“The movement was not shapers. The movement was surfers.” … Shapers are the facilitators not the creative energy.
wow big call that
**but i will not comment cause i cant spell **
cheers huie
I was going to speak of this before. Someone said shorter boards were partly due to a materials crisis or the oil embargo of the early 70s. Nonsense.
A major factor was the way Nat Young sent everyone a wake up call by defeating the darling of the US surf media using a different approach than the supposed epitome of the day. The death knell of noseriding as the pinnacle of performance. Those who witnessed this sea change began to think about making the most of the entire wave, and attempting things that were previously thought impossible. When we finally got over the preoccupation with tip riding, we got back to actually surfing the wave, and not the board.
For instance…Look at old films of the early to mid 60s, and pay attention to what were considered “deep” tube rides. By today’s standard, those would be easy cover-ups. Shorter boards made it possible to fit tighter spots on the wave. They also made it possible to maneuver in tighter arcs without losing speed. As lengths decreased, factors like rail profile, bottom contours, fin shape and placement, etc became more critical as the decreased waterline made every inch count. Every curve had to relate to each other. The explosion in experimentation was driven by the idea of: “how short will still work”? We took it to the extreme, then went the other way.
Exactly right Sammy … Nat changed the game … shortboards came a year later. It happened in the water first. An excerpt from from that time … As I stated above, Magic Sam is arguably the first short board.
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“Then Nat Young, with his born-again pig board, made a quantum leap in style. Instead of nose-riding like the rest of us, Nat was making lines and patterns on the faces of the waves. And that board of his, which looked like a piece of junk to us, was really pretty sophisticated. Besides being small (nine-foot was small to us then), it had a continuous-curve outline and continuous-curve rocker. While we were riding long, straight, cigar boards, Nat’s board was much more suitable for doing cutbacks and what I call S-turn surfing.”
“Nat was cranking his board,” explained Jeff Hakman, “a nine feet four inch thing he called Sam, and doing roundhouse cutbacks like I’d never seen before. He’d just drive it out onto the shoulder, plant those big feet of his on the rail, and wind it back in. Drouyn used a lot of little turns to tuck into the best part of the wave all the time, very tight, very controlled. They were both riding the wave, not the board, and that made the difference.”
“… Nat gave us all a lesson in the future of surfing,” Mike Doyle testified. “While we would cut back or stomp on the tail to stall, Nat would cut back by compressing his body and pushing out with his legs, driving to get more power off his fin. He came out of a turn with more power than when he went into it, which allowed him to keep the board moving all the time, cutting a much bigger pattern in the water. He would accelerate way out into the flat of the wave, cut way back into the curl, then drive way out in front again. The waves at Ocean Beach were small and mushy, but Nat was still carving all over them.”
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And some more.
“It was the first time most of us had seen anything like Nat’s style,” Mike Doyle recalled, “and it set him so far apart from the rest of us and impressed the judges so much, it was impossible for him not to win the contest.
“And by the way,” Doyle wrote in 1993, “all modern surfboards today follow the pig-board concept – wide in the tail and narrow in the nose.”
“I think Nat’s performance at San Diego in ’66,” Jeff Hakman declared in the late 1990s, “really was a benchmark in world surfing. It was the last of the longboard contests, and seeing what Nat could do on a board that was basically a log, made us all realise what was possible if we had better equipment.”
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And the race was on
Greg, the Nuuhiwa thing just reached its anti-climactic end, and while Nat’s surfing was perceived as different, and radical 9’4’’ is not a short board, and never will be. Definitely, extreme surfing in its time, but really just another contest that because of its media attention played into the minds of an impressionable youth. Nat really is more of a missing link than anything else. His rocker line was more important than the length of his board. Nonetheless, a new generation at that point was empowered.
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Greg, the Nuuhiwa thing just reached its anti-climactic end, and while Nat's surfing was perceived as different, and radical 9'4'' is not a short board, and never will be. Definitely, extreme surfing in its time, but really just another contest that because of its media attention played into the minds of an impressionable youth. Nat really is more of a missing link than anything else. His rocker line was more important than the length of his board. Nonetheless, a new generation at that point was empowered.
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The contest in question:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBKGPnXL1y4&feature=feedrec_grec_index
Narration sounds like Greg MacG???
The audio is at least 30 seconds ahead of the images…strange.
