Sunday, May 21, 2006

Bonzers


N WIND 10 KT OR LESS...BECOMING S THIS AFTERNOON.
WIND WAVES 1 FOOT.
NW SWELL 5 FT AT 9 SECONDS.
TONIGHT S WIND 10 KT...RISING TO 20 TO 25 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT.
WIND WAVES 5 FT.
NW SWELL 5 FT AT 9 SECONDS.

1970...innovation & acid-driven drug-addled design mishaps...
Single-finned thick-hulled stubs with hyper-kicked noses...
Hollow Plastic Fantastics sporting hollow fins...
Spaceage honeycomb technology in place of foam, honey...
Corky Carroll's twin-finned “Space Sticks”, trippy...
Encinitas's Don Hansen “Super Vibes”, California country life...
Greek Downrailer's that “put you right on top” in Surf City...
Kneelos with centerboards, rudders & a speedometer?...

Da Bull wrote in Surfer Mag that year: “The B.S.’ers”...
Laying blame & shame on the makers & shakers, himself included...
Ripping one-uppers of glitz & glam over boards that worked...
"...offences committed in the name of the almighty dollar...”

Matt Dillon's boy took apart the under-gunned Aussies at Johanna...
Along with their extreme shorter-is-better mantra...
Their tiny chips were lost in the fast, powerful barrels...
The gains in maneuverability cost loss of speed...
Single-fins under six were beyond the abilities of but a few...
With the skill and patience to make them work...

Contest surfing gave way to the need of karmic well-being...
And a retreat into acid-inspired black-wetsuit fundamentalism...
Tire-slashing localism isolated prime strongholds...
Innovation was viewed with deep skepticism and dark suspicion...

In Oxnard, the Campbell brothers watched, gathering info...
Their small twin fins encountered parellel speed barriers...
“...advances in surfboard design appear to have reached a plateau,”
But they weren’t giving up on the shortboard...

“...(Rolf) slaughtered ‘em on a seven-foot board,” recalls Duncan...
“...how do we make a 5'6" to 6' board work like a 7' board?"...

Hawaiian surf stylists and designs dominated the surf circus...
While the Campbell's smuggled in design from down under...
Oz surf films served up mind-blowing fuel for speed based design...
Witzig’s 1968 'Evolution', displayed Lynch’s lip-to-base carves...
Wayne and Nat were the new gods of the tribal culture...
Greenough and McTavish carried the torch that lit the way...
Young Duncan glassing pic of Wayne Lynch on his twin-fin...

Shaman...

Duncan in describing the why, said:
"The moves that needed to be replicated...were Greenough,"...
"Off the bottom, laying the rail down and not spinning (out)...
Coming up off the top, full roundhouse cutbacks into the soup...
And then tube riding for as long as you wanted to..."

"That was the future...
We didn’t see it as knee-boarders versus surfers...
We’re looking at maneuvers and Greenough was completely right."...

Right...

November, 1970...the Campbells produce a radical three-fin design...
An adapted 5’4” kneeboard shape cut from a $12 reject blank...
A big, boxy wing-style skeg set close in on a fat squashed tail...
Two long knife-like side-bites rode well forward near the rails...
Canted in approximately seven degrees...
And on the bottom...a glassed image of Felix the Cat...

What magic lies in that bag of tricks?

1 comments:

J.P. said...

The Campbell brothers changed my life. Crazy stuff.