surfresearch.com.au     history : transition boards, 1967-1968

Although using substantial (but highly edited) archival sources, the design developments in Australia are accredited uniquely to Bob McTavish.
While undoubtedly McTavish played an integral role in the early development of smaller boards, he was not an independent designer but rather a leading figure in the Sydney board design "hot-house" of 1967.
Among the other participants, the role of Midget Farrelly was substantial.

On the other hand, by merely relying on Brewer's recollections, the film effectively creates a "straw man" whose claims without any archival documentation are, at best, dubious.
It also fails to analyse the contribution of any other American and/or Hawaiian shapers.
Incredibly, according to  Bob McTavish's introductory comments at the Sydney premier of the film, interview footage with noted Hawaiian surfer and shaper, George Downing, never made the final cut.

Furthermore, while McTavish is a noted big wave rider, the initial short board designs were specifically manufactured for the small beach break waves of Sydney, yet during the late 1960s Brewer's reputation was firmly entrenched as the builder of big wave guns, primarily for the massive north swells of the Hawaiian winter.
The distinction between small and big wave surfboard design is not canvassed in Going Vertical.

See :
http://www.goingvertical.info/default.asp
(if link fails, please insert Going Vertical into a generic search engine)

Also see:
Damien Murphy: Wave of nostalgia swells feud
Sydney Sun Herald, May 9, 2010, page 18.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/wave-of-nostalgia-swells-feud-20100508-ukwp.html

For films, the lag was significantly longer and in some instances, by the time the film was released the board designs were largely obsolete.

Secondary sources are retrospective magazine articles, books or films; that is works that were published significantly after the period under discussion.
Generally, the value of secondary sources diminishes as the gap between publication and the actual events increases.

The most informative contemporary article that details the critical last six months of 1967 is an interview with Midget Farrelly, possibly conducted by magazine editor John Witzig, published in Surf International in early 1968, but clearly recorded before he left for the winter season in Hawaii.
Extensively quoted in this paper, it is strongly suggested that the article should be read in its entirety, see:
Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, pages 35 to 37.

Revolution: 2. A complete or marked change in something. - Macquarie Dictionary (1991).
Surfboard: in this context these comments refer to boards ridden in a standing position.

Undoubtedly many designs have been “invented” outside of the mainstream manufacturing process, however they are only adopted by the surfboard riding community at large and become a design standard when they are either (and often a combination of):
1. available as a commercial item.
2. given media exposure.
3. demonstrated in contest performance.

For eons surfboards were constructed from solid timber billets.
Since the turn of the 20th Century, surfboard design has generally advanced in an evolutionary process with small incremental changes.
However, at several critical points design has undergone a marked change, at the time effectively rending previous designs virtually obsolete.
These changes occurred in a relative short time, usually about three years, and formed the standard design parameters for the subsequent ten years, in some cases longer.
The accreditation to the following designers is simply a guide, and not exclusive.

The Hollow Board Revolution 1926-1929.
Tom Blake.
Improved floatation and a reduction in board weight by 50%.
Generally, lengths increased.
 In particular this vastly improved the surfboard’s potential as a rescue device.

The Fibreglass-Balsa Revolution 1947-1949.
Bob Simmons, Joe Quigg, Matt Kevlin.
Vast improvement in structural integrity and a return to the subtlety in design of the solid timber board, particularly in rail shape.
The addition of a large area fin greatly improved directional stability and turning performance.

The Foam Revolution 1956-1958.
Dave Sweet, Gubby Clarke, Hobie Alter.
Further reduction in weight (20%?) from the balsa/fibreglass board and a vast expansion of design possibilities.
Circa 1966, surfboard designers successfully adopted George Greenough’s high aspect fin design.

The “Short Board” Revolution, 1967-1970.
Bob McTavish, Midget Farrelly, Kevin Platt, Dick Brewer, others.
While the reduction in length is the focus of most commentators, from 1967 the standard board radically reduced in volume (L x W x D).
In 1967 most boards were 9 ft 4’’ x 23’’ x 3’’, by 1970 this had shrunk to 6ft 4’’ x 18’’ x 3’’, with an effective reduction in volume of approximately 40%.
Although substantially reducing paddling ability, the use of a smaller board significantly advanced wave riding performance.

The “Thruster” Revolution, 1981.
Simon Anderson.
From 1970 surfboard design experienced a wide variety of experimentation.
Most critical was the universal adoption of the down rail, often attributed to Mike Hynson.
Other variations were in template shape, rocker, and fin design and configuration.
The impact of the introduction of the leg-rope (US: surf leash) circa 1974, should not be overlooked.
It not only improved safety, wave count and encouraged surfers to ride more extreme locations, it also reduced  structural demands resulting in even lighter boards.
In 1981 Simon Anderson introduced his three-fin Thruster design, effectively supplanting previous fin configurations.

Included in an extensive range of Tom Blake surfboard models and other aquatic craft and accessories (aquaplanes, water skis, paddles and swim fins) detailed in a Los Angles Ladder Company brochure published in 1940 was the Breaker Board:

"A small surf board which enables the user to ride breakers.
Ideal for children and for use in swimming pools as a flutter board.
...
Size 5 ft. long, 18 in. wide."

- Lynch, Gary and Gault-Willians, Malcom : Tom Blake - The Uncommon Journey of a Pioneer Waterman (2001)  page 111.

Although designated as an aquaplane (note that these were often built by surfboard manufacturers), an early application of a vee bottom is evident in a 1934 brochure by the Thompson Bros. Boat Manufacturing Company, which offered two models- the Hawaiian Surf Board and the:

" 'Hawaiian Floater' ...  a hollow, built-up board.
It had a slight V shaped bottom, 6 feet long and 28 inches wide.
...
List price in the '34 brochure, $8.00 for the Surf Board and $12.00 for the Floater!"

- http://www.chris-craft.org/discussion : early aquaplane info needed
thompsonboatboy  Posted: Monday February 11, 2008 3:21 pm

Perhaps the most famous of the early experiments was the Darrilyn board, slightly smaller than normal board built by Joe Quigg  for Tom Zahn's then current girlfriend, Darrilyn Zanuck, in 1947.
The board was subsequently ridden by many elite surfers and was considered integral in the development of the Malibu Chip.

- Marcus: Surfboard (2007) pages 86-87.

In 1954, Dale Velzy produced his first Pig board, moving the wide point bellow the mid-point which substantially increased the tail area and improved turning performance.

- Holmes: Dale Velzy (2006) pages 101 and 102.
- Marcus: The Surfboard (2007) pages 103 and 104.
- Motil: Surfboards (2007) pages 114 and 115.

The Pig template was adopted in 1958-1959 by Australian manufacturers when they built their first fibre glassed boards (see Catalogue: #60 and #99) and was much in evidence in the shorter designs developed in Sydney in 1967.

In the early 1960s Velzy manufactured a short board, designated the Seven Eleven (7 ft 11''), which was later replicated (circa 1965) by Dewey Weber, see Joey Hamaski's comments below.

- Joe Tabler's Surf Blurb, 2 Aug 2010.
http://www.surfbooks.com/
Posts by Herb Torrens, Michael Richard and Don Fleming.

McDonagh Surfboards, one of Sydney's earliest fibreglass board builders, experimented with Coolite foam blanks in 1958 and produced a range of boards in varying lengths:
"pig board 9 ft., hot dog board 8 ft. 6 in., teardrops 8 ft., 7 ft. and 6 ft."

- Renwick, Ross: How to build a foam plastic surfboard.
Australian Outdoors, November, 1958, page 58.

In 1961 Bob McTavish purchased "the Goose", a 6 ft Gordon Woods surfboard from Ken Wiles surfshop in Brisbane.
The board was probably intended for a juvenile or, less likely, a surfer of small stature.

- McTavish: Stoked! (2009) pages 70 to 72.

Moving to Sydney in 1962, McTavish built several boards similar to the Goose for Chocko Ferrier, Dave Chidgley (both riders of small stature similar to McTavish) and female surfer Christine Binning.
These " 6 ' 6" wide tail board(s)", were designated as Foley boards, a reference to a similar design featured in the second edition California's Surfer magazine (further details unknown).

- McTavish: Pods for Primates Best of Tracks Magazine  April? 1973, page ?
- McTavish: Stoked! (2009) page 125.
Dave Chidgley is shown riding at short Foley board at Currumbin Beach, Queensland, in Dennis Elton's Follow the Surf (1963).

Dick Brewer noted in 1989:

"When (Pat) Curren visited me at Surfboards Hawaii in Haleiwa during 1963, he had a 9'4" full gun, an 8'4" semi-gun 3" thick, and a 4'6" twin-fin kneeboard.
All these boards were ahead of their time."

