My story post 32. It started with a bottom turn.

What I remember about getting good surf in the summer of ’67 is the length of my board. Even though I surfed a 9’0, which was short by most standards it began to feel to long.

What was nice about surfing that day with ‘Pee Wee’ Shaw... with every wave I looked forward to working on bottom turns. Back then we usually executed a pivot type turn where you’d step back on you board weight your back foot and guide your board around with you front foot. The popular left go right turn was done that way.

After executing your turn you would immediately take a couple steps to put yourself in trim. If you didn’t move forward you’d stall off the wave, so a quick reposition after your turn was mandatory. Reach, shuffle or step back, turn and step forward was a pretty automatic move after standing up.

Riding mostly point waves I started finding that after the initial turn and glide down the line and dropping back down the wave face and pointing your board at a slight angle to the wave, you could execute another bottom turn from the middle of your board. By laying the board over on its rail and at the same time weighting into the move with a full arched back stand rather than stepping back . The move generated speed so worked great on a lined up wall.

So on days with really good surf like that one day in ’67 I would work on that bottom turn time and again wave after wave until what I began to think was that the move would be easier if I didn’t have as much surfboard under my feet. If I didn’t need to step back to execute a turn why not have a board that was shorter so there was no need to step back?

Though later the next year guys were taking their long boards and cutting off the noses to make them shorter, the design process was actually the other way around… at least for me. It wasn’t that the boards were to long in front, they were to long aft. I didn’t want to step back to turn, I wanted to stand up and turn right where I planted my feet on take off. As well, you might notice that the early shorter boards, from California anyway, had pretty wide and fairly thick tails. A design element that changed of course but, we had to start somewhere.

D.R.

This shot of Dickie Moon from an old Surfer Magazine I nicked off of Swaylocks is a fairly close example of the stand in the middle of your board turn.