My Story post 25

The 7’6 vee bottom worked for me through the spring and summer of 1968. If I remember correctly at MP we were making boards in the sevens for most of the ’68 season. So what I was riding was pretty much standard fair, as far as size was concerned.

Then later in the year a couple of the guys I worked with started riding boards right around seven foot and doing well with them. These shorter boards were foiled different than the vee bottoms we’d all been riding. The vee bottoms had a rail line and profile similar to the long boards we used to ride. These newer shorter boards were different. The decks had an ‘S’ curve to them and the bottoms transitioned from rounded belly under the nose to flat in the tail. And, the rail line was up in the nose and down in the tail. They rode different too.

The vee bottom boards started to show a weakness in hard driving bottom turns and because of their length you still would move forward and back for trimming in the wave. The desire was to not move on the board but be able to stand in pretty much one place on the board and work the wave from the one spot.

Riding closer to the critical part of the wave and staying right there in the pocket was the ultimate in surfing. Climbing and dropping, racing under, along and with the curl of the wave was in our sites, getting there was the quest. These new boards were going to get us there. The foiled design, rails and rocker curves were going to make it happen. My coworkers and friends, Mike and Richie, made a couple of these new boards for them selves with direction from George Greenough. I followed in the fall of ’68 and made one for myself. It was 7’2

D.R.