- Brewer, Dick: Lust in the Dust - An Era of Big-Wave Equipment Evolution.
Surfer, Volume 30 Number 10  1989, page 105.

Despite Young's emphatic win at the World Contest in San Diego in 1966 and with half the finalists from Australia (ex-Avalon surfer Rodney Sumpter 5th and Midget Farrelly 6th), most Californian manufacturers continued to promote their noserider models.
Most boards were between 9ft 6'' and 10 ft and around 23'' wide.
They featured a round nose, often with a deep concave section, parallel rails with a wide square tail.
A wide variety of fin designs were available, some fitted either a specific manufacturers' fin box or to the universally available Waveset (previously Morey's Skeg Works 1965) range .
See Tom Morey's Noseriding Contest 1965.

Big wave board designs dominated the focus of Hawaiian builders, with lengths between 10 and 12 feet and widths generally less than 22''.
With a pointed nose, a foil template with the wide point well forward of centre and a narrow square tail, the boards had distinct nose lift with a relatively straight planning section in the tail where the rails were low and hard.
Given the stresses encountered in large surf, the most boards had a wide timber stringer, multiple timber stringers or a combination of both.
Noted designers included George Downing, Pat Curran and Dick Brewer.

"Bob McTavish shaped Drouyn's board for the titles that year and he shaped it lightweight.
Drouyn kept saying he wanted it shorter and lighter.
This was a new concept at the time and led by Drouyn in 1966."

Interviewed for the book, Bob McTavish commented:

 "I must admit, I could have overlooked a few things with Drouyn in my recall of history, but I do know for sure that in 1966, that is pre-revolution, Drouyn was pushing for change.
I shaped him the board he won the Aussie juniors on in 1966 and he wanted it light light light, which we did, we only did a single glass job.
He wanted to be able to bottom turn like you wouldn't believe and I made the mistake of making the tail too wide, still thinking Malibu style then you know."

Compare and contrast that McTavish's comment that "I made the mistake of making the tail too wide" with his Easter 1967 experiments, noted below.
Drouyn stated:

"We were in the shaping bay for half a day working on that board and in the end it came out perfectly.
I knew what I wanted and thanks to Bob he let it happen."

McTavish added:

 "... I'd say Drouyn was the first high profile surfer to push hard for Lightweight.
I'd go further than that, and say he was frustrated with the whole concept of surfboards at the time ... he was truly ready for the shortboard revolution of the next year before anyone..."

- Crockett, Andrew: Switchfoot (2005) pages 192-193.

"We started off in the power school of surfing with rounds, which was developed by McTavish, and then I found out later on that V bottoms could be more sensitive so we worked on them, and the board I took back for the sixty-six, sixty-seven Makaha Surfing Championship had a V in it, and that was over a year and a half ago."

and subsequently:

"(McTavish) was directly responsible for the continuation of my idea, the V-bottom surfboard."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 91 and page 101.

Bob McTavish reported, retrospectively in 1973, that Young's vee bottom board (or perhaps a subsequent version) was constructed in early 1967:

"Nat in Easter of '67 made a 9' 7" board with 6' of V in the bottom which was based on a Greenough design.
This thing turned like crazy and carved incredible arcs."

 - McTavish, Bob: Pods for Primates Part 2.
Tracks April 1972, reprinted in The Best of Tracks 1973.

The vee in the bottom of Nat's board is not noted in the available contemporary contest reports (by Ross Kelly and Barry Sullivan, below), is not discernible in photographs or film of the contest and its significance not canvassed in Going Vertical.
Regrettably, the board is not mentioned in Nat's autobiography:

"When Sam disappeared, the honest truth is I felt unsure on other surfboards.
I really believed he was magic and I just couldn't surf anything else.
I tried lots of different boards but it just wasn't the same - I built boards with exactly the same outline and vital statistics but they just didn't work like Sam had.
I sort of gave up and severed my relationship with Gordon Woods ..."

- Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) page 160.

On Nat's incorporation of the vee bottom as a design feature, in his intensive and enthusiastic account of his early surfing and shaping career published in 2009, Bob McTavish noted:

"George had suggested it as a way of allowing the wide tails to bank into a turn more easily.
In fact, on George's behest, Nat had just added some vee to the basic "Involvement" style board he was surfing at Bells that Easter.
It looked good, though on his standard width tail it was a little lost, a little unnecessary."

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 359.

This statement appears to have a internal contradiction - George Greenough suggests that vee may allow "the wide tails to bank into a turn more easily", yet Young shapes his initial design on a standard tail template.
Possibly Greenough initially recommended reformatting the standard round bottom with two flat planning panels (the vee bottom), a feature that was later adapted onto wider tailed boards.

With the expected big wave conditions common around this time of the year at Bells Beach, the 1967 National Championships  were eagerly anticipated.
The coming together of the country's best riders resulted in an intense focus on the performance of the participants and their equipment.
Midget Farrelly recalled:

"... I felt quite inspired after watching some of the surfers at the Australian Championships at
Bells a little more closely than I ever had done before.
I think I summed up Bells as being the kind of contest where people actually wanted to get out
and get more out of a wave than have ever been gotten out before.
They wanted to ride Bells in a way that had never been done before."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 35.

In a contest report, Ross Kelly detailed some of the recent advances in board design:

"Many new ideas showed up at Bells.
Bernard Farrelly's super light big board with a huge nose lift, which allowed him to stand further off
the tail and so level and trim the board against the water line.

Nat fattened his fins and especially the leading edge to reduce drag, similar to the foil on a dolphin's
fin.

The trend was for very light thin railed boards, many with nose and back sections sprayed for extra
feet grip.
(Spectator McTavish killed them all by only spraying the middle).

Russell Hughes from Noosa used a radical 9' 10" gun with a pure planing section aft flowing into a
10" pod and 18" fin.
The board proved fast and interesting."

- Kelly, Ross: Bells - as tolled by Ross Kelly.
Surfing World, Volume 9 Number 1 April-May 1967, page 20 (order adjusted).

The "10 inch pod" on Hughes' board was an indication of future developments, the "pure planing section aft" probably a flat tail section as opposed the the common rolled bottom.

McTavish writes that he shaped Russell Hughes' board, and a similar one for himself, apparently for the expected large waves of Bells Beach.

"One experimental board was a wide-tailed gun, based on George Greenough's kneeboard, but blown up from his 4'10 to 9'6!
What a beast!
I shaped one for Russell Hughes as well, and we'd surfed them at big Palm Beach, peaks once or twice, and Narrabeen on a big day as well.
They were absolute rockets!
Fastest, meanest machine ever, like dragsters.. fast in a straight line.
But there was simply too much of them ... way too big.
But it proved a point: if you're going to go that route - wide-tailed and flat - you have to shrink the board considerably."

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 359.

Equally significant was the board of fellow Queensland surfer, Peter Drouyn, Junior Champion in 1966 and who was making his initial entry into the senior ranks
An early proponent of lighter and shorter boards (see above) Drouyn was:

"Riding a very short and light board, Peter gained tremendous acceleration from his turns to power from the soup under some 'impossible' heavy Bell's curls."

- Sutherland, Barry: Australian Champs '67.
Surfabout Volume 4 Number 1, June 1967, page 23.

As well as Drouyn's "very short and light board", McTavish also claims that he built two, presumably, similar size boards before the 1967 Australian Championships.
McTavish appears to imply these were in response to the deficiencies already apparent in the boards he and Hughes rode during the Bells' contest.

"Hence, I made two freaky 8 footers, with long double concaves running right through the otherwise flat bottom, and a rakey single fin with George Greenough's flex design built in.
Robert Conneely, a fine Bondi surfer and surf shop owner, and former Australian Junior Champion in 1964, bought one, and Paul Witzig bought the other.
I didn't have any money to buy one myself.
These two boards were actually the first shortboards of the Revolution, as they came before the Plastic Machine of a month or two later.
They were thin and therefore hard to paddle, but we all surfed them fairly well at Winkipop, the neighbouring reef break to Bells.
The difficulty with them was the extreme power generated in the tail, which made it very difficult to bank into a turn.
But the sheer speed was phenomenal!"

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 359.

Before returning to Sydney, in conversation with Victorian surfers "Claw" Warbick and Brian Singer (the proprietors of the Bells Beach Surf Shop at Torquay, later Rip Curl Surfboards and Rip Curl Wetsuits), McTavish indicated that his next designs would incorporate vee in the bottom, presumably based on Nat Young's board noted above.

