New finds

I found these two boards last weekend near St Ives. An Atlantic - its taken me a long time to find one; and a bellyboard. The Atlantic is a stringerless 6'2 x 20 early shortboard - mabye 1969/70, with 50 50 rails. Its a bit battered but I'm proud to have found this scarce local make. Its had an acid drag gelcoat added to the underside, probably in the early 70s as theres quite a lot of dings over it ; and its good to have the St Ives council registration sticker. The shapers name looks like FLINT or AUNT ??
Atlantic was started by Charles Williams at St Ives in 1965 and produced quite a few boards until the early 70s. Charles and Kid Speed were local shapers, Colin Pryor blew blanks, Dave Griffin glassed and sanded ;in the late 60s Pete Mooney McAllum worked at Atlantic after shaping a few of his Stuart and Nomad boards at St Ives. Also Aussie Vietnam draft dodgers Neil Redding and Chris Cannings joined the team. St Ives at this time was a hotspot of good surfers and abstract artists.

Charles Williams surf shop 1973

60s surfer at Godrevy , near the site of todays Sandsifter.


Charles on the cover of Surfing UK, 1969. This is officially our first national surf mag, predating British Surfer by a few months. It was published by Lindsay Morgan in Porthcawl in Jan '69 ,and ran for three issues before fading away.

Longboarders at Porthmeor, mid 60s.

St Ives surf club at Porthmeor, mid 60s. The gas works behind is now the Tate St Ives.

This old bellyboard is also an interesting one, being an old hire board, probably from the 50s or 60s with a 1 shilling rental charge on it - don't know how long for !? This board was probably local to the St Ives area.

Sands hire boards , Jersey late 70s

Californian rental board 1920s from Fernando Aguerre's collection