Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
We’ve always been fascinated by those most ancient of Hawaiian finless wave sliding craft, alaias and olos. Without fins to hold them straight and steady, the bottom contours and rail profiles of these thin, flat, blades are key to ensuring that they hold into the face of the unbroken wave and generate speed and lift – and what speed! A few months ago, with summer approaching and the prospect of much more time spent playing in the sea in...
We drank a lot of tea during our May “Make Your Own” wooden surfboard workshop the week before last. Marcus and David were with us building...
Two weeks ago, whilst the surfing population of southwest England stared in frustration at the small, wind-blown, waves lapping on their shores,...
Last Wednesday James took on the drive from Cornwall up to London, pushing his way through West London traffic at rush hour to arrive at...
Our first “Make Your Own” workshop week of 2016 has just finished up, and it was a great way to kick off this year’s series of courses. We...
Our final workshop of 2015 has just wrapped up, and it was a great week to finish the year on. Every single one of the “Make-Your-Own” wooden surfboard workshop courses that we’ve run this year has been a fantastic experience for us as workshoppers arrive on the Monday morning as strangers and leave on the Friday evening as friends. This week was no exception. This last week we were joined by Kevin, who travelled from his home in...
Ordinarily, the people who join us to build their own wooden surfboard over the course of a workshop week have a fairly similar understanding of...
Last Saturday, Michael woke up with no idea what he would be doing for the next week; a few months previously his wife had told him that she was...
Our Annual Gathering of Makers is our chance to say thank you; an opportunity for us to invite everyone who has supported us these past few years by...
The British summer holidays are bellyboard season; that time of year when old plywood boards are pulled out of the backs of sheds and garages, dusted...
July was a good and busy month for wooden surfboard workshops here at Otter, and at the very end of the month we welcomed Marc Koska to the workshop. Marc is, amongst other things, one of the organisers of the TEDx Brighton conference that James spoke at last year, and for the past nine months or so he’s been telling us how much he wants to come down and make his own wooden longboard with us. Marc is a very busy man, though – an...
Last weekend we joined the wonderful team from Surfers Against Sewage at Somersault Festival in North Devon for a weekend of mud, music and...
For many families, school summer holidays involve going away somewhere and spending a week or so together making memories and enjoying each others...
A few weeks before Claire arrived in the UK from California, a large package arrived at the Otter Workshop addressed to her. When we opened it...
It's not a race to complete the list of daily tasks involved in making your own wooden surfboard with us here, but you'd never have known that if you...
Kurt arrived at the workshop on Monday morning, having driven his pick-up truck half way across Europe from Switzerland to come and spend a week building himself a wooden surfboard with us. Until he arrived we knew very little about him, as he had booked on to the course just a fortnight before it was due to start, however over the introductory cup of tea it became apparent that we had a craftsman in the workshop with us.
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...
This week we've had Alan and a whole lot of sunshine in the workshop with us. Whilst the beach at the bottom of the hill has been intermittently...
The first workshop week of our 2015 programme ran this week, and it was wonderful to welcome a friend from just down the coast into the workshop....