"I told them what I'd learned so far, and that I was going back to Sydney to add some vee to the bottom of the next bunch of experimental boards."

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 359.

Considering the intense interest in board design and surfing performance generated at the Bells contest (note Midget Farrelly's comments above), it is highly unlikely that Bob McTavish was the only surfer-shaper who was aware of the possibilities of combining the various design elements in evidence during Easter 1967.

The contest results were based on points accumulated over several rounds and was ultimately won by Nat Young with Peter Drouyn second and  Midget Farrelly in third place.
Other senior finalists included Ted Spencer, Keith Paull  and Bobby Brown.
The Junior champion was Wayne Lynch and fellow Victorian, Gail Couper, won the Women's.
Second in the juniors was Butch Cooney, followed by Kevin Parkinson and Richard Kavanaugh.

"In 1967 Gary Chapman rode Sunset Beach on a 9'7" Brewer, then an 8'6".
Barry Kanaiaupuni rode Chapman's boards, and said, 'This is what's happening-R.B. ... small guns.'
This was six months before Nat Young and Bob McTavish would show up with their 9' deep vee- tankers."

- Brewer, Dick: Lust in the Dust - An Era of Big-Wave Equipment Evolution.
Surfer, Volume 30 Number 10  1989, page 105.

Since Young and McTavish arrived in Maui in late December 1967, this would imply that Chapman and Kanaiapuni rode these boards at Sunset Beach in June, at the height of the Hawaiian summer.

Several years later, Brewer wrote that the first Hawaiian shortboard was built (rebuilt?) in the Northern Spring (April?) of 1967:

 " I'd made a 9-foot 10-inch gun for David Nuuhiwa in the spring of '67, and David broke the nose off, so I redrew it at 7 feet 8 inches with a 17- inch nose on it - a tanker nose - and Randy Rarick was a patcher and he reglassed it.
I took that board out and rode it at Chun's, at the left called Piddlies - phenomenal roller coasters with that heavy nose and the gun tail.
That board became the proto-type for the Bing Lotus.
So, the mini-gun was happening in the spring of '67.' "

Brewer's recollections were confirmed in the article by Randy Rarick.

- Marcus: Surfboard (2007) page 159, quoting  Drew Kampion in The Surfer's Journal, May 1992.

From context, the article strongly implies that in mid 1967 Brewer was firmly committed to this significant reduction in length and:

"For some reason, all of this innovation led to Brewer being relieved of his command at Bing.
Gary Chapman had purchased a reject blank and carried it over to Bing's factory where Brewer shaped it into an 8-foot 6-inch mini-gun.
"Bing fired me the next day," Brewer told Kampion."

- Marcus: Surfboard (2007) page 160, quoting  Drew Kampion in The Surfer's Journal, May 1992.

It would appear that Dick Brewer's dismissal  by Bing Copeland was in fact at least twelve months later.
Initially employed in May 1967, Bing Surfboards were still promoting Brewer's Pipeliner model in July 1968.

- Bing Surfboards Advertisement, Surfer, July 1968.
Reproduced in Holmes: Bing Surfboards (2008) page 97.

"He left Balgowlah High at 16 and took on the role of shit-kicker at Keyo Surfboards.
These were the innovative days of the McTavish Plastic Machine, and Baddie saw it all unfold.
The way he tells it, an unsung Keyo worker played a heavy role in its development.
'Like me, Neil Purchase was a shit kicker, 8 till 4, no time off to surf.
He made the first vee-bottom short board, a stringerless 7'4".
It had a black bottom and a clear deck.
Neil made it from scratch.
He called it "The Virgin".
The big names used to work around the surf, and Ted (Spencer) took it for a surf at Long Reef, then (Bob) McTavish and (Kevin) Platt rode it.' "

- Hynd, Derek: Surfers in History - David Treloar
Tracks, December 1988, page 28.

Treloar's recollections were not completely accurate - the board held by David Bell is in fact 8 ft 4'' long, a much more reasonable size for the period.
See #346

Extended accreditation:
Illustrating the complex and ad hoc nature of research, in June 2010 I was contacted by Andrew Kidman in regard to a board design by Rod Ball and during our phone conversation I mentioned my current project was revising the history of  transition boards during 1967.
Andrew noted that he had some material that I may find interesting and posted a booklet compiled by David Bell that contained his photographs and dimensions of the Virgin and copies of several relevant magazine and book articles, including the Tracks' article quoted above.
Therefore, thanks to David Bell, Mick Mock, Andrew Kidman, Derek Hynd and David Treloar.

Midget Farrelly noted:

"There is one thing, though, between Manly and Palm Beach you've got twenty miles, and I would say
at times there seem to be about two thousand surfers.
In amongst that two thousand and twenty miles you've got the best surfers in the whole country.
So something has got to happen.
Things have got to pop."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 37.

At the forefront of this group was Bob McTavish, Kevin Platt, Ted Spencer, David "Baddy" Treloar and Neil Purchase (see above) at Keyo Surfboards in Brookvale and Midget Farrelly with Warren Cornish building boards at Palm Beach.
Other Brookvale manufacturers/shapers included Gordon Woods Surfboards with Bob Kennerson (?),  John Otton at Wallace Surfboards, Geoff McCoy at Bennett Surfboards and Shane Surfboards with Russell Hughes, Richard Harvey and Dee Why's Peter Cornish.
South of the harbour Keith Paull was at Peter Clarke Surfboards, Bobby Brown was at Gordon & Smith Surfboards and Gordon Merchant was shaping at Jackson Surfboards.
At Bondi, Robert Conneelly had opened his surf shop, retailing his own designs under the Hayden Surfboards label.

Forty years later, McTavish clearly recalled the shaping his first vee bottom board at Keyo Surfboards, circa May 1967:

"A month later back in Sydney, I shaped the first Plastic Machine.
I went a full 9 feet, to try to integrate the nose riding we had developed so well, with the new vee tail idea.
The nose had a six-foot long concave, while the tail had two six-foot vee panels wrapping up alongside the nose concave in the middle three feet."

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 360.

A widely published photograph by John Witzig of McTavish carrying what is possibly this board is reprinted in Stoked! on page 363, in black and white, while a colour version appears on the rear dust jacket.

Furthermore, he relates the often told story of the naming of this new design:

"I loaded the shaped blank into my unregistered Morris 1000 van (which I'd bought off Keyo's sander Brian Hughes for $10) and headed off home to Palm Beach, where I had a bedroom at Paul Witzig's house.
While unloading it to carry it inside and groove on the shape for the night (an unusual habit in itself), Paul called out from the verandah, "It looks like a Plastic Machine!"
The name stuck, and next morning I took the shaped blank back to Keyo's and wrote in the six-foot long concave "PLASTIC MACHINE" in psychedelic lettering.
Hmmm.
A moment of dubious history."

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 360.

The earliest contemporary document that specifically indicates a move to boards under 9 feet appears to be by Bob McTavish (circa July 1967?), who noted Midget  Farrelly's new 8 ft 8'' board and a discernible improvement in performance:

"At Avalon on those beautiful turning waves - vertical at the top with a good soft curve in the bottom.
Midget's been pulling his 8' 8" around in the tightest arcs ever seen done by a full surfboard."

- McTavish, Bob: mctavish on a bit of what's going on
Surfing World, August - September 1967, pages 34 - 37?

Interviewed in December 1967, Farrelly recollected the developments of the past year:

"I remember midway through the winter I made my first 8 foot 8 board and I thought that was
short, but then about September they started to go even farther."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 35.

"Chuck Linnen's original California Pipeliner Gun.
Dick Brewer shaped three Pipeliner Guns when he visited the Hermosa shop in the summer of 1967, for team riders David Nuuhiwa and Chuck Linnen and Grant Reynolds (Bing's glasser).
Unlike the other Pipeliner Guns, which were made in Hawaii by Brewer in 1966-67, these three were made for riding big surf in California.
This one is 10'7" !"

The images include a "a photo right out of Bings order book" that indicates that Linnen's board ("#7986") was ordered and/or shaped on  "8-3-67", that is 3rd August 1967.
- Classic Bing Surfboards
http://www.classicbingsurfboards.com/mid60sbings.html

Even accounting for the board being "made for riding big surf in California", the extreme length hardly illustrates Brewer's recollection (above) that "the mini-gun was happening in the spring of '67".

"Later on in the year Kevin Platt and myself at Keyo's started making V bottoms.
First they were 9', then 8' 6" then 8', then down to 7' 1 0".
...
At the same time Midget's shop at Palm Beach was running stiff competition with us at Keyo's.
As we'd cut 2" off, Midget would cut 4" off, then vice versa."

