Zlaq Surfboards, kitesurf craftsman in Rabat

Zlaq Surfboards is Amine Dechraoui's shaping workshop in Rabat, on Rue Aït Attab in the Aviation district. The business fits in one line, the one he puts forward himself: surfboard building and surfboard repair. That makes it a rarity in the capital — the Oudayas beach has a whole row of clubs teaching surf, but almost nobody building boards.

The work he documents covers both chemistries of the trade: conventional polyester and EPS-epoxy. The boards shown run from a 5'10 shortboard to a 9' longboard, by way of 6'6s, 7'1 single fins and 8-footers, with the stages of the craft alongside them — blank cutting, laminating, hotcoat, gloss, sanding and colour work, in a workshop with a separate shaping room and sanding room. Repair is advertised on the same footing as building.

A second address is associated with the workshop, at Salé El Jadida, on the other bank of the Bouregreg. The online trail is old: the workshop's blog stops in 2014, its successor in 2018, and the zlaqsurfboards.com domain now serves nothing but an empty hosting page. The phone number, however, is still listed in Moroccan directories: that is the way in.

No opening hours are published. Call before going.