A N TA R C T I C SHAPES

What do you think you would get up to if faced with four months of daylight and no nights? Well for Southland's Josh Heerdegen, a keen surfer from the Catlins region, and Jodie Curtis of Gisborne, days on end of sunlight messing with your sleep patterns meant they put their skills to work in the workshop at Antarctica's Scott Base. Josh, who was a chef on the base, came up with the idea of building the world’s most southern manufactured surfboard while back home and had the concept of building it all out of natural timbers well before travelling down. After collecting and drying out the flower stalks of the native New Zealand flax, Harakeke, he then freighted them down to the base, and during his spare time hit the base workshop cutting down and running each piece of stalk through a thicknesser coming up with in excess of 500 pieces which were all laminated together along a thick piece of Ash timber which was used as a stringer. Jodie, who was working as a builder on the NZ base, helped out Josh in the woodworking skills area once gluing and clamping were needed. A few months later and after a few nights where the shaped wooden core was even slept with, with the help of the crew over at the US McMurdo base they glassed the craft to complete the process. Originally with Josh seeing photos in the surf mags of guys surfing in areas of the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere, and hearing unfounded rumours of Kelly Slater surfing Antarctica, it was hoped he could not only shape this board here but also surf it, but all the water around Scott Base was frozen as far as the eye could see and apart from the wave shapes sculptured in the surrounding snow and ice, the board would have to wait till he got home.