About myself

I'm a good class IV paddler. I usually paddle in north west Italian rivers (mostly in the Piemonte region). I'm a member of Canoa Club Milano.

I learned paddling playing kanupolo.

About the test environment

Zulu is a quite common school boat in Italy and sometimes I had occasion to try it in our school rivers, like Ticino or Sesia, but during a day in october 2004 I had the occasion to test it on a real technical river.

Some friends invited me to run on Enna river, it is a quite unknown small river (IV+ WW) in the mountains close to Bergamo, in North/NE Italy.
The river was cold, narrow and with lot of tight turns.

Here is a picture by Marcello Parmigiani (Kayak Team Turbigo)



Although the Zulu is almost hidden, you should have a good impression about the test environment.

Review

Zulu behaved quite well, its shape is very similar to wavesport Y, it has a flat hull that gives you lot of stability, but it is a little bit smaller, and this should make it more agile.

About boat behaviour in water, I felt very well, i just found it a little bit hard to roll during eskimos, this is mainly due to its squared shape.
Unfortunately I had lot of problems with outfitting, during the descent, bakcrest got unscrewed, that is really bad for a creekboat, but it must be said that it was a club boat with poor manutention.



Volume is correctly balanced, after several jumps I emerged in the correct position.
Unfortunately it is not a fast boat, many owners complain about lack of "hole-punching" capability.



As I said it is a quite common boat in Italian kayak schools, but some expert Italian kayakers use it as a creeker, the most famous is Francesco Balducci, but it has been used also by Francesco Salvato.
Now it is no more trendy, but sometimes I have the impression that the reason is more because its great popularity beetween beginners instead of its performances.

Conclusion

PROS

- Stability
- Easy to control
- Volume distribution
- Cheaper

CONS

- Some choices in material could be better, in particular polyethilene looks to be too thin
- Slow