Your Moment of Zen Is This Man Hand-Building a Wooden Kayak

A couple years ago, I went to Maine and built a wooden surfboard under the careful tutelage of the Grain Surfboards crew (you can, and should, read about it in AJ issue #16, available for purchase, here). For three days, we laid and clamped and glued strips of white cedar until it took the shape of a surfboard. I returned to Northern California, and a few weeks later, so did the board. I’d made foam surfboards before, but there was something alive and magic in the wood board. I’ll never forget whooshing along the first wave I caught, tapping into something deep and primeval and calming. Maybe that’s what paddling a handmade kayak is like. Anders Thygesen, the subject of this short film, would know.

– Justin Housman