Immersion

Luca is a sound engineer by trade, so his ordinary sleeping patterns of “late to bed and late to rise” were thrown out of the window when we roused him at 5am for three mornings in a row to come and surf with us.  We had a fleet of our demo surfboards on the beach for the photo shoots which allowed Luca to try out some of our different models each morning, offering him a sort of “try before you buy” scenario.  Because of this we left the machining of the framework for his surfboard until the very last minute so that he had the option of changing his mind on which surfboard to make if he rode one that he particularly fell in love with, and in the meantime we spent the rest of the days preparing the deck and bottom skins and rail strips – processes that Luca was able to come in and observe in the workshop.

This past week has been more about sawdust than saltwater, as Luca has assembled the framework for a custom 6’6″ Cutter, built up the rails and then shaped back the hollow wooden blank to a produce his finished surfboard.  He’s seen and experienced every step in the process from the preparation of materials through to crafting his own surfboard, and spent time with us outside of the workshop both in the sea and around the bbq.  He’s fully immersed himself in the Otter Surfboards experience, and chose the perfect twelve day window to come and visit us here.