During the late 70’s, early eighties in Florida, Kurt Wilson was my main rider/designer, he went on the east coast pro tour with Rabbit, Mark Warren, Dane Kealoha, Critter Byrne, Buzzy Kerbox.
Up to then, wide spots were ahead of center, but when he got back at the end of summer, he had me pull back the WP to center.
Mark Warren was riding McCoy shaped boards, with full boxy rails and more rocker, these were working well in the small contest venue waves. Clark had a 7’0" McCoy blank out at the time, so I immediately ordered 40 of them, Dick Morales questioned whether I really was going to use them or have them clog up the warehouse in Florida.
They boards worked very well in cleaner waves with a wall, but in contests, you get what you see, the increased rocker was NOT letting Kurt get through dead spots, where the competitors could glide through the flats.
Kurt drew up a new rocker, flattening the tail dramatically, the board bit donkey sack so much, as soon as you were to get on your feet and applied any rail to the wave, it was like something grabbed you and wouldn’t let go, the result was usually a face plant.
I had built polypro plugs for my own removable fin system and kept routing in new boxes and test riding over and over, it became what could be deemed ridable only when the fin angles became very cross eyed, intersecting far behind the tip of the nose, but the board rode flat and not on the rail at all, after that it was back to full bore rockers again and the problem went away. Rockerless tail = straight lines and rail digs