Journal
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
The latest news and stories from our workshop, and beyond.
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 were joined by Chris, who put some of the free time afforded him by recent retirement to good use and spent the week making himself a 6’10” Jetty.
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...
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 off and carried out to waist deep water to catch a whitewater wave back to shore on. These four foot by one foot surfcraft are as quintessentially British as eating an ice-cream behind a wind-break, and have a loyal following that spans generations, demonstrated perfectly by the huge popularity...
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...
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 stepped into the workshop here last week; Jon, Leo and Matt met each other first thing on Monday morning, and from the outset their relationship was built on a friendly competitiveness. Jon and Leo were both making near-identical 6'10" Jettys on neighbouring trestles, whilst Matt was making...
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...
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....
Sometimes a great swell coincides with a busy week of work, and there's nothing much that you can do about it. It's a great problem to be faced with and one that Penny and Rowena worked hard to overcome when, on the Tuesday of their "Build-Your-Own" workshop course, a small, clean, long range swell started to break on the beaches at the bottom of the hill. It was really too good to pass up, but it meant a few long days and some good teamwork...
Not many twelve year olds can say that they built a wooden surfboard in their half term holidays. Alex can, though.
Tom’s choice of t-shirt on the middle day of his “build-your-own” workshop week was wonderfully ironic. He hadn’t thought twice when...
Two weeks ago, James was sat in his back garden eating breakfast when Ralph called. "Would it be possible to come and build a surfboard with you...
