The board was badly damaged on the tail. Even though it hadn’t been disposed of yet, it was probably going to end up in landfill, as a number of repair jobs had been unsuccessful. The thought of putting something so large in the rubbish was difficult to come to terms with.

Then a good friend of ours here at Panamuna, Sharkgirl Madison Stewart, put a call out for soft-top surfboards for a project she wanted to begin in Lombok as part of Project Hiu. She wants to repurpose old boards and give them to the fishermen’s wives to use as another source of income.  With these boards they can rent them to tourists that come to use the fishing boats for surf trips, thus further reducing the need for these families to participate in shark fishing. We obviously wanted this board to go to this fantastic cause and we decided to do something about it.

We mentioned this to our good friend Chris Garrett and he definitely had some awesome ideas. Over a couple of days, Chris used 2 pieces of American Cedar he had from an old window frame on his property to meticulously create a new tail for the board.  We are so thankful for his efforts – the board looks as good as new.

Here is the result.

Upcycled Surfboard from Panamuna Project on Vimeo.