Boardworks’ B-Rays Are All The Rage In Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Boardworks dealer, Covewater Paddle Surf, knows a great board when they see one. Opened in early 2010, Covewater was the first fully dedicated SUP shop outside of southern California. Covewater has transitioned 100% of their classes and a large percentage of their rentals to the Boardworks B-Rays.

“As soon as we paddled our first B-Ray, we knew this would be the board we’d want to use in all of our classes and tours going forward” says Covewater owner Scott Ruble. “They are so much lighter than the typical beginner friendly boards we were using from another manufacturer. “The softop and EVA rails mean we can bang them around quite a bit and we don’t need to worry about taking them to ding repair. It’s really made our classes a lot easier for our instructors and more fun for our paddlers”.

Covewater rents B-Rays out of their main SUP shop in Santa Cruz, but also uses them exclusively for their paddleboarding classes at the Santa Cruz harbor, their paddleboarding classes in Capitola, their paddleboard rentals in Capitola and paddleboard rentals in New Brighton Beach. “In particular, customers have loved the B-Rays at our rental concession right at New Brighton State Beach. The 10’6” B-Ray is light enough that women can easily carry it down to the water, and the 11’6” is large enough that it can accommodate our really big renter” says Ruble. 

Glide, stability, weight and price point have all made the B-Ray a hit for Covewater and its customers. But one thing that surprised the staff at Covewater was how enjoyable the board was to surf small waves. “Recently we took a group out who were visiting from the east coast. About half this group were already surfing on SUPs back home. There was a nice little knee to waist high south swell running that day. I and the folks in our tour all ended up catching tons of small waves that day. We were really surprised how well the B-Rays caught waves and how fun they were in those small, slow waves. There were an awful lot of smiles that afternoon!” 

If you want to experience the fun of stand up paddling in the San Francisco Bay Area, Covewater in Santa Cruz is the place to go. There you’ll find a variety of the Boardworks boards to demo, as well as a whole lot of the B-Rays needless to say. Check them out at any of their three locations!