Vintage Surf meet 2019 coming soon !

Vintage Surf meet 2019 coming soon !
Free to take part
We buy interesting old boards 60s/70s/early 80s in good condition. Email alasdairlindsay75@gmail.com . Also wanted - Surfing UK , British Surfer and Surf Insight magazines .
Above photo - copyright Rennie Ellis photographer archive

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Cheyne Horan personal board

 There's an important piece of surf history going under the hammer on Aussie ebay at the moment. A board most self respecting Oz collectors would sell their grandma for - this 80s singlefin made at Hot Buttered for Cheyne Horan, which he has pesonally vouched for that it was a board he rode at Bells. All original including the red star fin . The guy who's selling it has just realised he's sitting on a gold mine ! http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=151022152371#ht_1021wt_1397
This is when Gee starts to get excited . Cheyne left one of these behind when he came to do the Fosters in Newquay one year. Rumour has it that it was to pay his bill at the headland hotel. ?









28 comments:

  1. well..............that was a fairly expensive board at a mere $3750.00

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  2. yes a lot of money. I thought it might go even higher though because of the collecting frenzy of anything to do with Cheyne Horan, lazor zaps etc.

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  3. Alasdair, curious to know why you have an Australian image as your header?
    ps//I am signed in as one of your members but can't seem to leave comment as such...any clues?
    John

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  4. hi John, good question. I just love the atmosphere of the photo, and since the board has a union jack on thats enough of a link for me !
    The comments system on blogger isnt straightforward , just have a play around and see what it accepts. Its not as simple as facebook ! Al

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  5. Any way you can take comments out of the blog Al if they are blatant advertising items with no relevance to the subject matter ?

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  6. yes i can remove rubbish like that above . Its usually for Newquay holiday cottages ! There you go I've just advertised them myself haha

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  7. This board didnt sell for $3750 as the winning bidder reneged ( if indeed there was a winning bidder) The guy selling it kept saying its an original 70's board. The fin was designed in 1983 making the board a 1983 or younger. The board has no 'For Cheyne' on it and the stars are red as per NZ flag not white as per Aussie flag. The guys ad said Cheyne called him but he mailed me and said Cheyne sent him an email. Cheynes email said it was a test board he rode a couple of time and that the fin was backwards in the picture. ( If he could remember back then it was most likely a stocky he may have ridden ) Anyway he relisted on ebay and had no offers after two days so he took it off and will probably try and flog it to some sucker down the track. It was relisted at a Buy Now price of $7500.

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  8. It's an interesting story now as in the photos supplied on the ad it was shown with 2 different fins fitted which seemed a bit odd - whoever posted above - who are you??

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  9. Actually the Fin was stamped June 85. There were no Wing Keel Star Fins in 1983. Aust II won Americas cup in Sept 83. I don't think Cheyne met Ben Lexcan until after Hawaii winter 83-84. So at earliest in the late Oz summer early 84. Cheyne won Bells in Easter/April 1984 on an Aussie Blue Wing Keel, probably a Hot Buttered. Only a month or two after the fin was developed. Somewhere in the first months of 84 Cheyne left McCoy. I'm not so sure the Star Fin was even released publicly back then ie before Bells 84. The Star Fin prototype was first put on one of Cheynes last boards with McCoy (maybe his last), an 83 Lazor Zap (which he recently road at a Bondi single fin comp). I'm not so sure even if a McCoy was ever made for Cheyne to accomodate a Wing Keel? After his 1983 raked fin Lazor Zap there is no evidence of him riding another McCoy. Let alone one with a Wing Keel. The Aussie Blue Hull nosed board that Terry Fitz shaped for him were the first real Wing Keel designed boards. And I believe (I could be wrong) that the Hulled or more often referred to 'Boat Nose' of the first Wing Keel boards was an initial design suggestion by Ben Lexcan. Cheyne, by his own account, pursued these changes in board design almost straight away under Lexcans tutelage. Again I could be wrong but I don't think McCoy was apart of this. (Try finding Cheyne riding a McCoy after this one let alone one with a wing Keel) Lending me to think that he had already left McCoy and pretty much developed the wing keeled board first with Terry Fitzgerald an then others. Cheyne returns from Hawaii sometime in January 84, he wins Bells in April...It is somewhere in this 2 months,February-March period, he had left McCoy and developed the Wing Keel...think about it...This flys in the face of many who dogmatically put Star Fins on Lazor Zaps. That is a major Fin Fail. If you are a collector and have a Star Fin on a pre 84 Lazor Zap it is the wrong fin. The extreme Lazor Zap fins were deep raked. After Cheyne left McCoy, Geoff started developing TRi-Zaps and somewhat responded to the Wing Keel with his Gul Wing fin. Im not so sure that McCoy even subscribed or developed the use of the Wing Keel on his boards, it was more a customer choice at the time.
    What Makes this board important is that it appears to be an early Lexcan inspired hull nose. Question is is it an 84 or 85 board?? The fin says 85 but a lot of the fins Cheyne used were modified with glass. So could've been added later. In fact this Aussie Blue look with the hulled nose pretty much signifies his boards before the 1984 OP Pro in August that year...during that comp and after that the colour ways significantly varied and the boards changed. And the hulled nose eventually dissapated. I don't know if this type of board was around in 85. Cheyne said he 'had it' at Bells, I assume 84. Not even sure that Cheyne was at 85 Bells or perhaps knocked out early.
    BTW, according to the seller, Cheyne also said that "the board was sprayed by a Kiwi" which accounts for the red fill in the stars, but NZ flag stars have 5 points not 7 points. So are Aussie stars that a cheeky Kiwi sprayed. Regarding the fin, the fin had initially been borrowed by a friend. When the seller realised that it was important to the board he retrieved it.
    To summarise, these boards of Cheynes post McCoy are the first Wing Keel dedicated designed boards. The hard core Lazor Zaps not only predate the Wing Keel but perhaps are not as integrated into the concept use of the Star Fin as many have assumed. Not that Cheyne didn't carry the Lazor Zap notion forward into his Keel Finned boards

