The workshop smells of resin and foam dust. There is no air conditioning. Marco has been working in shorts and flip-flops since 6 in the morning, and he will still be here at 6 in the evening. It has been like this for thirty years.
Marco Reyes makes surfboards by hand in a village in the Siargao hinterland. No computer-controlled machine. No digital template. A foam blank, planers, sandpaper, and knowledge accumulated since his apprenticeship under his father.
The gesture
There is a particular way Marco holds his planer. An angle, a pressure, a rhythm. “It doesn’t really explain itself,” he says. “Your body understands before your head does.”
Every board begins with a conversation. Marco asks how you surf. Not your level — how you surf. Your feet, your weight, the way you paddle, the waves you look for. Then he disappears into thought for a few seconds, and when he comes back it is to draw the first lines on the blank.
The board already exists in his head before it exists in the foam.
What is being lost
Marco is worried. Not for himself — he has enough orders for the next ten years. He worries about what comes after.
“My children don’t want to learn. They want to go to university in Manila. I understand.” He says this without bitterness, with a lucidity that hurts. “But in twenty years, who will know how to do this?”
The question hangs in the hot air of the workshop, between the boards hanging on the walls and the foam shavings floating in the light.
What remains
There are still a few hours of light. Marco picks up his planer and attacks the right rail. The gesture is precise, regular, almost hypnotic. Thirty years in every movement.
“A good board, you feel it before you surf it. You hold it in your arms and you already know.” He lifts the finished blank and angles it toward the light. “This one is going to surf well.”