The Flight of the Space Donkey
OUTLETS AND INLETS
I’ve recognized a need for several outlets in my life to maintain balance and happiness. For instance I need a social outlet to feel a sense of community support, to share ideas, and get feedback. I need a competitive outlet to help set goals, stay active, and feel accomplished. I prefer to have a spiritual outlet to stay curious about the universe, balance my soul, and have mental clarity. Perhaps most cyclically prevalent in my life has been a desire for a creative outlet.
Being creative is an interesting concept because it gives you the opportunity to make, transform, or assemble something just for the sake of doing so. Ideally it’s something aesthetically pleasing or maybe even functional. Some people utilize creativity in their jobs, others save this expression for their personal time. Some people even capitalize on their creativity and find it profitable. For me, I had the dream of combining all of these possibilities to create a functional art piece with value. I admire several friends who have done the same. Jon Kistemaker for instance makes spearguns in his free time. They help him support a passion of spearfishing, while connecting him with other people of the same passion to discuss, enjoy, and pursue more of that passion. It’s respectably difficult and the product is beautiful. I observed this process for a few months and became hungry to find my own outlet.
Another friend Sabina Osman, started an environmental movement called Unlitter that encourages people to reverse the negative impact humans have had on the planet while also prioritizing their own health and wellness. She helped me recognize that the foundational passions that keep you enthralled are not outlets, they are inlets. These activities, pursuits and requirements for happiness are magnetized to us by nature of our interest in them. Envision for a moment, a marine inlet or a port where supplies and resources are imported to a shipyard. It’s a fitting metaphor that depicts how the elements of your passions come to you like an armada of available resources. My parents are believers in the law of attraction, which is similarly positive depiction of inviting and providing the things you want in your life. You could also equate this to the power of prayer. With my inlets well defined in my mind, creative, social, competitive, it all came to me that I needed to make a specific and functional productL surfboards. That is when my inlet became a reality. That’s when I started shaping surfboards under the name Jort Boards.
JORT BOARDS
I remember the Ah-Ha moment when I realized I need to make surfboards, it was like completing a complicated puzzle but all of the pieces snapped together automatically at once to reveal an astounding picture. I was unexplainably excited and immediately started dreaming and researching how to proceed. Conceptually it made so much sense. It was creative, functional, lucrative (or so I thought at the time), and it provided a sense of community. Surfboards are extremely functional with a specific purpose of helping people catch waves. If you’ve ever met a passionate surfer you know that they are very happy people. Having the opportunity to give people the 1 necessary manmade resource for the sport to be possible is a powerful possibility. Not to mention that a large majority of my close friends are passionate surfers, I could immediately add value to them and earn their respect. If all else were to fail, I could make boards for myself, and even if I failed at that, I would learn along the way.
So I started watching YouTube videos, asking friends for help, and buying books online. I read article after article about where to buy supplies, what tools I would need, and how to do it right.
It was easy to find basic information but difficult to find really detailed and granular examples of people’s work. I quickly realized that the industry of shaping surfboards was just that, an industry, not just a hobby or art form. It’s both, but the result of the business side of it was that there are more people trying to keep their shaping technique a secret than their are people trying to teach others how to create surfboards. Aside from the industry secrets, it’s a long and tedious process that’s not simple to explain because you can do it easily, but do it wrong, or do it complicated, and do it right.
The mystery behind these industry secrets made it even more enticing to pursue. People dedicate their lives to this craft, and at the beginning stages of excitement, I could see myself doing this for life.
Just in time for Jort Boards to launch, my roommate Taylor Ingram invited me to surf trip to one of the best surfing locations in the world: Costa Rica. Perfect timing to create a custom board to put my research to the test and create a board specifically for the waves we would be chasing.
The Birth of the Space Donkey
I looked into the wave type, shape, speed, and how this board would best set me up for success in those conditions. There are infinite aspects of a board that you can adjust to create what you want. Sparing the details, there’s a lot to consider: length, width, thickness, rail shape, rocker line, concave style, glassing schedule, nose and tail shape, type of foam, type of stringer, type of fiberglass. The materials and resources required quickly become overwhelming. I decided on a 6’ long, 20 inch wide, and 2.4 inch thick board with a blunt nose, a thumb tail, and a lot of hidden volume in the middle for stability and paddling power. This was a conceptual synthesis of speaking with friends, and testing boards on my own. Ultimately that’s the only way to know for sure what you want. In the preliminary phases of surfing you always want to stray towards high volume, which lends more flotation, which catches more waves. It’s a hydrological science to engineer an artistic object that can plane and maneuver in a liquid medium. With a human riding it. Pretty damn cool for a nerd like me.
With so many things to consider, I began conceptualizing and constructing the Swiss Army knife of surfboards, later named, The Space Donkey. Reliable, Durable, Majestic, Mystical. The euphoria and anticipation superseded that of a first car. During this honeymoon phase of the process, I was dreaming up all kinds of ways to differentiate my craft from the thousands of other shapers. How could I stand out? What could I do differently? What does my brand stand for? What the hell do I call it? I knew I wanted a quality product that could be customized to a vast variety of demands, and that would require an extensive knowledge of the materials and designs that impact elements of performance. I previously and somewhat jokingly started a jorts company (yes, jean shorts) fittingly name Jort’s Jorts. As a University of Florida Gator, and a swamp raised Ocala National Forest resident, I embrace the southern appeal of jean shorts. They’re casual, functional, DIY oriented, and American as fuck. With an abbreviated name of Jort, it seemed to make sense that I would incorporate denim into the process somehow, maybe even throughout the entire board.
