“She’ll Grow Into It”

10 . 05 . 15

It’s lovely catching up with friends who have built surfboards with us in the past – that’s why we throw our “AGM” celebration every autumn to try and get as many workshoppers in one place at the same time to share their experiences with one another. Sometimes the making bug bites and building just one wooden surf craft with us isn’t enough, so whether those who have shaped handplanes or bellyboards return to build a full-size surfboard, or a former surfboard workshopper comes back for a Saturday to make something a little smaller, we get to spend more time together over the trestles.

Shane is somebody who seems to have caught it pretty badly; he returned on Saturday to shape a bellyboard, almost two years to the day since he arrived from Sydney, Australia to build a 5’10” Fetch fish with us. In the intervening period he’s built a 9’4” Seasaw at home from a kit that we sent out to him; Shane is the only former workshopper so far to have built an Otter model from a kit, and was happy to be our “guinea pig” for making a board remotely.

Shane and James spent Saturday catching up whilst Shane shaped a bellyboard for his baby girl Denali to catch her first waves on. Denali isn’t old enough to surf yet (she’s still just into clapping and pulling on beards) but Dad wants to make sure that when she is old enough to come into the shallows with him and ride a small whitewater wave back towards the beach, that it’s on a wooden board that he made for her.