I’ve been wanting to make some generalist boards for some upcoming trips - one soon to the south and one in spring to visit my uncle in Humboldt county.
I wanted generous foam, heavy glass, and shapes that can ride a variety of waves. It ended up being an 8’4 magic template off my neighbors 8’4 Skip, and a 7’0 shaped off an early Simon Anderson style Becker that I found on craigslist a few weeks ago.
The Becker caught my eye instantly. Just a really clean, balanced template with a wide tail that makes sense for my chunky beachbreaky local spot. Being roughly the same age as the thruster concept itself, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the early Thrusters and this looked more like an MR type twin with a trailer to me, especially with it’s removable, smaller G&S Star Fin for a rear. Upon more research though I realized - well, yes, start w an MR twin, square that swallowtail and add a third fin, and you have an early Thruster! The fin placement was 4" from tail for the rear fin and 11.5" from the tail for the sides. 1/4" toe, 6 or so degrees cant, and 1.5" from the rail for the side fins as well.
The more I looked at it the more I liked it. On a whim I took a shot at stuffing it into my “6’6” travel bag, and lo and behold it fit!
Anyways, here’s my take on a 7’0 Anderson style Becker early Thruster. I lowered the nose rocker from the original to around 4 1/8" or4 1/4" and bumped the tail rocker a bit to 2 1/8 or 2 1/4, if I recall.
I did a more traditional shortboard bottom with a flat entry, single concave from chest to between the feet, switching to a double concave /slight vee between the leading fins that flattens out behind the back fin. And I made a diamond tail out of that big rounded squaretail just for kicks.
The rails I went for a more modern shortboard rail. Domed the thick deck slightly down to not too thick, not too thin boxed tucked edge rails. The Becker had sharp rails front to back, so I did keep my tucked edge through most of the board, just not an extremely sharp one.
For the little wings, I wanted them more as a rail break to release the tail of the board a little more than anything else, so the wing sections were the the same shape as the rest of the rails just with a sharp step from one section to the next, rather than the pretty bladed wings on other boards from the time. Who knows if I had a valid idea there. Probably not, and any positive effect is luck. I can live with that haha.
To my slight surprise as I’m more comfortable making singles, the fin boxes all went in correctly and the fins point where they should! I tried the “drill through the box” leash loop install and it appears to be solid. I was aggressive with loading the hole and box cavity with chopped glass, so I hope it will be strong.
The board goes well. Fast, paddles, still small enough to duck dive like a high schooler, and yet on a trial day racing closeouts, I was able to get up, race, and quickly hit an oncoming section without anything feeling funky.
I’ve only had two mediocre sessions on it - very quickly we had a run of busy work, pollution related sore throat drydock, rainstorms dry dock, and flat weird tide longboard waves. So hopefully initial impressions were correct and this can be a back of the truck roadtrip board :) .
