O'Hara is chairman of the board

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31: Cullen O’Hara is riding a wave of business success with his own surfboard shop.

Mr O’Hara, founded Isolated Surfboards in September 2009 and has slowly gained popularity  over the past two years through Bermuda’s dedicated surfing community.

Mr O’Hara’s love of the sport was partly due to him being “fortunate enough to live in an area of South Shore where I could see it from my house. Seeing that as a little kid, I thought it was awesome. My folks are from California (his dad is former XL CEO Brian O’Hara) and my grandma lived next to a surf shop — It was just fresh.”

Besides surfing here, he went to the University of California Santa Cruz and spent a lot time in Fiji.

He said setting up his own brand “was kind of out of necessity. When I moved back here there were no other options. I was going through boards quickly. I had some friends in California who had built a couple of sticks (surfboards) and I decided to give it a go.”

Mr O’Hara said he is mostly self-taught having first honed his craft while he was in Fiji.

“I had been doing fiberglass repairs from little dings to full reconstruction. The board building process is essentially just an extension of ding repair.”

He handcrafts each board, which is not a lost art, but in the era of mass-produced manufactured boards, it requires more of an artesian skill.

He said as long as he’s not giving lessons or involved in other projects, it takes two days to make a surfboard.

“I’ve been pretty much doing custom orders.

“There are a lot of factors which prohibit me from growing too much because of the nature of surfing. You can’t have millions of people on the water because it’s a limited resource.”

Mr O’Hara said keeping that in mind, he does not want to exploit Bermuda’s natural resource with an overabundance of people out riding the waves.

“But there is no one here servicing the dings or making the boards, so it works well for me.”

Isolated boards can be seen across some of the hottest surfing destinations in North America.

“I’ve been dishing out some boards to Costa Rica, California and Hawai’i. Most of them are people I know or met through conferences and they want to give my boards a try.”

He said there are probably about 70 people who own surfboards in Bermuda and about 20 who check the waves on a regular basis with about 10 die-hard surfers.

“If we have that one perfect day and it’s a holiday, we could get 20 people in the water, which isn’t ideal because that’s pretty crowded.”

He said most of the surfing takes place between Tucker’s Town to the Horseshoe Beach area.

“Every day is different through. Sand moves a lot and one spot could not break for five years and all of a sudden we have on type of consistent current and it turns on. The rewards go to those who actively checking it.

“If you stumble upon a gem, you try to keep it a little secret for yourself  or maybe tell a mate or two. You don’t want to just give it away. You want to make people work for it a little.

Mr O’Hara said it roughly costs $100 per foot to make a basic surfboard.

“I try to keep my prices in line with what it would cost to buy from the major surf shops in the United States so I can compete with that and give people incentive to buy locally.

He also gives lessons but people wanting them have to be flexible as trying to schedule a 5pm surfing lesson on a Thursday two weeks in advance doesn’t necessarily work.

“You can’t go fishing in the desert. If there are no waves, there’s not much you can do about it. We have certain periods where the waves are more plentiful and stand a chance to catch a wave any day of the week, any time of the week.”

He said summer is actually the worst time of the year to surf.

“The beach profiles change quite a lot here and they are not conducive to surfable waves. There might be more than enough swell in the water but we have to wait for the sand to move around.

“People who live near the beach probably don’t like this as much when the beach sweeps out and becomes smaller, but it does make for a much more rideable wave for learning.

Lessons cost $65 one person or $50 for groups of two to four people.

He also gives stand up paddle board lessons, which are $65 for one to three people.