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  10. ... Not that Cheyne didn't carry the Lazor Zap notion forward into his Keel Finned boards, he did. Its just that I'm not so sure McCoy ever developed the Zap further with the Wing Keel with Cheyne on board (pardon the pun)) To that, the Wing Keel StarFin is maybe not as synonymous with the McCoy Lazor Zap as is so chiefly assumed. Its kinda unfortunate that Cheyne left McCoy when he did, I wonder how Geoff would've pushed his "design through development" mandate given...that fin, his boards and Cheyne, for the following 12 months...John

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  11. hi John, great info thanks - you should write a book !
    Like you say, its funny how every mccoy lazor zap you see has a star fin on , when Cheyne only rode one prototype star fin zap right at the end of his mccoy era. People have opted for the more extreme set up to make the board look more iconic

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  12. I guess so...that's the way it seems. And from memory that's the way it was. I'd like to hear it from the horses mouth though. anyway one only has to do the sums.
    BTW I managed to fix my blogger id as you can see!
    John

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  13. John, it would be great if you could get down to the vintage surfboard meet in June, AussieCollector no doubt will be bringing some of his Oz beauties, and I would even dust the bat crap/piss and cobwebs off the Peter Brock GG Wilderness, cheers, Henry

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  14. Easy Henry, can't you just bring along some random stuff unrepresentative of your true collection as usual - I've got plenty of new exhibits for you to drool over this year!!

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  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  16. Aussie, you know random is my middle name and nature.... not sure if I can handle seeing more of your clean and sparkling numbers, I like to keep my greeneyed monster under wraps..
    meant Chris Brock not Brocky The King of the Mountain, I blame the rattlers I had last night ;-)

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  17. So are you a Holden or Ford man??

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  18. I'm a sandgroper at heart, so that means a I'm a Holden man...

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  19. first aussie flag blue board hot buttered bells 84 star fin first time appearance in oz also.i have another prototype says RR for cheyne 84 full boat nose hull aswell.he tried a few shapers.

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  20. The big post is correct. Cheyne's falling out with McCoy was well-publicised at the time, with McCoy doing a big interview in Tracks (or elsewhere) when they were not together but praising Cheyne's surfing at Haleiwa as the best he had ever seen. The winged-keel board from Bells 1984 was designed by Lexan, shaped by Terry Fitz & not related to McCoy.

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  21. The wing-keel is certainly not related to the 1970s. In fact, Cheyne was riding normalish single fin boards in 1979 (beautiful flyer/flute tailed McCoys). I was in 1980, the boards went fat (Cheyne 5th in world), in 1981 they stayed fattish (see 1981 Bells), in 1982 they became Lazor Zapish (see OP Pro win), in 1983 they became full teardrop extreme Lazor Zap and in 1984 the winged-keel.

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  22. Terry Fitz was a big fan of the keel, I recall. In a 1984 or so article in Surfing World (or other Aussie glossy), I recall Fitz wrote an article on the differences between singles, twins & tri-fins and concluded the article saying the future of the surfboard was single-fin! Keep in mind in 1984, Joey Buran won the Pipeline Masters on a single fin (so obviously there still remained some doubts at the time, probably until Rawson shaped those killer boards for Tom Carroll).

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  23. I have an original cheyne hogan surfboard with small demage.I want to sell it.for more information and pictures contact me on babilon88@gmail.com

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  24. I wonder if the cheyne hogan board mentioned above was a collabaration between Cheyne Horan and Paul Hogan ?, perhaps Strop could let us have the low down..

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  25. The Red fin has been put in the wrong way around on third shot down the one with the board on the post. The design is taken from the Spitfire wing and the straight edge goes at the front the curve at the back.

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