Hi everyone, I went to a family gathering at my girls cousins today and in his garage he had a catri single fin. The logo is of a a bird (white) and all it says is Catri surfboards. It is a single fin with a square tail has a wing design near the tail. It is resin tinted and no leash plug. It has volan cloth overlaps and pinlines. Needs some work but was wondering if anyone knows what Dick Catris’ logo was when he made boards and what you think this might be. Thanks for any info.
Dick Catri is an East Coast legend.He has been building boards on and off for thirty years.He lives down south of Melbourne Fla. and mainly charter fishes for a living.He still has a shaping bay at his house.Greg Loehr or Jim Phillips could probably tell you more.I saw him a couple of years ago.He still runs a huge Cocoa Beach Surf Contest.Someone should write a book on this Dude and all of his adventures.
Greg and I were both employed by Dick during the years he used this logo. The factory roster read like this, Greg Loehr, Bob Toomb, Johnny Rice, Joey Thomas and myself, shapers. Freddy Grosskreutz, glasser. Tommy Maus, glosser. Larry Pope, sander, polisher. A very volitile time, Dick got busted, Greg went with Natural Art, Joey Thomas and Tommy Maus went to Santa Cruz, Johnny moved to Brazil. Dicks reign held on for a few more years, but the new crew of younger “craftsmen” just couldn’t put it together these way the old schoolers did
great! i havent had time to fix it up yet? How do those winged square tails ride? Thanks for you info.
Mahalo
July 1999
Longboard Magazine
Dick Catri: Forty Years of the Captain’s Log
Yo SIngle fin,
I ordered my Catri in 1974 from Ocean City, Md. so I would have a new stick when I showed up @ Jacksonville University in August of the same year. I still have it and it was shaped by Rice (thanks J.Phillips for that historical on Dick’s crew) It is a 7’ 0" Florida gun. Round pin, wide point ahead of center with the classic 7-'s style beak nose. I love thid board. It is so fast because there is very little ( imean almost non -existant tail rocker with a long laining area and a low entry nose rocker. I’ve carried it with me for years. I’ve broken the nose off it three times. It has now been restored and is in my livingroom. I was 19 in the attached picture and dinged the deck the first day with my boney knee. I patched the ding with “Pot leaf under glass” Also very classic for the era.
The Mighty Ohana pauses to reflect
Yep, there is that Freddy Grosskreutz tapering lap on your board
Jim…tell me more if you please about this tapering lap and it’s theory.
Thanks.
TMO
It just looked fast and was not that easy to duplicate by eye from side to side, kudos Freddy!
The seventies was a sort of peak in resin art on boards.Most of them had cut laps with opaque or tinted bottoms and resin pins.Channin and Plastic Fantastic kicked it off and we had to follow in order to compete.Those old tapered laps were done by eye.no measuring to speak of.Big wide laps at the nose tapering back in the tail.Lighting bolt did a cool little cut jag on the rail that looked like a bolt.One of my favorite color combos was a lime green cut lap bottom with yellow deck ,topped off with yellow and black pins.One of the cool secrets on this color combo was that you could actually free lap the deck lam because the pale yellow barely showed over the lime green,don’t know if you can get those tints anymore.
After Dick they broke the mold. I have a zillion Dick stories but they aren’t the kind that could be told in mixed company. When I was there, Dick had some substance abuse issues that eventually became his downfall. How can a guy have the crew he had, the Clark Foam eastern disributorship, two ripping surf shops, the number one production factory on the coast, the number one team on the coast and a fabulous distribution set up from Maine to Miami and BLOW IT! GREED!!!
Unfortunatly, Dick is not a well man today. Has had a real bad time of it the last 6 months or so but now seems to be coming out of the woods. As for the board, it was built in the late 70’s after I was there. The craftsmen who worked there were first rate. Jim forgot to mention Donny Mulhern who was also laminating there. That one sounds like a Freddie though.
Greg I can remember you delivering blanks to the factory Bill Hixon and I had in Jacksonville when you worked for Dick. .At that point you were probably the best surfer on the East Coast…I believe Dick had something to do with the Tomb&Reeves boards also.Were they built in Dicks factory-warehouse?Those boards were unreal.I hired a laminator from that factory by the name of Jeff Thompson who was a former Haut cronie from Sanata Cruz.I wonder what happened to him??
Funny you should say that about mixed company stories…someone previously mentioned was overheard saying the other day “Dick was a legend…someday after he’s gone all our stories will come out…people won’t beleive their ears” or something to that effect.
Larry Mayo is shaping under the Catri label now out of a factory in Orlando I believe.
Larry Mayo, is another of the gremmies that would hang at my factory and watch me build boards
Greg, I’m sure you remember two years ago when Dick was inducted into the East Coast Hall Of Fame and they got together to present Dick with the Hobie/Brewer gun he rode in the Duke Contest in Hawaii (I think it was in '66, but I could be wrong). Catri had somehow lost possession of the board, but all the former Hobie Team riders that DC had coached pooled their $$ together to buy it back and return it to it’s original owner, and I’m sure that it was’nt cheap. Obviously a great show of respect from a most distinguished group.
Sorry to hear of DC’s turn of health as of late, hope things improve for him.