I started working as a sander at Peter Clarkes at Brookvale in 1969, boards were at the 7' 4 to 7'10" range with slight roll bottoms going into a " V" in the tail around most of the factories at Brookvale, but there was a new wave of designs and shapes that were coming at an accelerated pace by alot of good surfers who were shapers. The most influential at the time , and there were many( so I may leave out some names here),were Ted Spencer, Glynn Ritchie and Richard Harvey. These guys were pulling down the length of boards every week but, the bottoms were still the same until Ted made a total downrailer ( nearly razor hard edges all the way through) and this started everyone flattening out there bottoms with the lengths ending up at 5'6" or so. Fins were still single fin and well foiled fins were also a big change to what was the factory produced board was. Now here I'm talking about boards that the guys at the factories were riding , as what had to be produced for the masses was a BIT different. The above photo is of Glynn Ritchie, not long after this was taken, he shaped his first full concave board, and he blew us all away, apart from being nice, well shaped boards ....they flew, super fast out of turns and unbelievable speed down the line. They allowed you to surf so much deeper than ever before and they looked a very different board to what was around. Most boards then had these horrible "S" decks with hardly and bottom curve ie. no tail lift , Glynn's were pieces of Art that worked. Glynn with Mitchel Raye developed the concave into a fine piece of equipment, by experimenting with the deepest part of the concave either forward or aft , and changing the depth. Also at this time Twin fins hit the Market with a big help from Geoff McCoy's team of riders, the bottom shape and shape of the boards wasn't appealing and the were slow, but Glynn had to try twin fins on one of his boards , the fins were moved many times with not any good result, and very quickly went back to his lovely fully foiled single. As soon as I rode a concave board I was hooked as I still am today , 46 years later, but back then many people were scoffing at us for what we were riding, too many drugs they would say, or what weird kind of trip are you guys on..... well the proof was in the pudding , they really worked and now almost every board that is made has a concave bottom, and mainly because of some hardcore surfer shapers who got off their Hull convex bottoms and fell in love with CONCAVE.... combined with a bit of flex ! that's what we've got today and its a dam shame there is hardly any footage of these boards being surfed in their day.
