20/08/2021
This is filling you in on what it's all about.
For quite some time I have been wanting to make my own hand boards.
For those that aren't sure what I'm talking about, a hand board is like a very small surfboard that you put on one hand.
You then catch the waves and use the hand board to glide along the face of the wave.
This can be done without a hand board but you lose the speed and control of where you want to be on the wave.
Back to my board, the main challenge has been, what materials do I use?
Fibreglass was always an option and wood was a far off second best.
The whole time this was happening, I was assisting Shanan Atkins in her research on Humpback Dolphins in Richards Bay (https://www.dolphins.org.za/) and spending time surfing whenever I could.
Slowly but surely bodysurfing became my prefered mode of transport on the waves. The hardboard I had then was already a veteran and I was looking to upgrade it.
Plastic is and will always be a danger to our sea life and there needs to be a way to prevent it from getting to our waters.
That's when I had my "AHA" moment.
If we can't stop plastic from getting to our waters, let's recycle the plastic into hand boards and take the recycled plastic to the water.
Talk about killing two birds with one stone, please note no animals were injured or harmed in any way when saying this.
What I meant was that I now had a material to make my hand boards from and we would keep the beach cleaner because we collected the plastic.
That's it for now. will keep you informed as to what happened next in the next post.
Humpback dolphins are endangered, threatened by shark nets at Richards Bay, South Africa. Conservation research is being conducted to stop the dolphin deaths. Visitors can help by searching for dolphins in live footage from a video camera.