Anyone ever heard of this board ? It was the first NEW board I ever bought . back in 1971 ? … Was a fun gun type of shape as I remember and I do remember that it had Really Down rails all the way around . Does anyone have any info. on this board . Who made them and where ? Wonder what is close to them now? Thanks Don J.
Right, I remember those. And that downrail-hard edges era. Roughly mid 7’ range, fast and kinda gunny was the way they went, and still a very functional board today. There were similar, ‘sideslip/finger fin’ boards around then too, but the gunny ones were the nutz-
Though - are you sure it was an O’Neill? I seem to recall that Hobie or somebody had a ‘star’ model line about then. About the last gasp of Hobie as an independant board company, if senility hasn’t set in too completely and I am remembering it right.
The boards of that general type were pretty neat, though. With the right rails/rocker combination they were as good a board as you could get, though the really hard rails in the midsection tended to catch an edge if you were not careful. They rewarded a surfer with a smooth, fast style and penalised the tricksters who tended to eat it a lot when doing contest moves. Not great on dinky, sloppy, powerless waves, but on shoulder-high and better, clean, fast, hollow waves they worked like a bandit.
Manny at Mandala is making some similar ( http://mandalacustomshapes.com/singlefins.html# ) and I am sure any decent shaper can make you one. Also, see some of the recent retro/singlefin posts - while I haven’t been too into that, I’m sure you can pick up some good info.
hope that’s of use
doc…