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I'm not one to make unnecessary surfboards.
If I were, I'd toss out a long fish, a glider, some really neutral eggy midlengths, a couple average + volume shortboards and tell everyone how easy and fun the boards are.
If I'm being frank (although I'm Ryan), I don't really care TOO much for that stuff. Other guys do that, other brands do that, I don't need to - Its not useless stuff, at all, but it exists and I'm not here to make anyone whats already available somewhere else. I made a deal with myself when I decided to try making boards for a living that I'd make what I wanted to, and if it was received then I'd keep going, and if not I'd hang it up - here we are 20 years later.
So keeping that in mind, the Zambal, really has left a mark, and I needed it to in order to decide to add it to LM It was a shape I had zero intention of putting into the quiver here from the get go, it was the last in a 5-board quiver that I shaped for William Aliotti when I had already thrown the kitchen sink at him and I didn't know what else to do...so I went flatter, less aggro, tweaked every square inch of the surface area, and just honestly threw caution to the wind.
The first text was a message was a critique about catching the nose on a cutback, and then the next few days completely flipped that on its head. That 'catch' just never seemed to happen again, and the flood gates opened - Willy said he felt like he had known the board his whole life. I took note, cautiously. Then he went to Kandui Resort for two months, and the crew there started sending me messages...talking about a new William. If I recall, they said he was surfing 30% better, or something like that - pretty funny, and noteworthy if true. Then I saw the clips - I was sold, but I wasn't about to jump onboard the "Lets go ahead and make an extremely difficult, particular, visually-jarring board into our lineup - then I made some for a few customers and friends......game over.
The immediate response was deafening, everyone sounded the same friggin chorus - natural, forgiving, fast, all the good words, and all from very different surfers. Some friends had ridden a LOT of my asymms over the years, and some are at the tippity top of my hard-to-please list. When something like that comes at you, then keeps coming over and over and over, you HAVE to take note.
So the Zambal got the go-ahead, and I put them into play; the clips have circulated, the shape has become an Indo and Mentawai STAPLE within the crew, William is still going ape shit. He's just got back from a week at Red Frog Bungalows in Panama and proved the point about the Zambal on his backhand making endless bottomless sand sucking tubes over his stay:
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