 - McTavish, Bob: Pods for Primates Part 2.
Tracks April 1972, reprinted in The Best of Tracks 1973.

Note McTavish's "Later on in the year" (July-August 1967?) is somewhat at variance with his detailed account in Stoked!
In 2005 McTavish was more expansive on the contribution of other surfers and shapers:

" I certainly wish Drouyn was in Sydney when it all came down in '67... and I secretly think Peter wishes he was there too... along with Ted (Spencer) Baddy (David Treloar), Kevin Platt, Midget, Keith (Paull)..."

- Bob McTavish, quoted in  Crockett, Andrew: Switchfoot (2005) page 193.

Note however that Drouyn was in Sydney, at least briefly, to compete in the Windansea Contest in late November 1967, see below.
In the week between the first rounds and final, the Windansea team with Eric Blum's film unit and several Australians travelled up the North Coast of NSW, terminating at Coolangatta, Queensland:

"First stop was Peter Drouyn's house.
...
The first thing his mother asked Peter was how he did in the contest ... he told her he'd been eliminated early on ..."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 122.

In a Bob McTavish interview conducted by Avalon's David "Mexican" Sumpter and published in 2006, his recollections fall somewhere between his 1972 Tracks article noted above and the those presented in Stoked!:

"Sumpter: Where did Midget and other manufacturers fit in?
As soon as you were starting to bring the boards down in size, Midget must have been pretty close to the action?

McTavish: Midget was building boards at Palm Beach in Frankie Gonsalves' boat shed, just him and Warren Cornish.
I was at Keyo's, and we had a dynamic crew working there.
Kevin Platt and I were the shapers, Baddy Treloar and Ted Spencer were hanging around all the time, and Neil Purchase was doing a great job sanding and learning to shape."
...
So the next weekend I made one 8'2'', and while I was doing this I was surfing at Palm Beach or Avalon every afternoon because I was living there, and Midget. ..he'd see what I was riding and a couple of days later he would have something very similar, maybe even an inch shorter!
So we didn't talk too much - we'd just each show up each afternoon with these shorter boards.
He was really into it!
I recently read an interview he did for Surf magazine about those times and you can tell he was totally stoked in what we call the Plastic Machine era through the winter of '67.

- Pacific Longboarder, Volume 9 Number 5, 2006, page 50.

The Farrelly interview for Surf magazine noted by McTavish is probably the previously quoted:
- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, pages 34 to 37.

In that interview, Farrelly appears to imply that the deep vee bottom board was his own design:

"The progression towards round bottoms has proven that a round bottom definitely puts you back in
the wave, but it often leaves you there too.
There had to be an answer.
I felt a split planing surface under the tail, set at different angles, would provide the displacement of a
round bottom plus the planing advantages of a flat bottom."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 35.

"Every little bit of the board works.
If you came back from the nose about 1' 6" and cut a foot out of it, then just glue it back together
again, that's more or less what we've got now.
...
Putting the "V" in a long board was like putting a super charger on an ordinary car."

- McTavish, Platt, Spencer.
Surfing World, Volume 10 Number 1, December 1967- January 1968, pages 31 and 32.

Following Midget Farrelly's example of completing "the tightest arcs ever seen done by a full surfboard" (McTavish, quoted above), the shapers emphasized the turning capability of their new designs.
Platt noted:

"With a shorter board you can manoeuvre much better.
The thing is, this new board brings in a complete new approach to surfing ... the vertical performance."

- McTavish, Platt, Spencer.
Surfing World, Volume 10 Number 1, December 1967- January 1968, page 31.

This was endorsed by McTavish:

"Being shorter, you can put it in smaller places, in small curls.
You can ride it in bad conditions and get more pleasure."

- McTavish, Platt, Spencer.
Surfing World, Volume 10 Number 1, December 1967- January 1968, page 32.

Of the three, Ted Spencer took the reduction in length to an extreme.
In the photographs accompanying the article one photograph of Spencer has a caption indicating the board length as 5 ft 6'' (page 36).

Spencer, however, noted the possible fluidity for future developments:

" We get our kicks from this right now; who knows, what's going to happen tomorrow.
We might go in a completely different direction."

- McTavish, Platt, Spencer.
Surfing World, Volume 10 Number 1, December 1967- January 1968, pages 33.

 In an article published concurrently in John Witzig's recently introduced Surf International, McTavish further extolled the virtues of a reduction in length accompanied by a wide tail, but also indicated considerable variation within these parameters:

"Elimination of two feet of board.
...
You see, the turn area doubles as a planing area.
It's wide and flat.
...
That wide, wide tail will not mush in.
That short length (7 feet and up) can be spun into a cut-back without ever digging and sinking.
...
Farrelly, Spencer, Young, Platt and this kid, were all riding considerably different styles of units at
time of writing, six weeks before news-stands."

- McTavish, Bob: Ladies and Gentlemen and Children-of-the-Sun ...
Surf International, December 1967 - January 1968 Volume 1 Number 2,  page 9.

At this stage, the major surfing identities missing from the Sydney scene were Peter Drouyn (noted above), Wayne Lynch and  the 1967 Australian Champion, Nat Young:

"Nat was missing in celebrity-land for the first few months of the revolution."

- Bob McTavish, quoted in Crockett, Andrew: Switchfoot (2005) pages 192-193.

In an extended interview in late 1967 with Brian St. Pierre, Nat confessed that following the Australian Championships at Bells Beach:

"I haven't been on a board for five months."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 93.

Young gave an expanded account of his five month sabbatical and his first encounter with the new vee bottom design in his 1998 autobiography.
No longer contracted to Gordon Woods Surfboards and impressed by McTavish's enthusiasm, he built his first vee bottom at Keyo Surfboards.

"McTavish was working for Keyo Surfboards just down the road from my office in Brookvale and I'd call in every now and then to say hello and check on his latest shaping job.
One day after not having been to Keyo's for a few weeks, I walked through the showroom and there were ten new boards, all in the 8-foot range and all with deep vee bottoms and concave noses.
The 4 inch-deep vee held right off the tail, giving them a different look, like nothing I'd seen before.
Bob explained that he'd been making them shorter and shorter over the past few weeks and insisting the little "Plastic Machines" were really exciting to ride.
...
I asked Denny Keyo if I could use Bob's shaping bay and, for the first time in six months, I shaped a new board.
It was 8 feet long by 23 inches wide and like McTavish's had a 12-inch pod across the tail with a 4-inch vee.
The stringerless blank was really hard to hold while shaping and I had to use a brick to keep it in one place.
The thickness of those Plastic Machines also made them appear strange, as they held the thickness of the centre right through to the tail.
And I soon found that glassing them was a nightmare.
The idea was to get the board as light as possible, so a thin skin had to be put on the bottom to hold the curve, then a couple, of layers on the deck to give it some strength and rigidity.
I took the new board out in a 3-footer inside Narrabeen "Alley" to test it and thought I'd never get used to the feel, it was so weird.
After an hour of practise, and a few long swims to the beach, I began to get the feel of the vee and found how interesting the pocket-riding type of surfing could be."

-Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) page 162.

Although based at Lorne in Victoria, Wayne Lynch apparently kept a keen interest on the developments in Sydney and during late 1967 ordered a number of Keyo surfboards from Bob McTavish.

"  'Claw' Warbrick managed to secure Plastic Machine #4 for his protégé Wayne Lynch, commonly regarded as the most exciting young surfer in Australia, and a board numbered in the twenties for himself".

- Jarratt, Phil: Sands and Suits (2010) page 93.
Also see McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) page 368.

By the end of October most Sydney manufactures were producing their interpretation of the Vee bottom design.
Lengths were around 8 ft or shorter and the width between 23 -24 inches, located between 4 and 10 inches behind the mid point, reminiscent of Velzy's Pig board of 1954.
Noses were full and round with a square or diamond pod approximately 10 inches wide, often deeply chamfered or dished.
While they invariably featured a rolled bottom in the centre flaring into a deep vee in the tail, nose sections could be flat, concave, or occasionally double concave.
The rails had a thin 50/50 profile and most boards were shaped from a stringerless blank glassed in Volan cloth often with extra layer deck or kneel patches.
The high aspect fin had a long base, about 12 inches deep with a large rake, either a Greenough Stage 3  or similar.
Set at least 8 inches from the pod, the leading edge was thus around 20 inches from the tail which further reduced the effective board length.

