02 . 08 . 13
This weekend the annual Boardmasters Festival returns to Newquay (7th-11th). The Boardmasters has been running in one guise or another since 1981, and over the years this event has morphed from the UK’s flagship surf contest, with a line-up of international competitors vying for WQS points, into a large music festival on the cliffs overlooking Watergate Bay, with a small surf competition on the side held at Fistral Beach. Whilst we’re not completely submerged in the world of competitive surfing here at Otter Surfboards, it’s nice to see some of our sport’s top athletes performing on our beaches. And this year, one of our boards will be present. Yup, if you’re at Fistral Beach on Friday 9th August then you can stop by the Surfers Against Sewage stand and check out progress so far on the big wave gun that we’re building for Ben Skinner.
The board is part of a project aimed at highlighting the alternatives to the petro-chemical derived materials currently used to manufacture most surfboards, and will culminate in Ben surfing one of our hollow, skin and frame, wooden surfboards on the first significant “swell of consequence” this coming Autumn/Winter. Ben has worked with us to design the board to his specifications so that he can confidently paddle into big surf on it, and we are currently in the process of building it. This week the deck and bottom skins have been laid up and the internal framework cut out, and by the time the board goes on display on the SAS stand at the end of next week it should have the rails built up and be ready for the deck to go on, so will be “open” to show the internal framework.
