Christophe, Jeffrey and myself founded this last year. The idea being to draw the attention of the public upon vintage surfboards and hopefully have people realize that some gems are sleeping on rafters in their garage or attic. Last year, we had the very first meeting and it was a real success with about 90 old boards showing up. That was in Cap Ferret, near Bordeaux.
This year, we decided to have our first meeting near Biarritz and Guéthary was easily adopted as the ideal venue with its legendary terrace overlooking the spot. That turned out to be a pretty good idea as we had a hell of a good time. Here are a few photos of the event:
The scene:
Some of Christophe’s boards:
More beauties, including a Red Fin and a very nice “Invincible” by Windansea Surfboards (third from left):
A couple of Skip Frye boards from Daniel’s Longboards’ collection:
An old paipo from Jack’s Surfboards, and some wooden belly-boards. We called those “plankies” back in the days:
Would you believe it? I caught some of my very first waves in Guéthary with this very board, 44 years ago. It belonged to a guy who rented boards on the beach and it miraculously showed up for the event after I talked to a boy for a while and realized he was the guy’s son. I asked about his father’s boards and he told me this one was still in their garage. Two hours later, he was back with it and I boarded the time machine, backwards, full speed… That’s Jeffrey, sitting besides it, trying to relax a bit in the shade. For you down unders, the board is a “George Rice”, made in Melbourne.
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This very unique Gary Linden agave pig shape was brought to the show by my friend Pierre Bernard Gascogne. Of course, the board looks even much better in real than in photo…
A Con “Ugly”, fully restored:
Another restoration, a Lance Carson:
A smaller Bing:
To show you all boards would be too long… But here is a last one. Sure, it does not look very good but the story behind it makes it valuable for at least two people: the guy on the photo and myself.
This board was shaped in 1969 by Mike Diffenderfer for François Lartigau who was the current french champion at the time. The story goes as follows: François was sitting on the stairs at the “Côte des Basques” beach in Biarritz, looking on his Wayne Lynch shaped board when a guy he had never seen before turned up and asked who had shaped his board. François rather proudly answered that it was a custom-shaped Wayne Lynch. The guy then just dropped something like: “Man, it’s a piece of junk. I’ll make you a REAL board.” The guy turned out to be Mike Diffenderfer and François took him to the Barland factory where they bought a blank and some cloth and resin. Mike shaped the board with a carpenter’s block plane and some sanding paper, in a friend’s garden, after having built shaping racks with everything he could find nearby. They then glassed the board, still in the same garden, and while they were getting ready to do it, Mike noticed a peacock feather lying on the ground and he decided to have it laminated under the glass. François rode the board for a long time and it was magic; he won the next french championships on it. Eventually he sold it to some guy and my friend Daniel bought it from the guy some time later. I even rode that very board in the only french championships I ever entered and took fifth place out of six contestants… A few years later, the board had been heavily battered and Daniel tried to repair the whole deck with whatever materials were available where he lived (near Angers). The result was not great -to say the least- and the board ended in my attic where it has been sleeping peacefully ever since.
To make a (very) long story short, François Lartigau dropped by yesterday and started looking at the boards on show. I told him that I had this one board at home and would he like to see it again? He wouldn’t believe me. So i said: “Hold on, I’ll be back soon” and went back home, picked up the board and brought it back. He recognized it at once, even though it had seen much better days and he was almost crying. He and Diff were pretty good friends untill he died and this board just means a lot to him. I then took this photo of him and the Diff board, re-united after all these years:
