Kevin Cross

Here's a MOBS interview with North Devon legend Australian shaper Kevin Cross who is over on holiday. Kevin was here from 1971 to '76 and still has strong family links with north Devon. He made hundreds of boards in the 70s under the Kejo, Creamed Honey, Silverwings and Kevin Cross labels.
The board behind Kevin with the jellyfish spray is one of the few I regret selling on ebay a few years back, pre blog etc. . It was a Piran stinger and was a beauty, and I don't know why I sold it  ? Must have been skint..

Anyway heres three boards I didnt sell, all by Kevin , a Creamed Honey, a Silverwings (which was his budget label) , and a Kevin Cross .

boards for sale

SOLD Heres a great little Fulmar 5'8 quad for sale at Gee's place in Newquay. These were made in north Cornwall from what I can remember. What makes this board special are the cool jet fins ( designed by Simon Anderson, probably influenced by tail fins on jet fighters, and only used in around '82-'83) . There were a few jet fins used on UK boards - but not many ! so a rarity, hence the price. Email geepiper@yahoo.co.uk .  

Remember Gee's vintage comp is on next monday, contact him if you want to enter. Looking at the forecast a longboard could be a good idea...

Here are a couple of classic longboards for sale for our French readers -
Pierre is selling this Hobie "mini-model" Corky Carroll 9'6 with original fin from 1967 and a
Surfboard Hawaii Stylist II ,9'2 original fin missing from 1968 (I think the shapers were Johnny Rice and Bill Hamilton at this time). As for the price, Pierre is waiting for offers, and has a pretty good idea what he wants for them; may consider swaps with vintage French/ English boards. Email pierremennesson@hotmail.com
 

beautiful Conways

 You hear about how artful John Conway's boards were in the early 70s, but usually only see the more plain boards come up for sale. So here's a couple of gems made by John around '72 , both using the coloured resin drag technique taught to him by Mick Jackman when they worked at Bickers.
This board below has been owned from new (1973) by Ste's dad, and only surfed a handful of times. It has lived in the attic for 20 years.  Its a beautifully crafted 6'2, and looks very surfable too, plenty of width, and Greenough inspired slim fin. Raspberry ripple resin ...yum.

Ste's dad in the 80s

John in 1972.

Some more great resin work on this similar Conway shape probably made in the same year. Quite adventurous colour mix which could have gone horribly wrong but JC has pulled it off. The fin is unusually far back but this could have been a bad repair. This board belongs to Darren .

Martin Richard of Newquay singlefin

Martin Richard surfboards were shaped by one of the legends of the Newquay surf scene Martin 'gearbox' Geary. MR was his first label in Newquay lasting from 1967 to 1969, so pretty scarce today. This 7'5 x 19 3/4 probably dates to around 1968, half way through the transitional period of the late 60s, based upon what the Aussies were riding in films like Evolution. It has a early patent pending Bilbo fin and fin box- not as nice a finish as their later clear ones. The board is one of the nicest MR's I've seen ,with full red tint on rails and underside, green pinline and red glue stringer ;and the trippy logo is classic late 60s. After MR Martin worked for Bilbo for a bit, and then started the sought after and equally rare Outer Limits label through the 70s, also shaping at Piran later in the decade. In the early 80s he was working with Nigel Semmens at Ocean Magic doing airbrushing .More recently he has suffered from bad arthritis in his hands and now makes small model surfboards.

Tony says about the board -                                                                                                                    In this case a copy of a Bing Foil brought to GB in 1968 by the new Australian Champ
Keith Paull, who went to Cal first to shape the board for them to copy, then came to Cornwall. He used it at Porthtowan in the Cornish & Open, then in Jersey at the Europeans ,then filmed in France with Mark Martinson and Robert August for McGillivray and Freeman .Everybody ran a tape measure over it, photographed every detail, then made copies.For a few months we were cutting edge, making the latest shape boards at the same time as Aus and Cal were. Martinson later wrote in SURFER mag `When we saw what Paull was riding we were sick. When we tried it out we realised the boards we had brought with us from Cal were obsolete.

In the Bing foil ad of Keith Paull above you can see just how far forward the fin was...... just like the MR copy.

1969 ad British Surfer

posters and flyers

Some classic posters , above Crantock village hall film nights put on by Rod Sumpter late 60s.

Cornish and Open at Porthtowan 1981 ,a rare poster - these were throwaway items in their day

Fantasea at St Merryn village hall ,1980 . 'Dogs free' !

Seaflight at St Merryn again 1980,  no allowance for dogs this time

Rare Surfaari 1969 poster, film by Fitz of Westcoast surfboards Woolacombe

Fastnet surf club pamphlet of Irish surf spots, early70s

Detail of Free and Easy (1967) poster - the South Coast surf club's version that is.Artwork by Tony Cope .

Here's another very rare 1969 flyer sent in by Tony-

''Probably the only poster still existing for Southampton Uni`s film show in May 1969. Southampton was prob. the best spot anywhere to show surf movies, there was another surf club there already, the Ordinance Survey SC ( OS had their HQ in So`ton ), and 3 much bigger clubs all within 30 miles, ie. SCSC at Hayling Island, Wessex at Bournemouth and the Isle of Wight boys would come in on a ferry for the evening. You could send out posters to the 5 clubs 2 weeks before the show and guarantee 100+ attendances, sometimes double that. We once hired So`ton Civic Centre for the night, got Rod Sumpter to bring down something of Paul Witzig`s to show, and filled the place. He was quite pleased about that......''.

Thanks to Chris Flower, Tony Cope, Graham Looker and Alex Williams.

Westcoast of Woolacombe

Here's one of those rare Westcoast of Woolacombe boards, a really nice looking old shape which I saw on the facebook page of the Bay surf shop, Woolacombe and I think they'd just got hold of it and were pretty pleased. Tony is the man when it comes to remembering the details of the Westcoast gang so he was really happy to see photos of one of these old shapes he used to ride back in the late 60s ,and filled in some details-

'The Bay surf shop board was shaped by Fitz in about March / April 1969. It`s the transitional model, the link between `V`bottom `Surf. Inc.` boards Fitz made from March 1968, and the Westcoast `Team` models ( like yours Al) shaped by Clive Barber ( SA ) when he came across in about June 1969. They have a very `round` feeling to them, both in plan shape, rail section, and across the bottom, finishing often in a soft `V` at the tail end. Often the deck glass had one colour tint, the bottom would be another, so where they overlapped at the rails there was a much deeper colour ..... eg., yellow bottom, blue deck, gives green rails. A black pinstripe hides the cut line where the 2 glass cloth coverings meet. Attached are 2 photos of mine, unfortunately the logo`s under my feet, but you can see the round shape it had, and the black pinstripe over the cut line where the white deck meets the pale purple bottom. My boards were pretty plain compared to custom orders, because they took a real hammering every day at Wooly and at weekends at contests. Any fancy colours or art schemes were a devil to repair neatly, so we didn`t want them . Meant to say - look at the decal - it`s just a piece of paper, and any non-printed bits have been cut away with scissors. That`s because when squeegy-ing the resin on, air bubbles would get trapped under large paper areas, and be clearly visable in the finished board. Fitz eventually got some printed on tissue: problem solved, air escapes up thro` the little voids in the paper.'
Thanks to Tony for the rememberings. Westcoast was a small but important company with some cutting edge designs at the time (my team model is unbelievably light for the period) and successful team riders who competed well locally and nationally.

Shockwaves mid 80s thruster

 Picked this board up early this morning. Initially I was into it because it was in such good condition and also because of the glitter resin on the deck giving it a bit of mid 80s bling.I'd never heard of Shockwaves - apart from the hair gel ;so supposed it was Australian. A quick scan on google gives just one bit of info - that Shockwaves surfboards come from Wales (gower ?) and Wyn Davies is the boss. Not sure who the shaper Con is though ; very unlikely to the Californian Con. // Thanks to Chris for letting me know this is probably by Paul Connibear.
The board has a nice shockwave spray on the underside, and is one of the classic 80s flat deck plenty of volume shapes.Clark foam super light, 6'3 x 19 1/2. Anyone else know anything about this label ?

More of Con's old boards, under the sought after Crab Island label, mid 80s