My story post 28

How I ended up leaving MP in the Spring of ’69 and moving on to Wilderness was pretty impulsive. But the story goes like this…..

After the winter layoff Morey-Pope had got their new factory set up in Saticoy. So everyone reported out there for work. The shop was big and being set up for a production of 200 surfboards a week. I say being set up because when we all started working out there the place needed tweaking to get up to speed. One of the problem areas was the sanding booths.

My friend Mike Cundith was the MP sander. The sanding room at the Front street shop he had was vented very well, Mike was very happy with it. However the sanding rooms in Saticoy didn’t vent well at all. Mike had nothing but trouble with them and was continually frustrated because the shop manager was unwilling or unable to get the venting problem fixed. I don’t know how many days and weeks went by but eventually Mike had enough. It must have been mid morning when he threw open the sanding room door one day ripping the mask from his face in a cloud of sanding dust and yelled “ I’ve had it…. I quit “ …. Right then and there he left and didn’t come back.

My other Friend Richie West laminated for MP. I honestly don’t remember when he left, was it the same day? Something tells me no, but if it wasn’t it was shortly after. So there was some unrest in the place and frustration…. Mostly management issues. Then one day I found out the head shaper, Richard, was making a buck off of every board I shaped. Looking back I don’t know if it should have bothered me or not but at the time it did. Maybe it was because he never told me… and I felt left out of the loop… I don’t know but my friends leaving out of frustration, the management issues, the buck a board thing was the last straw and I decided to quit too.

When Mike left he went and started setting up the Wilderness shop in Santa Barbara in an old ice house between E. Cabrillo Blvd. and the rail road tracks along East Beach. And me…. Quitting and walking away from a good paying job? Well I had been talking with Mike about joining up with the Wilderness guys…. Which was Mike, Richie and Peter Moscogenis. So after walking out of the MP shop I went to my place on Buena Vista in Ventura, packed my stuff and moved in with Mike, his wife, Richie and Jamo at their place in Rincon Valley and started setting up at the ice house… shaping boards at Wilderness.

D.R.

A veiw just up the over grown driveway above the Rincon Valley ranch house were the Wilderness gang lived. Me sitting on the ground playing my guitar.

My Story post 27

There are a few boards that have stuck in my memories from all the boards I made myself during the evolution days.

That first 7’2 was sum what of a tear drop shaped outline…. That is it had a fairly straight hip area, wide point was above center and the nose tapered more to a point. The next board I remember having was one I made at MP before I left in the spring of ’69 and moved up with Mike, Richie and gang to work at Wilderness in Santa Barbara.

Anyway, the board was 6’8 and for some reason I couldn’t get the deck line to work the way I’d like and it ended up with a long sweeping curve in the deck that peaked back of center…. Not a typical “ S “ deck line. The board worked well except the fin was made from a green pigmented panel which gave the thing a soft flex. The learning curve was continuing… don’t use pigmented panels for fins if you want a nice stiff snapping fin. The green finned board was a little different and I got teased about it some but it still rode good enough. Because of the fin it worked better in short beach break type waves, which during that particular time we got a number of great days on the back side of Faira and at Over Head BB. Now try surf Over Head BB, the place is way over crowded. Back then… we were the only guys there.

Another board I remember making was about in the middle of summer ’69. I wanted something that would float real well for the small summer surf so I made a generic type flat bottom board with soft rails around 6’6 x 21 x 3 and kept thickness out on the rails. The board floated me great but wouldn’t hold an edge for nothing. So, I put a resin bead around the apex of the rail from the tail two thirds up. This added about a half inch to the over all width of the board. I shaped the bead so the rail now had a nice edge on it. Ok, now I was set… set for a fall. The edge, added width and over all thickness made the board too stiff. I would have needed to gain about 50 lbs to be able to turn the darn thing. Almost every time I’d go to set an edge on a wave bigger than waist high I’d fall flat on my face. I wanted to rail surf the thing and didn’t have the body size for it. The learning curve continued…

Learning what worked was all trial and error. Board lengths, thicknesses, rail profiles, widths, outline curves, rockers… finding all the right ingredients. Ya know what? I wish I would have taken notes. Though there may have been others, the only guy I ever saw take notes was Nat Young.

D.R.

Something similar to what was.

My Story post 26

The 7’2 was the first of many Greenough style boards I would ride. From the fall of ’68 into the early ‘70s I made myself a sizeable number of them.

It seems that people think that when you make surfboards you can get as many of them as you like because after all ‘you make them’…. Fact is they cost money, not retail or the bro deal but none the less blanks, fiberglass and resin are not cheap. So what I would do is sell the board I was riding and make myself another board, post haste, with the proceeds.

There was a stretch there from 1969 to about 1972 that I may have made myself a new board almost every month. I could go surf then go in to work after surfing and stick my board in the sales area of the shop with a price tag on it. If someone came in for a board and wanted my board…. sold. Take the money, pay for another blank and start mowing foam. I went from the first 7’2 down to 6’0, a couple inches at a time in not more than 6 months.

I remember reports coming in from Australia of the guys riding sub 6 foot boards. Wide, short and round outlines, full hulled bottoms with big single fins. Hard driving bottom turns engaging as much rail as possible. Sweeping 180 degree turn backs. It was all new territory. If you fell you swam, so there were consequences. But it didn’t matter. Paddle hard, work hard, project your thoughts into the next wave until you’re going where you want to and making it all work.

Looking at some of the old surf films of the era the moves don’t look that radical by today’s standards. But at the time it was.

D.R.

Riding my first Greenough style board