In his late 1967 design interview, Midget Farrelly indicated that the contemporary surfboard length was now substantially less than 8 feet for expert surfers:

"... there is a general trend towards a shorter board.
Last summer it seemed everyone was riding nine feet.
We had come down from around nine five, nine six, and they were considered short boards.
During the winter, boards went a little farther.
I remember midway through the winter I made my first 8 foot 8 board and I thought that was short,
but then about September they started to go even farther.
Generally they have gone down six inches to a foot and in the last three months the top surfers have
dropped their lengths down two feet."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 35.

He further detailed other design developments that accompanied the reduction in length:

"The problem has always been if you make a shorter board how do you get it to do everything a long
board does.
I think most of the good surfers now realize it's not one dimension of a surfboard that guarantees
that it works.
As we get a little bit more sophisticated with design we are looking towards displacement volume to
give us a true measurement of a surfboard.
While we have gone down in length we have come up in a few other things.
The design is so radical that we do need a basic thickness of at least three inches.
The introduction of the V bottom means more defined planing areas, more positive areas on the
bottom of the board.
Rail shape has changed from a pointed, critical, radical rail to a softer, rounder, more oval rail.
The general rocker of a surfboard has been altered.
The nose is kicked radically while the tail flows away in a soft line.
So you have got the V, the more defined planing areas, nose rocker, and the change in rail shape, but
I think most significant and obvious change is in outline.
We have almost got a very basic old fashioned outline: big, wide, square tail, parallel rails and a blunt
nose.
You wouldn't say that the boards of today are beautiful at all."

- Farrelly, Midget : An Interview on the progress and development of the modern surfboard.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3  February 1968, page 35.

In tune with alternative cultural developments in western society (expressed most vibrantly in popular music and album cover art), many manufacturers decorated their boards with art deco styled decals, replacing the simple text based style of the earlier 1960s.
Compounding the musical influence, some surfboard models adopted fanciful names, for example McTavish's Fantastic Plastic Machine (note Fantastic Plastic Lover by San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane, February 1967), Russell Hughes' Crystal Vessel (Crystal Ship by The Doors, January 1967), Keith Paull's Happening (The Happening by The Supremes, March 1967), and Robert Connelly's Spaceship.

Some examples of these vee bottom boards were featured in some segments shot in Northern Queensland and Sydney by New Zealander Andy McAlpine and included in his film Children of the Sun (1968).
Note the title reprises the opening lines, "Ladies and Gentlemen and Children-of-the-Sun", to Bob McTavish's 1967-1968 article for  Surf International, noted above.
Starring the outstanding New Zealand surfer of the time, Wayne Parkes, McAlpine exposed local surfers to these developments on his return home before the end of the year.
Parkes would later take a short vee bottom board to Hawaii for the 1967 winter season, where it was also ridden by Peter Drouyn at Honolua Bay on Maui, see below.

Sometime in October or early November 1967, Ted Spencer took an alternate perspective, foreshadowed in his interview published in Surfing World noted above, and with Bob McTavish shaped Little Red.
In contrast with his previous wide tailed vee bottom boards, this new 8 ft 4 inch design featured a rounded pintail, and apparently without incorporating the deep vee bottom.

"For what it's worth, so called Little Red board was 8'4" in length single stringer 23" wide and was shaped by Bob McTavish and I at Keyo Surfboards in Brookvale Australia.
...
Regards, Ted."

- Ted Spencer, personal email, November 2003.
Many thanks to Ted Spencer for this invaluable contribution.

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 69.

In an interview with St. Pierre, Skip Frye, a top shaper at Gordon and Smith Surfboards in San Diego, indicated the visiting American surfers' awareness of the Australian move to shorter boards, noting:

"Australia's the main place that everything's happening.
Everything that's happened here in New Zealand has been what the top guys in Australia have done, so over here it falls a little more on the crude side than what we'll be seeing in Australia, I think.
They've been going as short and light as possible, and working with varying bottom contours, trying to get better manoeuvrability; I don't know yet how successful they've been.

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) pages 64-65.

The discussion canvassed the prominence of Nat Young and Bob McTavish, and St. Pierre enquired about other influential Australians.
Frye noted Midget Farrelly, whose Stringerless model was manufactured in California under licence by Gordon and Smith Surfboards following his appearance in the final of the 1966 World Contest, and commented:

"He is very technically involved also, probably just as much as McTavish.
I know he's one of the foremost craftsmen that I have ever come across.
A lot of these ideas may have possibly originated from him.
As far as the new V tail-chines, as they call them, the first I heard about it with these small boards was from Midget.
He and McTavish were kind of playing around with the idea at the same time, six months ago or a year ago, I don't know when it started, but I think McTavish just worked a little harder on it than Midget did."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 68.

Joining the conversation, New Zealander Peter Wray, indicated the extent that the Australian shapers had reduced the length of their boards:

"When you get to Australia, you're going to see really radical boards.
McTavish and Midget now are riding seven foot six boards, twenty-four inches wide, two foot back from the nose, great big double concaves under the nose which McTavish thinks he'll ride Sunset on."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) page 71.

The first rounds were held at Long Reef over three days and featured most of the top local riders, with the notable exception of Nat Young and Bob McTavish, who did however appear as a contest judge.
Competitors included Midget Farrelly, Ted Spencer, John Monie, Russell Hughes, Robert Conneelly, Keith Paull, Butch Cooney, David Treloar, Peter Cornish, Peter Drouyn and Wayne Lynch, who travelled up from Victoria but had to return for school exams before the finals.
In film of the early rounds in Blum's The Fantastic Plastic Machine (1969) most, but not all, Australian surfers are shown riding variations of the short vee bottom board.

- Witizig, John & Brien, Lester: Windansea Invitational Surfing Contest.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3, February 1968, pages 20 to 25.
- Carter, Jeff: Surf Beaches (1968) - a photograph on page 33 shows Keith Paull at Long Reef with his sub 8 ft Happening model Peter Clarke Surfboard, with an extremely wide diamond tail.
- Eric Blum: The Fantastic Plastic Machine (1969) - footage of the early rounds.

St. Pierre noted how the new designs were rapidly adopted in the Australian market:

"Perhaps one of the first things an outsider notices about surfing in Australia is the speed with which surfers there latch on to innovations in equipment and style.
Perhaps it's just their natural competitiveness, but young and unknown surfers are right behind the leaders, picking up on their ideas, sometimes adapting them a little more, and generally pushing on; it makes the scene exciting to be in, even if only for the atmosphere it has - everybody's up most of the time."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) pages 92 to 93.

During the week the American team, some Australians and the film crew travelled to the far North Coast of NSW, not without some difficulties.

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) pages 112 to 136.
- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) pages 375 to 376.

On the return to Sydney, the finals were run at Palm Beach with Midget Farrelly, Ted Spencer, John Monie and Russell Hughes representing Australia and Mike Purpus and Steve Bigler from California.
The judges were Nat Young, Bob McTavish, Skip Frye and Mickey Munoz.
Lester Brien detailed the range of surfboard designs:

"It is interesting to note the variations in surfing equipment.
Farrelly has two boards, both extremely small, light and wide backed; one has an accentuated scoop
out of the back top deck.
Spencer has a very short pin tail, a large fin set about 12 inches from the back.
Money and Hughes are riding the more conventional 9-ft. performance boards.
The American equipment is different altogether, perhaps their surf demands length, I do not know.
Purpus has a rather large, thin-backed, wide-nosed board, the widest point being about one-third
from the tip, from there it takes a long but gradual taper to the back.
Bigler is on a somewhat shorter but basically same shaped board."

- Brien, Lester: Windansea Invitational Surfing Contest.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3, February 1968, page 20.

The Australians dominated the tightly contested final, no doubt encouraged by the award of an airline ticket to Hawaii for the winner, courtesy of Surf International magazine.
Lester Brien wrote:

"It is a hard pick; over the 40 minutes I would not hesitate in giving it to Farrelly, but the contest was to
be decided over the best 7 waves.
...
It is so close.
A discussion is called, it is agreed that on 40 minutes Farrelly had won, but that the contest was over
7 waves and the contestants having been told this, it is not practical for a wider points margin to
operate.
Spencer had top scored on two sheets; Spencer had won, Farrelly second, Hughes third."

- Brien, Lester: Windansea Invitational Surfing Contest.
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3, February 1968, page 22.
- Eric Blum: The Fantastic Plastic Machine (1969) - footage of the final.

Following the contest, several American surfers were interviewed for Jack Eden's Surfabout Magazine.
Asked about his assessment of the Australian boards, Mike Purpus replied:

"... I ride a 9'5" surfboard and I thought that was really small before I came here.
Then I arrived and I talked to Midget Farrelly a great deal and I think his board is the best one I
have seen over here and I have seen McTavish's and Young's.
I will take back some of his fundamental ideas and incorporate them in my own model that I have
back in California."

