Quiver shots

Here are some shots taken a couple of years ago by Kirstin Prisk for the excellent Stranger magazine , for a piece called Story Boards , about the wierd and unlikely places I'd found boards and also to have a look at the collection. It was great to get a professional like Kirstin in and he took 100s of shots; luckily the sun was shining and the boards looked 'jolly good'. http://www.kirstinprisk.com/ http://www.stranger-mag.com/

Surfing heritage foundation vid

Someone's sneaked into my shed and taken a film of my boards ! Just wait till I get hold of him.....okay no its the surfing heritage foundation, no drooling please.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YtchrIWE9A

Tom Hoye 80s gun for British surfer Rob Ward

Rob Ward at Jeffrey's bay in the mid 70s

Tom Hoye in 1970

You don't see these in Cornwall every day ! Its a mid 1980s five fin gun made for big wave charger and adventurer Rob Ward, who grew up on the isle of Wight. The board was made by top Californian surfer turned experimental shaper Tom Hoye, who had settled in Margaret river by this time and had a long shaping relationship with Ward. Hoye is known for making unusual and forward thinking big wave boards in the late 70s and 80s and not many still survive.

Rob was a true adventurer and surfed big waves across the world from the 70s till the 90s, and did a surfing circumnavigation of the world in his self built yacht Orinoco flo. He settled in Newquay for a while in the 80s and has now emigrated to Australia.

The board has huge rocker for dealing with chop on big faces and looks to have been surfed alot ;I bet it could tell a few stories ! The dimensions are 8'6 x 19 1/4 x 3 .The board will soon be going into the British surfing museum's collection where it will be well preserved. There's a section about Rob in Roger Mansfield's book The Surfing Tribe p.152-3.

New arrivals, new projects....

A couple of new arrivals to the collection which as usual will need a bit of tlc, an 80s 6'1 Tris by Martin Wright, and a 6'8 circa 1970 snub nose backyard board with some great artwork, built like a tank and probably a force to be reckoned with out on the water.

Also half way through restoration is this beautiful Hayden singlefin from the late 60s, with its Greenough style fin; actually George was working with Hayden at the time making his amazing clear kneeboards. This board had some pretty heavy handed repairs with red resin and the previous owner also painted resin on the underside which I am taking back and repolishing, but its still got a few hours work left. Its a very elegant 6'11 built for Queenslands fast points.

Surf mags

In the 60s Britain didn't have any major surf magazines ( until Rod Sumpter brought out British Surfer in '69 ) so Surfer , the top US mag was highly prized by mail order and also imported and sold from Doug Wilson's shop in Newquay. British surfers and shapers could now keep up with all the latest trends from abroad.

Vitamin Sea surfboards 1970s single fin

Ad from Tube News dec 1981.

Nice early Vitamin Sea with a great logo by Kevin Russ featuring a tropical left hander; the board dates to the mid 70s. Vitamin Sea was started by Ted and Sue Ciastula in Newquay and was very successful during the late 70s and 80s with their Mark Richards and Cheyne Horan models and also Vit Sea's own twin fins and thrusters, many shaped by Chris Jones. I haven't seen a Vit Sea with this early logo before , check the leash fitting which loops through the board.

rare Newquay surfing guide 1966/7

Here are some pages from an early surf guide by Newquay lifeguard G. Roberts , published in 1967, which gives a good view of how the sport was growing and becoming a bit more commercial; someone told me the surfer drawings were by Fuzz Bleakley, not sure if that's right or not. The Bilbo ad shows what an important company it was at the time and why it was the leading maker in Europe through the 60s.

Now you're talkin

Donavon's back yard, the result of visits to 100s of thrift shops; he doesn't even have time to take the scabby wax off. If I had that many boards I'd never be able to choose which one to take out !

1970s Tiki single fin

Nice Tiki single fin, around 7 ft long which belongs to my friend Nick. Tiki was started by Tim Heyland and Dave Smith in south Wales in 1967 and relocated to Barnstaple in 1968; I think this board must date from 72/73, its got a nice logo and I like the bubbly bennet foam decal. Nick has a blog with some nice stuff on , http://www.frootful.blogspot.com/ .

1980s Hawaiian Style quad

Here's a board I picked up from the local car boot this morning. Its an early 80s quad made by Hawaiian Style. I can't find anything about the label but its a British made board and I'm guessing it was made in Newquay or possibly South Wales. It still has the original shop sticker saying supplied by the Newquay Surfing Centre in fore st.. Artwork is by Chris Gadd and glassing by 'the rattler' , no shapers name. I 'm hoping someone out there might know something about Hawaiian style boards ?

Its a nice 80s shape with quad fins, four channels and two small stingers in the tail, dimensions are 6'4 x 20 1/2 x 2 1/2. I guess the name was cashing in on the craze for all things American at the time and the board has US clark foam 'blue light' and 100 % American resin.

Pipeline in the 70s

Back in the 70s we didn't have a lot of home grown surf films so any foreign ones available were mainly imported by Three S films of Penzance, and came from Oz and the US. Check out the ad, a surf video for £35 in 1981 !!

In the US films Pipeline invariably plays a big part and here's a couple of clips of it in the late 70s; one from Freeride, one of the best films of the era http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5rNvQtLGQo ; and here's an obscure clip from a film called Sevano's Seven in 1979 which features a great soundtrack and some accomodating ladies, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLmjqtTa6MI ,the sort of film that inspired surf trips away from Britain in winter.

1980s Hott twin fin/ tri fin by Chris Jones

Staying with the Chris Jones theme, here's a board he shaped in the the early 80s for the short lived Hott surfboards label. It's got the classic features of its era, when needle or narrow noses were replacing the wide noses of the 70s, fins were changing from 2 to 2 1/2 to 3 and channels appeared, sometimes even at the nose and along the rails.

The dimensions are 5'10 x 20 1/2 x 2 1/2 and its numbered as Chris's 1008 th board. Many of the boards from this era are still not thought of as classics by their original owners and this one was heading for the landfill ;not any more !