I have seen these adds for retro thrusters. Where is the widepoint on them usually? And I am assuming they utilize boxier rails right?
If your talking about the rusty 1980’s board, the wide point is probably 1 or 2 inches behind centre. Most other retro shorties would be most likely be wide point centre. When your getting into more wide nose egg shorties the wide point would be moved forward of centre.
I’ve got one. Mines’s a Webber 5’11 x 18 3/4 x 2 3/8. Flat rocker, flat deck, lot of volume. It differs from the original 80’s ones in that it has double concaves feeding into concaved vee and it’s a lttle longer and less pointy in the nose. Great board, only shortcoming is in hollow surf, it’s hard to bottom turn on my forehand, I guess the water rushing up the face makes it harder to sink the fat rails, not a problem on my backhand where I’ve got more leverage. Suits smaller waves, down the line point surf or anything going backhand. I think the contemporary ones are tweaked to surf in the pocket a little better than the originals, but still take advantage of the low rocker and volume.
While sifting thru the boards at a local shop I came upon a gem of a board. It was a re-issue of the original thruster by Simon Anderson. Much thicker than modern versions, a really soft low rail with a very subtle tucked under edge, bump wing, needle nose. I thought it was so cool, although it didnt have the “Energy” label, it did have that circle logo with the 3 in it and the taped off rail spray fade. I guess thats as close to the original design that literally changed surfboards. Hand shaped and signed by Simon himself. Behind that board were a couple of MR twins shaped by Mark Richards, but they didnt look anything like the original twins he did in '78, more like a modern fish with twin fins. Cool to see those two boards though.
FD, I have seen both of those boards you’re talking about. The Anderson one along with the CI Black Beauty are the inspiration behind the shaping of this retro board. I like both of them, and had i any money would buy them, but for now i just gotta settle on trying to copy them. The MR’s I saw in the shop were alot like ones I have seen in pictures of that era. Only problem was that they had FCS plugs, and I dont know if FCS makes any fins that would make the board work like it is supposed to.
FCS has a “mark richards” twin fin set
Then I guess im wrong.