- Smith, Ian and Sullivan, Jack: Windansea (and the contest that never was)
Surfabout, Volume 4 Number 4, March 1968, page 29.

In the same article, the diminutive female surfer and sponsored rider for Dewey Weber Surfboards, Joey Hamaski, indicated that some shapers in California were also experimenting with shorter boards, admittedly for riders of smaller stature (Hamaski was 5 ft 2 inches, her board 7 ft 11 inches):

"Dewey Weber has had these boards for two years now and nobody thought they would work;
like all my friends thought I was crazy to ride a board so small but I like it."

- Smith, Ian and Sullivan, Jack: Windansea (and the contest that never was)
Surfabout, Volume 4 Number 4, March 1968, page 27.

Before their departure for Fiji*, the next stop on the Windansea tour, several US surfers purchased new vee bottom boards from Sydney manufacturers:

"There is no doubt, though, that the Americans had learned more; half a dozen of them had bought V-bottom boards to take back with them, and all were planning to experiment with the short-board concept and the flexible-fin idea and many of the other things we'd seen."

- St. Pierre, Brian: The Fantastic Plastic Voyage (1969) pages 92 to 93.

*Note that when the film was released, footage of the visit to Fiji (and subsequently Tahiti) was inserted before the sequences filmed in Australia to enhance the dramatic impact of the new Australian board designs.

While Brewer's claim that "the mini-gun was happening in the spring of '67" is questionable, there is considerable evidence that Hawaiian based surfers were beginning to decrease the size of their boards.
Whereas there had been a tendency to build boards in excess of 10 ft to ride large waves, the outstanding surfer of the 1967-1968 winter was Joey Cabell whose boards were between 9ft 4 inch to 9ft 8 inches and featured a pointed nose, elongated pintail and a deep Greenough influenced fin.

On returning to Australia in 1968, Midget Farrelly stated:

"I think Joey Cabell was the best surfer in the Islands this year."

- Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, page 36.

Surf International editor, John Witzig was almost as positive in his assessment.
A photograph of Cabell accompanying his article on the North Shore winter was captioned:

"Cabell at Backdoor on his 9'5'' Brewer pintail.
He was possibly the most outstanding surfer in Hawaii this year."

- Witzig, John: The Australians in Hawaii, Part 1 - Oahu.
Surf International Vol. 1. No. 4 March 1968  page 28.

Other surfers in the winter waves of Hawaii were the progressive performers Jock Sutherland, Jeff Hakman, Billy Hamilton and Jackie Eberle.
Still highly competitive were the long-term stalwarts Ricky Grigg, George Downing, Fred Hemmings and Paul Strauch.

As the American surf media was firmly concentrated in California, invariably developments in Hawaii tended to be covered retrospectively and there appears (without access to all the relevant material, see Disclaimer above) to be a lack of detailed information on contemporary design.
However, given the emphasis on building boards for extreme conditions, subsequent film, articles and photographs indicate many surfers were committed to boards of similar dimensions to Cabell's.

In Australia McTavish and Young shaped extended or gunned versions of their vee bottoms about 9 feet at Keyo Surfboards.

- Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) page 163.

Other Australians in Hawaii that winter included Ted Spencer, Midget Farrelly, Russell Hughes and Peter Drouyn.
Spencer took his pintailed Little Red, ridden to victory in the Windansea Contest and Farrelly's board, showing a firm commitment to the short board principle, was 7 ft 8".
-???

Regrettably for surfing historians, Bob Evans' film The Way We Like It (1968) has never been released in video or DVD format, apparently due to contractual difficulties following Evans' premature death in 1976.
Premiering at Sydney's University's Union Theatre in November 1968, it included Drouyn at the 1967 Mahaka titles, Farrelly, Young and Drouyn surfing at Haliewa that same year, and the 1967 Australian titles.

- Thoms, Albie: Surfmovies (2000) page 103.

In detailing an intense surf session at Haleiwa, John Witzig wrote:

To my mind it was Cabell and Nat who were again outstanding.
Hawaiian Joey was coming from far inside and making waves where even George Downing and
Ricky Grigg weren't.

- Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) page 163.

The conditions for the contest were good, but less than ideal:

"The surf for the Dukes meeting was running at 8 -10 ft. Hawaiian size, 12 -15 ft. Australian or Californian size.
...
It was smooth but irregular, it was unpredictable, it was inconsistent and at times it was so consistent that there were several waves to choose from."
The surf was so tricky that it required a lot of ability and concentration to do well in those conditions."

- Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, page 35.

The 24 contestants were judged in heats of six:

Heat 1 Herbie Fletcher  Mike Hynson Dick Katri  Paul Strauch  # * # *

(California) (California) (Florida) (Hawaii)

Heat 2 Eddie Aikau  # Corky Carroll  Mickey Dora  Mike Doyle  # Jeff Hakman  Dick Keating

(Hawaii)  (California) (California) (California)  (Hawaii) (California)

Heat 3 Ben Apia  # Fred Hemmings  Rusty Miller  # Felipe Pomar  Jock Sutherland  # Bruce Valluzzi

(Hawaii)  (Hawaii) (California)  (Peru) (Hawaii)  (Florida)

Heat 4 Claude Codgen  Jackie Eberle  # Bob McTavish  Greg Noll  Butch Van Artsdalen  * #

(Florida) (Hawaii) (Australia) (California) (Hawaii)

* Other competitors included Ricky Grigg (California), George Downing (Hawaii) and possibly Joey Cabell (Hawaii).
# Advanced to the final.

The judges included Phil Edwards, Wally Froiseth, Kimo Hollinger and Walt Hoffman.

The top two competitors from each heat advanced to a nine man final*:
 

Ben Apia George Downing (3rd) Mike Doyle Jackie Eberle (7th) Ricky Grigg

Jeff Hakman Rusty Miller  Paul Strauch (2nd) Jock Sutherland (1st)

*Three competitors advanced from Heat 3.

Hawaiian surfers dominated the results -1st Jock Sutherland was first, with Sunset veterans Paul Strauch second and George Downing in third pace.
Midget Farrelly summarized Sutherland's performance:

"Jock Sutherland was definitely the best surfer in the contest.
He was so fresh, so clean, and so fast and wasn't scared of anything.
Here's a typical example of Sutherland: He takes off goofy-foot and goes 'right'.
When he hits the bottom of the wave he turns 'left', switches feet, comes out of the curl, climbs with a
full turn vertical up the face, gets into the shadow, stretches out and just lets the curl clip him twice in
a row.
I think this was his winning ride of the contest."

- Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, page 36.

Confirming Farrelly's analysis, Jock Sutherland's outstanding ride was recorded by the ABC Wide World of Sports television cameras.

- ABC Wide World of Sports Television Program, 1968 (actual release date unknown).
ABC Wide World of Sports: Duke Kahanamoku Contest 1967.
DVD formatted by Doug Cavanaugh, courtesy of Ben Marcus, with many thanks.

The Wide World of Sports program, aired sometime after the passing of Duke Kahanamoku on 22nd January 1968, was a compilation of contest footage augmented with archival material describing the early career of Duke, interviews with some competitors, judges and Kahanamoku, beach scenes, and stock footage by Californian film makers, MacGillvray and Freeman.

Some interviewees attempted to disassociate surfers from the negative image portrayed by the popular press- Paul Strauch wore a suit and tie and drug use was decried by Fred Hemmings and Ricky Grigg.
Grigg noted that surfing is "two sports - what goes on on the beach and what goes on in the water."
Jock Sutherland, in contrast to future developments, noted "Big guns are the answer for anything over 12 feet".

George Downing's extended interview was illustrated with examples of a finless solid timber and a modern foam board- a short (8 ft?) pintail with a high aspect Greenough style fin.
Similar boards were shown in a sequence on board construction in a shop front factory with a large window opening onto the street.
Contemporary footage recorded Downing riding an solid wood board, ancient surfboards in the Bishop Museum and Duke Kahanamoku displaying his 16 foot board, famously ridden in 25 foot Castles surf for "a mile and a eighth - and that's a long way!".

Kimo Hollinger analysed his judging criteria as a combination of wave size, critical positioning, manoeuvres and courtesy.

Despite test riding his vee bottom at Sunset, Makaha and on Maui before the contest and noting some deficiencies in the powerful Hawaiian waves, Bob McTavish persisted in riding his Plastic Machine in his heat of the Duke Contest.
Also note, foreshadowing future developments, he had also ridden and was impressed by fellow competitor Mike Hynson's pintail, reported as both 9ft 6'' (page 385) and 9ft 3'' (page 388).

