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.