Like most humble beginnings, my escapades of shaping started in my garage and my friends garages. A few friends were particularly helpful, and for their time and energy I am forever grateful. Will Sinclair told me where to get supplies and what to get. Nijjy showed me how to shape the foam. Nate Hall pretty much taught me everything hands on from A to Z. I finished my first board 6 hours before my flight top Costa Rica, in about a month overall. Yer damn tootin’ there was a piece of denim on her. I’d say I went above average on necessary resources, but with all tools and materials it was about $600. Less than you can buy most new boards for.
Each board I’ve shaped since has progressed the level of difficulty, knowledge, and materials required to complete it. I did a floral fabric inlay mermaid themed board for my girlfriend at the time, and I did a really sweet fully custom 5’7” for my good friend Jon Kistemaker. I spent 40 hours just on the foam shaping portion of his board to meet his request of hard edge rails, duck dive grips, hidden center volume, and bat winged tail. It’s a labor of love worth every second.
The Flight of the Space Donkey
Digressing back to the Space Donkey, my first board I ever shaped, I have a mental image engrained in my memory that will never leave my mind as long as I live. It’s essentially the desktop photo of my mind, particularly when I think about Jort Boards. It’s an image of the first wave I caught on the Space Donkey. It was a sunrise surf session in Costa Rica, the very location I created the board for. We woke up while it was still dark out, 5:30am in Playa Negra Costa Rica. We rented this behemoth of a mansion right on the water with 15 people. Our friends knew the owner so we got a break on the exorbitant price tag and balled out for 3 days with a big crew of some new friends, and some old. Epic does not even come close to describing this trip. The sun was peaking through a misty haze casting this omnipotent golden hue through the air. It was pretty etherial floating in the crystal clear water, while also having a sense of swimming through this liquid gold cloud. Big 5-7 foot waves were peeling in on a right hand point break with nobody else in the water except our herd of friends. I happily watched my friends score beautiful waves, many of them their first of the trip, or their first in years. The hype level was through the roof. Shouts of “Yew!” And “Go Go Go!” Were flying through the air like rocket powered confetti. I looked out at the oncoming swell, and had that nervous butterfly feeling when I realized a beautiful wave was coming straight for me, and I was in the perfect spot to catch it. “Get it Ort!” Was the last thing I heard before putting my head down and paddling as hard as I could to ensure I caught this beast. And then the nose of the board dipped underwater because I had too much weight up front, and I flipped over the board, and snapped it in half. The worst… Just kidding, that would have sucked though. I paddled in, felt the inertia of the wave transfer the speed into my board, pressed my hands into the board, stood up, and gazed out over this pristine environment. The sunrise, the air, all of my friends. It was all just absurd. When you first drop into a wave you forget that anything else exists for a second. Your adrenaline spikes, your dopamine floods, your pupils dilate, and your fight or flight response flips on fight mode, because you can’t choose flight at this point. That feeling is why people sacrifice time, money, body, and life to surf. That feeling is what dilenates people who understand why surfing is an addiction and people who think that it’s just long term drowning with style. So once all of that euphoric simplicity subsides you take a moment to relax, breath, stand up tall and soak it all in. And that is when I took a mental image of the logo on the board that I made, blasting down the line in Playa Negra with all of my friends cheering me on. They new it was a special moment for me, and it truly was. I dedicated a lot of time, sweat, and maybe not blood, but who knows, there might be some blood in there. So I paddled back out into the lineup and started talking about how awesome the conditions were at the time with my friends, and I mentioned to someone that it was like we were floating in liquid golden space. At another point I mentioned that we all looked like a herd of donkeys paddling out with 15 people in one spot. Hince the birth of the name Space Donkey. It perfectly incapsulates the mystical qualities of the board, while also reiterating the reliable durability of it’s construction. I only have pure love for that moment, that wave, and that board.
WHAT’S IN STORE?
I will always have a love for this process, this sport, and this product that makes it all possible. I will always love the people brought into my life by surfing, and I hope that they will continue to bless me with abundant experiences, laughs, and dance-offs. I have an ambitious goal of making 100 boards in my lifetime. I’ve made 3 by myself, and helped make about 4 others. So we’ll call it 97 more to go.
After Jon’s custom, my shaping journey was put on the back burner temporarily for a variety of reasons, one of the foremost being the lack of proper space. Garage shaping is cool to get by, but it gets a little dangerous and aggravating especially when you live with 4 other people who share the space. I am discussing the possibility of making some dedicated shaping bays in friends shops to help teach them and share a proper space for creating surfboards. I’ve also discussed the possibility of teaching shaping lessons at community maker-spaces. Exciting possibilities ahead, but one thing is for certain. I’ve genuinely enjoyed the time I’ve spent learning this craft, and I can’t wait to continue expressing a healthy dose of creativity.
I’ve decided to take a break from creating custom boards for others and make some boards for myself. I want to make sure I master this craft before sharing my product, and I also want to fuel my passion for the sport of surfing, and the art of shaping. I also need to spend a little bit less time shaping and a little more time surfing now that my shaping skills have surpassed my surfing ability.
So I plan to shape a triple stringer 9’ performance longboard, followed by a 4’6” wake surf board for behind the boat. We’ll see how it all pans out. Whether it’s a longboard, a strong board, or a shortboard, one thing is for sure, it should be a Jort Board. Setting the bar and shredding the gnar, since 1991. Yew!
