LOGGING at the Pass 1970s
In the early 70s up til 81,82 I was living around Byron bay,and short boards ruled , a lot of surfers of my vintage , just didn't tick with them, and most stopped surfing and pursued the Aussie art of drinking Grog so at this time there were hardly anyone riding longboards so, on many a good, up to shoulder high day the maximum crowd of longboarders would be 4 or 5 . There were only 2 modern logs one a Warren Cornish and the other a Bare Nature shaped by Nigel Perrow the rest were 60s logs and all the guys surfing them grew up on logs so the array of different styles and moves was a sight . Roy Meisel an american who founded Bare Nature was a Vietnam veteran and never surfed or saw a shortboard and only surfed logs with a very distinctive Californian style and then came Rusty Miller who brought out the softboard and Morey Pope Boogieboard and we all thought another American gimmick Ha!...... The learning curve here was as the waves got hollower or faster the old logs didn't compare, with the exception of a few. The newer shapes turned better, were faster and very reactive, but didn't nose ride as good and this is where the revolution of logs and what you want to do on them came of age, but it didn't matter back then just as long as you had length to catch those little beauties at the Pass with 5 other guys out IMAGINE it now those were the days......
A TRUE TALE OF THE LOVE OF SURFIN no shit!
Glynn Ritchie and Mitchel Raye moved to Nana Glenn in the early 70s and there they made some wonderfully crafted boards , amagine three stringers with noseblock and green tints at 7 foot and under. It was at this time when Bali was the true testing ground for boards,not the slop with the occaisional good wave here and ther that we got here, it was noticable the changes that were happening to both concaves and rails each time they came back. For reasons I do not fully know Glynn and Mitchel parted, with Mitchel continuing making boards and Glynn heading to Papua New Guinea, and around here was Mitchels FLEX tail which to this day is his first love with surfcraft. Down the road at Nambucca heads Paul Joske was a constant viwer of what was going on at Nana Glenn , and it influenced him immensly apart fom a few other shapers, Paul was hooked ,concave was speed ,which got you into tubes and got you out of them, so by the mid 70s,as far as the single fin was concerned ,boards were at there peak and so were the surfers for this was the era of one of Australias ,if not the world, greatest ever surfer The late Michael Peterson, who blasted everyone away including Nat Young, THEN came legropes, and twinnies took hold again and Thrusters became King and here is where , with the rise of proffesional surfing, the soul of true surfing started to die.
By the end of the 60s boards had gone through an explosive time in design ,the mainstay was " V " bottoms that was the leftover from Greenough and Mctavish, but there was a group of guys ,mainly Glenn Ritchie , David Chidgy Ted Spencer, Richard Harvey and the then Young Mitchel Raye who were delving into concave bottoms with wondorous results. The combination of concave bottom,bottom curve and tail lift and deck curve created a very fast and exciting board, but no one else really played around with them except a few other converts including me as I was working with this crew at Peter Clarke surfboards at this time. After moving to the Central coast and making boards with Nigel Websdale we delved into our version of concave , with some success but then Nigel wanted to make really deep concaves and after I left and Moved to Byron Bay he influenced Ian Lindsay who was a talented surfer from Nth Avoca ,and a talented shaper the last board he made before his motorbike accident is what you see here he lost the use of his legs but his skills and talents are the same. Glenn and Mitchel continued constantly making super sleek and functional boards and today they are the reason why most boards that you ride today are concave of some sort, and including your rails and edges and fully foiled fins, it didn't just happen it was a long hard working trial and error process completely made by hand no computer to copy someones work no machine to pop them out .
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