A friend of mine has a few 70’s single fin boards he has acumulated over the years. They are in pretty crap condition but I love checking them over. They are so alien to modern designs that I have a hard time getting my head around what the shapers where thinking when they where making these boards.
One of the things that spins me out the most is the foil.
The foil can go from say 3 1/2 inches under the front foot and a lot of foam up in the nose to 1 1/2 under the back foot. Compared to a modern shortboard this is a really radical difference.
Could someone please explain to me why they would want to have so much foam up the front end of the board and so comparitively little foam at the back end?
I love watching Morning of the Earth and I can see that they get a lot of trim speed when standing in the middle of the board but they still spend a fair bit of time on the tail.
IMO it’s basically last year’s Hawaiian design come to (take your pick) East Coast, Gulf Coast or West Coast.
Barry K. or Gerry Lopez rode them like madmen at Sunset/Pipeline but they didn’t work all that great under the feet of normal surfers in crappy mainland conditions.
Think narrow, thin, over rockered, teeny, tiny Kelly Slater boards in the 90s.
I.E. try to sell what is high profile pro stuff in the magazines and surf movies to normal surfing consumers like the rest of us.
JD, if you just consider the foil and nothing else then lots of foam in the nose would have been considered good for paddling,paddling into a wave and reducing pearling. ( before rocker was cool)
But even back then they knew that a lot of foam in the arse wasnt so good, so they wouldve slimmed it down.
As surfers and surfing became more competitive, everything became sharper, anorexic and tuned for max effect from min product.
My favorite thing about Morning of the Earth is that although the boards are small, a lot of the footwork is left over from the 60’s. If you watch for it, you’ll actually see them cross-stepping & noseriding on those little pointy boards. And most of the time, the stance is pretty close. So what looks like a thin back-foot area to you, was actually just where they’d step back to turn, and then bring that back foot forward again to trim. Both feet were usually over that thick part…
JD, if you just consider the foil and nothing else then lots of foam in the nose would have been considered good for paddling,paddling into a wave and reducing pearling. ( before rocker was cool)
But even back then they knew that a lot of foam in the arse wasnt so good, so they wouldve slimmed it down.
As surfers and surfing became more competitive, everything became sharper, anorexic and tuned for max effect from min product.
And so it continues…
mate , if your avatar and benny1’s avatar got together , it would be gaylocks , wouldn’t it ???
just a thought for today
ben[t]
…still remembering / getting flashbacks from the foils i had in the '70s …
the meat up front pulls you into waves, and the only reason you go back is to turn. surfing wasn’t forced. it was just speed and wave riding. you weren’t riding fins, you were riding waves. and to me, thats surfing.