This Silva Yates longboard is a real meeting of nations - its owned by a Dutchman who found it recently in France, and it was made by an Australian in the mid 60s in Jersey !Hans found the two boards a few weeks ago on a trip to Biarritz. The 10 ft longboard has a Silva Yates logo and is signed Wheels Williams on the stringer ; the other cut down longboard has no visible logos /signatures unfortunately, but is probably from the UK too.
Silva Yates boards are rare - he was a fibreglass boat builder in Jersey who saw an opportunity to start a business making boards for the island's growing surfing population. He only made around 100 longboards, and quite a lot of paipos (4'11 twin fins etc ), and had one or two guest shapers to help him, most notably Wheels Williams. Silva's first board was a hollow ply but a couple of years later he became aware of foam blanks and strted producing conventional boards in around '65 until '68 when Freedom started production. In some ways Silva Yates peaked too early , and finished making boards just as the boom was starting. I think his boats are still made today; he says for him making boards was a hobby type diversion.
Hans' board is probably from 1966 - Wheels hung round Europe from '65 till '67. It has a few extra stripes added on the rails and possibly by the stringer to give it that US competition look. The cut down board was probably modified in '68 when the top surfers were riding 8 ft v-bottoms.
Tony Cope remembers meeting Wheels in France -
''Wheels Williams was a renowned travelling Aussie surfer, not a champion, but too good for all the Europeans except Sumpter.
He was in Biarritz in Sept. 1966 when we were there. We kept meeting seeing him, as all the French were in the Surf Club de France & travelled around together as a group, surfing the same waves, eating at the same cafe, getting drunk together etc., and any visiting surfers were immediately enrolled into that group - it was an extraordinary experience.''
Thanks to Hans for the photos. If anyone wants to buy the board Hans is Taking offers. One problem though - its in Holland.
Joel de Rosnay, Wheels Williams and Rod Sumpter , France september 1965. The board is a Silva Yates probably shaped by Wheels.
the silva yates is now back in england, and going through a full resto,will send pics to Al on completion of the work,posted 28 th feb 2012,by Paul Broomfield.
ReplyDeleteSilva yates and I worked together for a jersey company called fiberglass laminates in 1962 ,we were approached by Dave grimshaw to glass a balsa blank he had shaped .it so out performed boards in use at that time that we took a mould from it to try to make them quicker ( early pop outs ) but un successfull , we then bought foam billets and had them cut out on a large bandsaw / shaped and glassed . Wheels Williams and Peter inde? Worked for a while in 65/66 as shapers myself and Roger benest were the glassers. Silva yates began working for himself in 1969 and we began building boats in 1973, sorry for the correction but history must not get lost in the translation ,regards mick jezequel .🇯🇪
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