And They Say You Can’t Polish A Turd….

(Part One)

This one has been a long time coming. As alliteratively satisfying as it may be, Covid proper put the kibosh on collaborations. What was supposed to be a few weeks of shaping, shooting and surfing ended up becoming a 7 month long saga of missed meetings , missed deadlines and me pulling clumps of hair out with frustration at attempting to prove the old adage wrong and polish myself up a nice shiny turd.

Let’s start at the beginning shall we?

For the last couple of years, there has been a concerted effort among the great and the good of environmental groups to deal with that bane of beaches everywhere, the cheap, “disposable” bodyboard.

Local lifeguards, the plastic project, 2 minute beach clean, Widemouth Task Force and the Ocean Recovery Project have all been pulling these little plastic bags of fuck from the lineups and spearheaded by Neil Hembrow (Ocean Recovery Project and Keep Britain Tidy) they have been trying to find ways to stop them going to landfill or polluting our waterways.

The cores of my boards are EPS and I try and use recycled EPS as much as possible. I knew the standard of foam in these bodyboards was pretty shocking but with all the enthusiasm that only the truly naive can muster I asked Neil if I could maybe have a few of them to try and turn into a proper, built to last surfboard.

Not only was he happy to help but he also offered to have the finished board and to film the “making of” as a bit of promo for their initiative and my stuff.

Sounds like plain sailing, eh? I mean, I’m not a fan of being in front of the camera but I’m used to shaping in front of people and it’s basically a standard build with a bit of gluing up for the blank first, surely.

What could possibly go wrong?