SUP My Race and EO SUP
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| Lucius and Nebula boards from EO SUP |
EO SUP - How it all started
The EO SUP story starts in 2015 when Maris Galenieks started to paddle for fun after multiple surgical procedures on his spine. When you look at how fast he goes now then that is a bit of a surprise.
As he got more comfortable with SUP he started to think about going faster and getting equipment that suited him which is where his son Artis Strazdiņš comes into the picture. At the time Artis was studying Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering and as a keen rower he knew a lot about going fast on water.
Their first blades and board were fabricated using wood, a material that Maris as a skilled carpenter knows very well and while they looked fantastic the performance wasn’t good enough. In 2018 once Artis had graduated the two of them started to look more at the engineering behind board and blade performance using their experience to improve their initial designs. And that has gone pretty well!
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| Nebula |
EO SUP today
Fast forward to 2022… 15 prototype boards and more than 40 prototype paddles have brought EO to where they are now, a range of 4 paddles that will suit any paddler from enthusiastic learner to seriously fast addict and 3 boards that cover fun, flatwater and even flatter water race. And you will notice that Maris’ roots working with wood have remained in the paddle range, they are truly works of art that perform at the highest level.
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| The best looking high-performance paddles available? |
The boards have moved from wood to carbon fibre and don’t just look fantastic, I was fortunate to get a few KM on a Nebula CW in the summer of 2022 and it was simply the fastest accelerating SUP I had ever had the pleasure of paddling as well as looking fantastic.
Visiting EO SUP
At the end of 2022 Maris and I were talking about race boards and he offered me a board! I was super-stoked with this and our conversation turned from giddy excitement to details, what did I want? We discussed the model, either a pure flatwater Lucius or a more useful but still flatwater-based Nebula, the width and volume I needed, options to carry fluids and a small bag, colour and leash points, the EO SUP design process lets the customer get the board they want not what someone else thinks they want. But our conversation had to stop in early Spring when Maris got a huge carpentry commission in the USA, several months of work for him.
As we moved through April I reached out to Maris to see if he had a board I could borrow after damaging my race board, luckily for me he said ‘yes’ and in mid-May I found myself on a solo SUP My Race road trip driving across Sweden then Lithuania and into Latvia with a 14 hours ferry ride in-between.
On arrival in Jūrmala I was met by Maris, Ieva and Artis and treated to some awesome hospitality including 2 fabulous paddle sessions on their home waters.
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| Blanks cut ready for the next stage and one part finished Nebula. |
First though was a visit to the EO SUP production facility. Split over two floors in a large building on a school campus this is where Maris’ carpentry business is located and where Maris was finishing work on his carpentry commission which had to be shipped out less than a week later, all 6000 parts of it! On the ground floor was the largest CNC machine I’ve ever seen, admittedly I’m no expert on CNC machines but this one looked purposeful and was busy cutting parts of a kitchen, sadly no birth of a SUP demonstration for me.
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| Maris at work |
A quick visit to the office where the brain for the CNC machine was and a look at how EO SUP paddles are made, no weak foam core here but light, strong wood. Then upstairs to see the painting and finishing areas, these guys really do make a custom board for the paddler.
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| EO SUP Paddle Blade |
Later that evening I paddled 5 different flatwater boards - a Nebula FW, Nebula CW and three slightly different versions of Lucius boards including Ieva’s own black and white speed machine before beers, sauna and food. EO SUP certainly know how to keep a paddler happy!
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| Lucius boards - #2, Ieva's board and the test special. |
The Lucius boards clearly showed the way EO SUP work, I had already seen board #1 at EO SUP HQ, made entirely from wood it was the Genesis for the carbon fibre boards on the water including board #2 - the green machine in the images with an incredible finish that was almost pearlescent in the sunshine and Maris' super stealthy test board with a top-secret finish that is being trialled now. Lucius is a pure flatwater machine, perfect for time trials on SUP My Race and for anyone who needs maximum speed in glassy conditions.
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| Board #2 - wood veneer over carbon |
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| Ieva's Lucius |
The Nebula boards take the lessons learned from Lucius and adapt them for the conditions most of us have, small waves and chop. The FW variant is for Flat Water and the CW is for slightly rougher conditions, Choppy Water.
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| EO SUP Nebula CW |
EO SUP make flatwater race boards, thoroughbreds. Without an ocean environment to test them in, they rightly stick to the conditions they know, the river Lielupe is approximately 200m from their house and this leads to the Baltic Sea. Conditions on the river are usually calm and their local spot is very popular with rowers and kayakers including C1 sprint boats which are incredibly fast and look impossible to paddle close up! Not a place to design and test boards for heavy water.
The EO SUP Nebula FW
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| Nebula FW and CW at rest in Latvia |
The next day I made my choice, the red Nebula FW and went for a guided tour with Ieva - on the white Nebula CW - down the river to the Baltic Sea. It was a difficult choice to make, the white Nebula CW is possibly the best-looking board I have ever paddled, the solid white sides a brilliant contrast to the carbon/white deck but the main reason for borrowing a board was speed and the Nebula FW is, according to engineer Artis, faster. Speed over good looks. When it was time to leave I loaded up the van with the red board, a beautiful fin (new for 2024!) and a couple of paddles and retraced my steps to Sweden.
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| Prototype EO SUP race fin |
As an aside the drive was fantastic, quiet roads, beautiful scenery and it didn't seem to take that long.
Now, back in Sweden, I need to find out how fast I am on this sleek speed machine. I know the board is fast, in 2022 at the EuroTour SUP race in Nordhausen EO SUP team paddler Julija Mihailova returned to racing after a break with an excellent fourth place in the Elite ladies on her custom, low-volume Nebula FW board. And this emphasises the key point of the EO SUP process, if you are a lighter paddler getting a board to suit you can be difficult, similarly if you are a larger paddler then getting a narrow board with enough volume is also difficult. Being able to tweak parameters before construction means you will get the board you need.
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| EO SUP Nebula FW at rest in Sweden |
I am very lucky to be part of the EO SUP extended family, I love their paddles and I know that after a few sessions on the Nebula that I am already falling for the red rocket.
Fast is Fun
I am currently training under the guidance of multiple SUP world champion Michael Booth with Booth Training and regularly write about my progress here in this blog, you can keep up with my progress on my new Nebula through the Booth Training series of posts here.
You can join in the GPS tracking fun and the virtual time trials on SUP My Race which is here and you can get all the details on EO SUP boards and paddles here. And it that isn't enough you will also find me writing about all sorts of paddling on TotalSUP and sometimes posting on Instagram.