- McTavish, Bob: Stoked! (2009) pages 383 to 389.

Midget Farrelly observed McTavish riding Hynson's pintail at Sunset Beach and Russell Hughes on borrowed board at Haleiwa:

"McTavish ... looked good on a borrowed pintail... at Sunset.
Borrowed it was- you couldn't buy a pintail on the island- every blank and finished board was accounted for."

- Farrelly, Midget: Untitled (Hawaii, Winter 1967).
Surf International Volume 1 Number 4, March 1968, page 9, adjusted.

He also noted that Russell Hughes also experimented with borrowed pintail:

"Russell was also good.
I watched him in some 6 - 8 ft. waves and he adjusted really fast, faster than any Australian I've seen.
He rode his own boards for a couple of days then switched to a pin tail and did just fine."

-Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, pages 35 and 36.

Hughes' own boards included his wide tailed 9ft 10'' board that he used at the Australian Championships held at Bells Beach (see above).
The afternoon after the completion of the Duke Contest, John Witzig noted:

"Russell, who had only arrived that afternoon with Midget, used his wide-tail Bells big wave board to get into a few curls."
- Witzig, John: The Australians in Hawaii, Part 1 Oahu.
Surf International Volume 1 Number 4, March 1968,  pages 29.

Unfortunately, the ABC's Wide World of Sports footage of the heat records only one of McTavish's rides ( a wave "shared" with Claude Codgen), however Midget Farrelly, largely confirming Fred Hemmings' description as The Spin-Out King, commented on McTavish's commitment and the limitations of his board:

"McTavish went out there with a board that had never been used at Sunset, ever.
That is to say nobody had ridden that kind of board there.
He went out under average to poor conditions.
He was completely guts-up.
Whenever he lost his board, he swam so hard that you would have sworn he was a machine.
Whenever he dropped in, he dropped in like he was skydiving.
He really powered down the face, it was only when he went to make his turn that, that wide, flat, fat
tail just wouldn't sink in and bite.
...
McTavish was outclassed in performance, he was outclassed in equipment, he was outclassed in
almost everything.
What was so great about McTavish was that the harder he got beaten down by those waves, the
harder he belted himself right back out there again.
He had twice the guts but half the equipment."

- Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, pages 35 and 36.

John Witzig was briefer, but essentially confirmed Farrely's contest report:

"For McTavish it was a couple of swims, and at Sunset it is just allover.
More probably than not, Jock Sutherland would have won whichever way the contest was run.
His fantastic knowledge of how a difficult Sunset would break was so evident in his choice of wave.
He would fade far left, then change feet and crank a bottom turn under twelve feet of white water.
He was superb, there was little doubt about it."

- Witzig, John: The Australians in Hawaii, Part 1 - Oahu.
Surf International Vol. 1. No. 4 March 1968  page 29.

Clearly the wide tailed boards conceived in the small  waves of Sydney's beach  breaks were unsuitable for these conditions.

"The boards that worked so well in Sydney were now impotent pieces of foam and glass.
The tails were too wide-too much area between fin and rail to make a vital turn at high speeds."

- Farrelly, Midget: Untitled (Hawaii, Winter 1967).
Surf International Volume 1 Number 4, March 1968, page 9.

Unfortunately, I currently do not have access to the contest reports of the The Duke and Makaha contests published in the Californian based magazines:
Surfer, Volume 9 Number 1, March 1968.
Duke Invitational and coverage of the Makaha International Surfing Championships.
Surfing,Volume 4 Number 1, June 1968:
Jock Sutherland wins the third annual Duke Invitational at Sunset, while Cabell takes the 15th annual Makaha International Surfing Championships.

"I preface this story with the advice that if this is not an absolutely accurate reconstruction of our trip to the Sandwich Islands, then it is the best that I can make up."

- Witzig, John: The Australians in Hawaii, Part 1 - Oahu.
Surf International Vol. 1. No. 4 March 1968  page 23.

Witzig's report of an intense session at Haleiwa, several days after the Duke contest, identified two approaches to surfing performance and surfboard design, initially evident at the 1966 World Contest, that would dominate developments over the next five years.
His account is worth quoting at length:

"I have seen Haliewa on a number of occasions.
It has been flat, or it has been reasonable.
On one day, with a good swell, and a side wind at Sunset, Haleiwa was 12' and good.
It was so good that I just could not imagine that Haliewa could get like that, and neither, I imagine,
could the eighty surfers in the water, or the one hundred and eighty other photographers on the
beach.
I wonder on reflection whether the rest of them wasted as much film as I did that day.
The spray was particularly bad and through the lens it just looked like a messy mass of blues and
greys and sprayey-whites.

Still, if the photographs were to end up as a disappointment, then certainly the surfing on that day at
Haliewa was not.
To my mind it was Cabell and Nat who were again outstanding.
Hawaiian Joey was coming from far inside and making waves where even George Downing and
Ricky Grigg weren't.
Nat gave up, more because of the limitations of the crowd than because of those of his board or
ability.
Certainly, Drouyn came from inside on a few waves, but they were not much more than stand-up
rides.
Cabell though, was outstanding.
Tight in the curl, his 9'8" pintail board would fly across the face of the fantastic Haliewa waves.
What had become apparent, at Sunset on that late afternoon, was now compounded at Haliewa.
There were two schools of thought: Nat and acceleration, Cabell and flow.

It is difficult to the point of being impossible to try to evaluate one approach as against the other.
There is a considerable gulf between the two, attributable to the basic experience that has, as its result, either of the two points of view.
As an Australian, I was more used to Nat's approach to surfing, and if it should appear that I am
biased in my appraisal, then it may very well be that this is so.

I cannot but think that the general approach of the pintail-flow school of thought is a logical
extension, and perhaps conclusion, of a style of riding big waves that began with the first attempt on
the big surf of the North Shore in the late 50s and early 60s.

In contrast, the short board- acceleration school of the Australian surfers appears to me to hold the
key to the future.
I would be the last to claim that on the North Shore this year the Hawaiians, on their conventional
equipment, were out-performed by the Australians on their short, V bottom boards.
Yet I cannot contain the enthusiasm that I feel for the breakthrough in performance big wave surfing
that I feel must ultimately flow from this initial Australian assault on the Hawaiian surf.

Most probably there are lessons to be learnt from each approach.
Perhaps in some way, a marrying of the flow and acceleration is not impossible.
The sort of board that this would necessitate is quite beyond my knowledge.
While we were in Maui, shaper Dick Brewer began to experiment with V bottoms on pintails.
Perhaps there is an answer here.
Yet I find the two styles of approach to surfing to practically be the antithesis of one another.

To my mind the potential is with the Australian surfers and their equipment.
There is greater experimentation being done in Australia, and the excitement and inspiration that
must arise from this, not to mention the equipment, assures a significant place in the future."

- Witzig, John: The Australians in Hawaii, Part 1 - Oahu.
Surf International Vol. 1. No. 4 March 1968  pages 29 to 30.

In 1970 Bob McTavish contributed an article to Surfer magazine illustrating that "the two schools of thought" identified by Witzig continued to resonate.
See

- McTavish, Bob: Streaks and Slugs (Surfer Tips Number 45).
Surfer, Volume 11 Number 2, May 1970. pages 27 and 29.

"When we caught up with McTavish a few days after the event he wasn't even surfing his own short board - it was as though he'd given up - and watching him surf Haleiwa on a big conventional board borrowed from David Nuuhiwa, I thought he looked awkward and stiff.
Amazed by his about-face, I couldn't understand what he was doing and it was hard to get much sense out of him.
But later that afternoon, when I cornered him outside the house where he and Nuuhiwa were living, he sounded fine, promising to follow us to Maui when I told him I'd be going there next day.

I was travelling to Maui with John and Paul Witzig and the hot young Sydney surfer Ted Spencer; George Greenough was going to fly in direct from California and Doc Spence came over for a few days before going back to Oahu to fulfil his obligations as the official judge for the Mach contest."

- Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) pages 163 to 164.

Young later came to attribute McTavish's behaviour to the high quality local cannabis, available courtesy of Hynson and Nuuhiwa.

- Young, Nat: Nat's Nat (1998) page 164.

The visit to the less demanding conditions on Maui was probably appreciated by Ted Spencer.
Farrelly commented:

"I always think of Ted as being honest, when he says to me that the waves are too big for him.
I know he's not kidding me.
When he paddled out at Sunset and said "Gosh, this isn't like Manly," I knew he was serious."

