07 . 02 . 23
Let us introduce you, a little more formally, to The Island Hopper. At 7’4″ it’s the Otter Surfboard’s “one board quiver” model, perfect for longboarders looking to step down in length a bit, or for shortboarders who want a little extra flow. It’s a board that answers a question that we asked ourselves:
“If you were going away on an extended surf trip and had room for only one surfboard in your luggage, what would you take?”
Well, we’d probably take a 7’4″ x 23″ x 3″ mid-length board. If we were going to island hop from place to place then we’d want to be prepared for all types of surf, from small dribbly summer stuff through to overhead waves on reefs and points. The Island Hopper fits the bill for such a trip, and is short enough that it won’t be a pain to check on to flights or stash on a boat.
The Island Hopper in the above photo is a pretty special custom board, that we recently finished for a customer in the US. It is our first Island Hopper to be made entirely from Cedar, with a matching glass on fin and stunning high gloss. We are really happy with how it turned out, the cleanliness of the deck and bottom skins allows focus to be drawn to the beautiful pattern of the book matched grain. The board is framed by cedar rails which brings the wood layout full circle, something we rarely see on our surfboards, as poplar tends to be the more reliable material to make rail strips from.
We can’t wait to hear how this one goes, if it’s anything like previous Island Hoppers, we’ll have one happy customer on our hands!
If you would like to order your very own custom Island Hopper, click here.
If you would like to join us to ‘make your own’, click here!
You can also check out this weeks wooden surfboard workshop, featuring the aforementioned board being made by one of our workshoppers, here!
Here's Jonathan to tell you what it was like joining us in our workshop to make a wooden surfboard...
Laurie made a 9'1 Wicket with us last year, and we recently reached out to him for his reflections on the workshop experience and how the board is...
