There were a few big names in surfing around the southern California coast in the mid sixties when I was first a kook, then a grom and eventually an OK surfer. Surfers with a name in my neck of the woods would show up at the beach and of course heads would turn. It wouldn’t happen too often but I remember when it did.

Back then working in a surf shop making surfboards was like a regular job. You showed up for work everyday at 8 a.m. and put in your 8 hours. Unless the surf was really good, you didn’t go off and surf or just take off and go to the beach… you showed up for work and did what was required like any other job.

But, sometimes the surf was really good, that’s when the shop would shut down and the crew would go surfing… usually the whole crew. I remember a couple summer days at Malibu when there was a good swell and here comes Dewey Weber and his crew in the middle of the day. I can remember a couple times being at Rincon and seeing Renny Yater, or Bob Cooper. I was a teenager, these guys were the old guys, like 10 years older the me.

Then I got a job at the surf shop, still a teenager but, with a regular job. And a few times there would be a good swell and the shop would stop and go surfing. That was a treat, going to the beach with Tom Morey and the crew and getting some good surf.

Seeing Morey in the water heads would turn. He was a good surfer, not really a hotdoger, but had great wave knowledge and would draw nice lines with causal style. He never fell and would make every wave. Inspiring to watch. I was young, he seemed… old, smart, knowledgeable like he had a plan and was executing it. He was my boss so at work, I was at his command. In the water? He was more than my boss, he had the respect of everyone. He was the guy in the water, I was just a guy in the lineup, stoked to be out there, but just a guy in the lineup… and watching Morey like the rest.

It seemed the older guys in surfing back then were the guys that made surfboards. And back then the older guys were in their late twenties and early thirties. That’s hardly old, but to a teenager it seemed old.

Except for golf or bowling maybe, most sports are populated with young people. Surfing is no different. In the sixties when surfing started getting popular it was a very young sport so there weren’t too many older people doing it.

Now it’s quite different, there are people much older than 30 in the water everyday, and not just when the surf shop has gone out for a surf break because there is a good swell in the water. Some guys liked surfing enough when they were teenagers to say they’d surf for the rest of their lives…. Now they are doing just that!

D.R.

Designing a surfboard doesn’t take much.

All you need is a free software program and several hours figuring out how to use it. Borrow one of the surfboard files available with the program to make your learning curve shorter and you are on your way.

After you’ve got your surfboard file finished just give it to the cutting house and get your new surfboard design machined… at the fine setting of course, so you don’t have to much work to do getting your new surfboard sanded and ready for glassing.

Now you can’t glass your board yourself so you take your finished blank to the local lam shop and hand in your board for glassing.

About a week later you get a call from the lam shop and think… wow those guys are fast… but instead you hear the guy from the lam shop say “ you didn’t mark your fin lay out “. You say “ oh I didn’t know I needed to do that “

He says “ yes, it’s your board, we simply cut the fin boxes on the shapers marks”.

You say “Well, can you put the marks on the board for me”?

He says “no, I don’t know where you want them”

You say “ Put them where you normally would”

He says “I normally put them on the shapers marks, where ever they are. So you need to come in and mark where you want the fins”.

You don’t know fin lay out … even though that’s part of surfboard design. So now what?

Who knew?… fin lay out is a major thing, fin lay out can and will greatly effect how a surfboard performs. Sure put the fins anywhere, the board will still surf ok but, put them in the optimum place and the board will perform much better.

Surfboard design is more than a computer program, computer file and a blank.

D.R.