:  Shaka XLT, Tiger Shaka 14, and the top secret skunk works "double shaka".  I got on the Shaka right away and as soon as I stood up on the board and put my paddle in the water, I got a big smile on my face and goosebumps up my arms.  This board felt great from the start.  Though really designed as a downwind board, this board felt pretty fast on flat water.  It has some nose rocker so it's not trying to be as fast as a flatwater race board but it didn't feel slow either.  At 230 pounds, it also felt like it was sitting properly in the water.  I also really liked how it turned.  It felt light (at about 30 pounds) and because the nose is not in the water, it turns really quickly when you want it to.  I want this board.  I think this will be a great downwind and touring board for me.  I'm also going to go out on a limb here and say that this would even be a good race board for bigger guys in rough conditions.  This could be the ideal rough-water race board.

Be sure to check out Gary Niblock's videos: