My story post 37

It was 40 years ago…. time flies when you’re having fun…. I had moved up to the Wilderness ranch house in Rincon valley on Casitas Pass rd. where Mike Cundith, his wife and Richie West lived.

This time of year what we would do in the morning before going up to the ice house shop in Santa Barbara to make surfboards is check for surf. Spring time and into summer what we call The Rincon which is the stretch of coast line from below Pitas point to Rincon point is usually pretty flat. South swells are blocked by the channel islands in this area so except for wind swells there is no surf.

Some times a good enough wind swell will refract around Rincon point as well can make a few of the beach breaks from Over Head to oil piers work. By that time Stanley’s was gone. So it was wind swells we'd be looking for. Unless we knew of a south swell and hit Ventura for surf.

The surfboards we rode by then were all sub 6’ boards of the Greenough hull design and very cutting edge, though at the time it really didn’t seem that way. We were just surfers trying to find new ways to ride waves. There were no big commercial interests, no big money involved… actually barely any money at all. I was single and only interested in surfing so I didn’t need money. Enough money to pay rent and buy peanut butter was about it for me, actually I think I ate trail mix. We all drove VW’s, wore t-shirts, shorts and flip flops, didn’t get hair cuts or watch TV. It was a simple life of surfing and making surfboards.

Looking back that time has become the defining time of change, the beginning of the evolution in surfboard design as we know it. None of us thought that 40 years from then we’d ever say ‘geez that was us, we were right at the forefront of the design process’ we were all just caught up in the moment. Never a thought about what it might mean in the future.

D.R.

This board shaped in 1973, a 6’3, is similar to what we were doing at Wilderness 40 years ago. That board has been everywhere, from Mazatlan to the south shore of Oahu and all up and down the California coast.