Our 1st Annual AGM

11 . 10 . 13

It has been a little over a year now since we relaunched our website with a new logo and a new look for Otter Surfboards, and we thought that it was about time that we gathered together all of the people who have helped to grow Otter Surfboards into what it is today to say “Thank You” for being a part of our community. And so last Saturday we returned to Otter Surfboards spiritual home on the farm above Porthtowan for our first ever “AGM” – read: a BBQ and a chance to catch up with each other, share experiences and talk wooden surfboards.

Our Annual Gathering of Makers.

Otter Surfboards 2013 AGM Annual Gathering of Makers Barn part made

Otter Surfboards 2013 AGM Annual Gathering of Makers food spread

Friends travelled from far and wide and it was lovely to see so many wooden surfboard enthusiasts in one place. We invited all of the people who have attended one of our “Build-Your-Own” workshop weeks, who we are now proud to call our friends rather than customers, and it was great to see so many make it along – Eddie even made it over from the Netherlands and collected his finished Island Hopper earlier on that afternoon. We were also joined by friends from closer to home, those people who have had a role in shaping Otter Surfboards, supporting us and shouting about what we do here.

When we moved out of our workshop on the farm to turn Otter Surfboards into a business with dedicated premises, work began there on a new barn. We arrived on Saturday to find the barn strung with fairy lights, haybales piled up as seats and tablecloths thrown across trestle tables laden with food. Almost all of the food on the table had come from the farm, kind of a harvest festival, and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jez and Ange for their hospitality not just on Saturday, but over the years, and for the wonderful food that they put on for us.

We had a great evening catching up with friends, but what was really lovely was seeing new friendships being forged as people who had attended different workshop weeks or perhaps have had different and separate interactions with us over the past year or so got chatting. We hope that, as the years go on, the guest list for our “Annual AGM” (BBQ and get-together) will grow and the interlinking friendships rooted in an enjoyment and appreciation of wooden surfboards will grow also.

Thanks so much to everyone not just for making it along on Saturday, but more so for being a part of our community and Otter Surfboards. We hope that you enjoyed the evening, ate some good food with zero food miles, made some new friends and will be able to make it along next year too for more of the same. And to those of you who couldn’t make it along this time, well we’re sorry that we didn’t get to see you and we hope that you can come next year. Now as it was technically an AGM, does anybody have “any other business”?