Sunday, September 30, 2018

So, while on the subject of surf forecasters.  Today was the arrival of a hurricane swell. The forecast was for good size surf. Though it’s Sunday and I usually don’t surf the weekends I decided to go down early and get in on this swell.
When I got out of bed and looked at what the buoys said, surprisingly they read 2 to 3.3 foot.  Which isn’t much… ok it was 5am. Maybe the swell just isn’t registering yet. After going down to the beach and seeing that there really wasn’t much I came home.  I would’ve been better off sleeping in. Sometimes the forecast is off…. Waist high isn’t double overhead.
Anyway, you know what the difference is between the guys that make a lot of surfboards and the guys that don’t make a lot of surfboards?  It’s the time that is spent on the process.
I don’t have to make a lot of surfboards… I have in the past but don’t now. Because I don’t have to make one after another after another with several boards in different stages of the process at once I can take my time on each part of the process and get a bit more involved with the craft.
I believe In Bing Copeland’s surfboard book he explained that during the 60’s when surfing started getting popular one of his goals was to always have a 2 week turn around time. This meant that when someone ordered a board it would be finished in 2 weeks. So on any given day if 4 orders came in those 4 boards would be finished in 2 weeks from that day. So what happens when 5 orders come in the next day and 8 come in the day after that? Suddenly you have to make a lot of boards in a short amount of time.
Hiring more help so that each stage of the process is done by one person is what happens. Then making surfboards becomes a production thing instead of a crafting thing. Which is fine, that’s what happens to successful businesses, work hard turning over product.
This week while working on one of my orders I got to thinking about how much time I spend fussing with some of the details of making a surfboard and how there would be no way I could have done that in the production environment. I smiled and said to myself ‘yeah and I’m having fun doing what I’m doing now’. 
Working in production is hard work, and I liked it. Other wise I would have done something else. But taking my time and enjoying the process is just more enjoyable.
D.R.