WOW, after 40 years this is a tough one to narrow down
6’8" skip frye egg----with a 7 " greg liddle flex fin—rode it to death —mid 70’s
7’ safari tri fin — spyder murphy build it in one week after my board broke in durban----the best tri fin i ever owned----broke it in tortola–pieces are part of the Bomba shack
7’8" campbell bros —epoxy/styro glassed by clyde beady—7 years old and still looks and rides like it’s new
i think thats it so far—but youknow, that next magic board could be just around the corner…the quest goes on!
Forgot to mention my Solomonson Neumatic. More fun than a barrel of monkeys both in good and crap waves, easy to carry and travel with. In fact, for air travel…I may never take a hard board again; why hassel and pay extra and worry about damage?
After learning to surf on a single fin & then spending the next 25 plus years on thrusters, april last year I bought my first fish. I was reborn.
My happy little bottle-green resin tinted 5’9" Channel Islands Fish is my favourite board. It’s got a life & spirit all of it’s own, I can catch any wave I want, when my friends are sinking to their knees trying to keep potatoe chip thrusters moving - I giggle to myself as I pull into another sub 1 foot fun wave. On bigger days I annoy our local mal riders by sitting 10 meters further outside with them & catching “their” waves. It’s just all good.
It goes faster than any surfboard I’ve every owned before, I can slip & slide & carve & turn & do cartoon squiggles on any wave with enough energy to allow me such joy.
Simply, I hope she never dies. I know one day she will, but until then, shes my “Dori”
6’4" Sunset Surfbords Encinitas,1976 MR type twin fin copy. shaped by Rusty, before he was RUSTY. Crapy FU fin system, screwed from the top deck into a crappy little fin box. Cheap composite type fins, probably broke about 6 sets…But the board was magic.
Nice description. Makes me want to surf. Can you give more info on that 6’4" Liddle? Aside from the unique flex tail, what else was it like? Was it similar to a 6’4" “Pointbreaker” model? Any pics of it?
This was the one Al started shaping in the mid-90s (not the later/current one that is quite a bit more modern). He said to get it 2" shorter than my normal shortboard, but I’m glad I didn’t listen to him! At 6’2" Out paddled the longboarders, caught anything, and was so much fun. I left it in Japan when I moved to California because I couldn’t find a board case at that point that was wide enough! (no one was surfing wide twins back then). I should have brought it back so I could at least try to copy it myself… My friend still has it at his surfshop in Kugenuma.
25 years since I’ve seen it. It was very round, deep hull, extremely pinched rails. No flats anywhere except near the tail. Trash tail outline. Nothing like the boards Greg makes today. The tail looked a bit like Tony Masie’s board in TSJ article except way more flexy. You could bend the tip with one finger. I can’t remember if Greg, Steve or Dave shaped it.
I worked really well in mushy waves which is pretty weird for a hull.
Custom 9’4" Donald Takayama Step-Deck. Best board I’ve ever ridden. Snapped it in 1’ surf a few years back…Almost cried. On the bright side, that’s what made me try to start shaping boards!
a late 70’s/early 80’s 5’11" double wing rounded pin tri-fin shaped by dennis pang when he was at town and country surfboards.
fluted wings, lots of vee, thin and hard tail rails, tucked towards the front.
it was one of two boards custom shaped for a friend of mine in N.J. who sold it to me.
i was at my peak health and i could do anything with it. my first 360, my first stand up tube ride, my first ‘air’, and my first 3 contest wins.
sold it to a friend because i got sponsered by a different company and wasn’t supposed to ride it. i was going through an experimental board phase and getting almost free boards anyway, then left for college. never saw that board or friend again.
been wanting to try to reproduce it from memory, but my memory isn’t that good, and i don’t yet shape.
got in touch with dennis awhile back on the off chance he might remember it or my friend.
no go.
oh well, my favorite is probably going to be my next board anyway, whichever one it is.
my current fav. is a 7’3" 80’s style bump squash thruster by Craig Hollingsworth. Perfect HB beach break board. Shows the groms that the 40+ crowd can still rip. Plus, it has a Lightning Bolt on it so it works better!
Howzit Herb, Have been lucky to have had many magic boards. An 8’3" spoon, 6’2" sammy Hawk,But one of my all time favs is my 9’0" terry Chung.Aloha,Kokua
Hmm…so maybe if I can’t pick an all-time favourite, I’ll pick some boards which were turning points in my shaping…
1)Last board I ever owned by somebody else, before taking on the planer myself at 13:- “Force9”, 5’10 chopped squaretail, by Wayne Roach, a benchmark board which I tried to emulate.
2)After having made a few I busted one on a surftrip to Ulladulla, borrowed a 6’ by a dude named Jeff Sjordstrom, from Sussex Inlet, and then I knew where experience made the difference.
3)My first EPS/epoxy vac composite board. 6’6 x 19…First turn, so quick and sensitive.
I’ve had two…a 7’0" funboard I shaped in '92 that had two deep bonzer like concaves combined with a thruster fin set up that worked great in basically anything up to 6ft. The second was a 9’0" longboard that was just a basic low railed modern longboard, standard flat to vee bottom using a Clark 9 1Y blank. I used a Nuuhiwa type noserider fin with it and it was just a fun board to ride. I one of my best tubes with that board too. I ended up selling it to a kid on Kauai.
This board has already become my favorite… To top it all off it has great vibes from my daughters paint job… By far the best working SUP board or any board I’ve ever shaped for myself… I’m sooo stoked the way this thing carves and snaps! Epic sessions already had at various spots both in Town and North Shore. I LOVE THIS BOARD!!
a little 5’10" x 19 1/4" x 2 1/4" swallowtail thruster i made about ten years ago. don’t know what it was, but that was a magic board, one of only a few truly magic boards i’ve ever ridden. rode it for only 8 months or so, never had a bad surf. snapped it at my local rockshelf one winter morning, after a couple hours of a particularly joyous tube-laden session. paddled/swam the pieces in & went home & cried.
i never could bring myself to put it back together, somehow i knew it would never be the same again. but i could never throw it out either, it’s still down in my shed waiting to be copied one day.