Also, in the early clips of Jock Sutherland, he is riding Nuuhiwa’s board. Bing Noserider w/B/W slipcheck on nose. Later, he’s carrying a Harbour Cheater as he leaves the water. Plus, Bigler comes out of the water with a Harbour under his arm. At the time, I think he was riding for Con (?).
Lots of nice “melon shots”, in true 60s surf photog tradition.
That footage looks like it came from the MacGillivray/Freeman classic film "Free and Easy". While much fanfare has deservedably been given to Nat Young for his contribution to the evolution of modern surfing, earlier in the same film, David Nuuhiwa had a couple sequences filmed at Tracks in Hawaii and Huntington Beach, where he squared off the bottom into a radical for the time "roller coaster". If you take into consideration the type of equipment he was riding (almost 10 ft. logs) his ability to pull off such radical manuvers are nothing short of remarkable. That Tracks footage has to be my all time favoriite longboard sequence, highlighting all the beauty and flow, while still showing how advanced David was. If my memory serves me correctly, Steve Bigler was featured in at least one Harbour Surfboard ad riding the Cheater model.
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That footage looks like it came from the MacGillivray/Freeman classic film "Free and Easy". While much fanfare has deservedably been given to Nat Young for his contribution to the evolution of modern surfing, earlier in the same film, David Nuuhiwa had a couple sequences filmed at Tracks in Hawaii and Huntington Beach, where he squared off the bottom into a radical for the time "roller coaster". If you take into consideration the type of equipment he was riding (almost 10 ft. logs) his ability to pull off such radical manuvers are nothing short of remarkable. That Tracks footage has to be my all time favoriite longboard sequence, highlighting all the beauty and flow, while still showing how advanced David was. If my memory serves me correctly, Steve Bigler was featured in at least one Harbour Surfboard ad riding the Cheater model.
[/quote] The footage of Herbie Fletcher and Bill Hamilton at Honalua is all-time !
Howzit kayu, 2 surfing legends at a legendary break, If you have ever surfed Honolula then you know what I mean, great wave and the first place I surfed when I moved to Hawaii. I knew I had found heaven except for the cave . Aloha,Kokua
It isn’t. I have Free and Easy on VHS tape.
While it is most likely some Mac/Free footage, I do not know what film it is from.
wow bobs winning this hands down.
poor old dicks not getting a mention?
** cheers huie
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The footage of Herbie Fletcher and Bill Hamilton at Honalua is all-time ! Mac/Free Five summer stories!
Well now… I blew it on this one. I am watching Free and Easy, right now. The footage of the 66 World Contest @ OB San Diego is playing as I type this.
My memory failed me here, miserably. Blame it on age, or the recreational substances I ingested in the 60s (take your pick)
Don’t underestimate the power of a movie like “Free and Easy”, to imprint the notion that Nat’s performance at OB was a watershed moment. 9’4’’ is still not a short board. His surfing was AA, that is a combination of attitude, and aggression, something that future generations of Aussies would build on. One need look no further than the first major film, the “Birth of a Nation”, around 1915 and its impact it had upon American culture generations earlier. That film sparked a movement that grew into the KKK. Amazing the impact the media can have upon impressionable minds. Back then an overwhelming theme was to legitimize surfing as a competitive sport, and sell it to the masses, already prepared by Hollywood’s less than stellar elucidations.
My point was that Magic Sam wasn’t a modern shortboard but that it was the first step. 9’4" was short for a guy of Nat’s size at that time but the board size was never the only issue … it was a more modern design. Minds opened after that event. And to quote Jeff Hakman,** "Seeing what Nat could do on a board that was basically a log, made us all realise what was possible if we had better equipment.” **The race was on after that performance. That was the performance that changed surfing. Every bit as much as Simon at Bells in '81. More so even.
Right. Nat’s approach caused a whole lot of people to re-think what was possible. It planted a seed that led to the notion of eliminating unnecessary bulk and volume in boards. That seed grew into “how short will still work”?
Hi Mike, sorry for going awol, just found a computer in the jungle, couldn't possibly read all the posts from when I left, I did get an email from Neal Purchase Jnr about his Dad and will wait till I come home to discuss it with Neal senior about one late night at Keyos, thanks to everyone for such knowledge and passion, it seems Huie is on his own from the Aussie side and I wonder why Midget can't throw something into the ring, see you in abt 10 days, cheers HH.