- Farrelly, Midget: Twelve Days in Hawaii.
Surfing World Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, page 37.

The highlight of the stay on Maui was a week excellent surf at the famous right handers of Honolua Bay, film of these sessions becoming the highlight of both Paul Witzig's short Hawaii  68 (1968), later added to the American release of Hot Generation (1967, 1968), and Eric Blum's The Fantastic Plastic Machine, which due to production difficulties was not released until 1969.

- Thoms, Albie: Surfmovies (2000) page 101 and pages 106 to 107.

These films, the widely reproduced photographs by John Witzig and a vast plethora of book and magazine articles simply too numerous to detail have contributed to the widely held view that the Honolua sessions were the inspiration for what is commonly called The Short-board Revolution.
Critical to this perspective was the meeting of McTavish and Dick Brewer, said to convert Brewer, and hence other Hawaiian and American shapers, to building smaller boards.

Californian photographer, Steve Wilkins was also at Honolua Bay during these sessions and his excellent web site specifically dates images of Nat Young and Bob McTavish riding their vee bottom Keyo Surfboards on 28th and 30th December 1967.

- http//:www.SteveWilkings.com
Steve Wilkins Photography

In a contemporary article, perhaps composed before his departure from Hawaii, Bob McTavish wrote:

"Good Honolua is a tube from take off to calm centre.
This day Nat and I had our deep Vees going.
Ted S. had his 8'9" pintail in one piece till it was two pieces.
Buddy Boy was visiting Him on most rides - in spite of his overlong machine.
George did It quite often. .. Paule made It.
Six hours at six to eight feet.
Only a few there.
Coupla cameras, coupla shapers - one was R. B. Dick was digging the whole thing.
Those Vees - pulling turns in the most tight spots, gaining speed in those turns, thrusting out of
them.
Making waves, making them tighter.
Pintails were beautiful -  in the fall line.
Magical Mystery Tours.
But the U.S. - going round, up, thru- thrusting!!
YOU got the speed.
YOU went where you wanted - when you wanted.
Said R. B. when asked - "They work."

Dick Brewer went to his groovy tin shed and made a beautiful pintail - 'V' bottom.

Just a basic change of design - no "yippee-we did it first" because who is "we"?
We are all brothers 'V' is one change - many many more coming up from many many people - so
names don't matter."

- McTavish, Bob: A plastic drinking straw...
Surf International, Volume 1 Number 3, February - March 1968, page 11.

This brief passage invites further analysis.
Firstly, the closing comment, "so names don't matter", indicates a substantial change in attitude as evidenced in the claims advanced several decades later in Stoked! (2009)  and Going Vertical (2010).

Secondly, despite McTavish's obvious enthusiasm for the wide tail vee bottom design at the time, he later acknowledged the design's deficiencies:

"We took our boards to Hawaii in late 67, they were, just large versions of V bottom stubbies we were riding in the shorebreaks of Australia and they were pretty miserable failures except for Nat's board which was more of an arrow planshape and Ted Spencer's little double end sausage which went well in small surf."

 - McTavish, Bob: Pods for Primates Part 2.
Tracks April 1972, reprinted in The Best of Tracks 1973.

Thirdly, while Brewer and others have disputed the impact of the Australian vee bottom, one of Brewer's team riders has subsequently confirmed the Australian influence:

"Gerry Lopez supports that story with his own recollection: 'I think it was in late '67,' he told Drew Kampion.
'Brewer had just moved over to Maui from the North Shore and was shaping in Lahaina.
Reno Abellira and I each took a blank over  there to get our boards made by him.
Reno got his shaped first, but before he could shape mine, Nat and Greenough and McTavish and Ted Spencer and a couple of other Aussies showed up with those wide-tailed, vee-bottom boards.
They wanted to go ride em at Honolua Bay, but there wasn't any surf there.
John P Thurston had a surf shop at the Cannery in Lahaina where all the boards were glassed, and they came there, and we met em, and Brewer and McTavish kind of bullshitted for a long time.
So the next day we go back to do my board - I think wanted like a 9 foot 8-inch, which was considered a shorter board then - and Brewer just takes the saw and cuts a foot of the blank, and it's 8 feet 6 inches, and he tells me, 'That's how big a board you're getting.' "

Holmes: Bing Surfboards (2008) page 164, quoting Drew Kampion in The Surfer's Journal, unspecified.

Gerry Lopez outlines his early shaping history, including recalling his 8 ft 6'' Brewer- "the very first mini-gun", in his book Surf Is Where You Find It, Patagonia Inc. (2008).
The relevant chapter, The Buddy, is online at:
Patagonia: The Cleanest Line
http://www.thecleanestline.com/2008/04/the-buddy.html

Incidentally, while "Ted S. had his 8'9" pintail in one piece till it was two pieces" appears to indicate that Little Red was fatally injured at Honolua Bay, it was actually 8 ft 4'' and survived to return to Australia:

For what it's worth, so called Little Red board was 8'4" in length
...
It didn't break badly in Hawaii and I took it back to OZ.
Regards, Ted."

- Ted Spencer, personal email, November 2003.
Many thanks to Ted Spencer for this invaluable contribution.

Furthermore, although McTavish expressed the opinion in 1972 (above) that "Ted Spencer's little double end sausage which went well in small surf" , his enthusiasm for riding different designs is demonstrated by a John Witzig photograph of McTavish riding Little Red on a substantial  wave at Honolua Bay printed on the cover of Surf International, Volume 1 Number 12, circa 1969.

Finally, for those with a (possibly unhealthy) interest in surfing literature, McTavish's Surf International article includes the often quoted "A GIANT GREEN CATHEDRAL AND I AM THERE", invariably ridiculed as an example of one of the many excesses of the era.
Likewise, Jock Sutherland was derided for his similar themed description of tube riding as "In the Pope's Living Room" in a 1970 Surfer magazine interview (Volume 11, Number 6, page 72).
Both possibly owe a debt to Phil Edwards, a surfer unlikely to be associated with the psychedelia of the late 1960s, who, when describing his first ride at the Banzai Pipeline, wrote:

"The pipe was swirling thinly on top and it was a burst of green crystal with shafts of sunlight coming through it.
It was like a whirling cathedral; yet, immense, overpowering, somehow quiet."

 Edwards, Phil: You Should Have Been Here An Hour Ago. (1967), page 154.

As indicated by Gerry Lopez ("and a couple of other Aussies", above) Young, McTavish and Spencer were not the only notable Australian surfers to ride the waves of Honolua Bay that winter.
Peter Drouyn, following his placing in the Mahaka Contest, also flew to Maui:

"Honolua Bay was probably the best surf we had over there, although Haleiwa was pretty good.
We had Honolua at 15 -18 ft., consistent and only 12 guys in the water.
...
I was riding one of the small stubby boards.
I borrowed it from Wayne Parkes, the New Zealand surfer."

- Drouyn, Peter: Drouyn
Surfing World, Volume 10 Number 3, March 1968, page 14.

Other relevant, but currently unexamined, magazine articles:

Surfer, Volume 9 Number 3, 1968.
Corky Carroll,  1967 Surfer Poll Award winner, Noseriding cover.
"The Challenge from Down Under" featuring Bob McTavish and Nat Young.

Surfer, Volume 9 Number 4, 1968.
Nat Young at Honolua Bay cover in vee bottom outline.
Drew Kampion essay explores "the super short, uptight, v-bottom, tube carving plastic machines and other assorted short subjects"

Other 1968 visitors to France included Nat Young, Wayne Lynch and Ted Spencer, on a tour that eventually arrived in Puerto Rico for the 1968 World Contest.
1968 European ChampionshipsLa Barre France
1st Wayne Lynch
2nd Nat Young
Their exploits would be documented in Paul Witzig's Evolution, released in 1970.

Surfer, Volume 9 Number 6, 1969.
"The Challenge from Down Under" featuring Bob McTavish and Nat Young

Surfer, Volume 9 Number 6, 1969.
Nat Young at La Barre, France, cover.
Fred Hemmings wins the world title in Puerto Rico.
The evolution of the Short Board, Phase II with Drew Kampion.
Filmmaker Eric Blum introduces "The Fantastic Plastic Machine," featuring George Greenough's never-before-seen in-the-tube perspectives.

International Surfing (US)Volume 5 Number 1, February-March1969.
The World Contest held at Rincon, Puerto Rico. In the world contest, 15-year-old Margo Godfrey won the women's division, while Fred Hemmings captured the men's division.
Plus a look at early shortboards. 

surfresearch.com.au

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