Arlene Maltman

This Surf scene from 1984 is the first Britsh mag to feature a female surfer on the cover. The surfer is Jersey's Arlene Maltman, British champ in 1984, although this mag says Arlene is also Europes leading lady. Arlene got a good sponsership deal from British Airways, and was part of a surge of British female talent in the 80s. She still surfs and competes today.

Heres an article from Surfers journal about a guy who found one of Arlene's boards at a dump in the US, and eventually traced her to learn its history .

Arlene, mid 80s

80s thrusters

Heres a mid 80s Crab I sland thruster with a cool spray from Stephane's collection. 6'2 x 19 1/2 made by Pete Crab in Swansea . Check the channels and wave graffiti graphics. Pete started making boards in 1977 and still shapes today.

From Tube news 1985/6 , Glen Winton quad model on the left.

On ebay recently was this classic late 80s thruster by Adrian Phillips of Fluid Juice. Made at St Merryn its a cutting edge board of its time and still looks good with strong colours and not much damage.

From Surf scene 1987

Nobby the Japanese craftsman...

Nobuhito Ohkawa, is a Japanese craftsman in all senses of the word. He builds Paulownia boards with a passion and in a method he has created to craft beautiful boards as witnessed by the two he brought out to the wooden board day last August. All his timber for any one board is cut from the same tree and the board is built with all the grain going in the one direction to control the flex. A coat of epoxy resin is infused on the inside of the skins and a only a coat of varnish on the outside so as to not inhibit the natural flex of the chosen timbers.He is already booked to be here again this August . And is building new boards to showcase his talents.

Check him out at www.nobbywoodsurfboards.com

It is always great to see new ideas evolve

They may not all be what some would call fish exactly , but they certainly are a close cousin .It is always great to see people thinking outside the box and experimenting and blending ideas and design elements to come up with something different.Sage Joske from Valla Surfboards near Coffs Harbour has created the Vector above. Sage is an avid Alaia and fish shaper and rider and from this the Vector was hatched.
This is the Anderson Stealth 6' 4" and is an obvious marriage of the two, like a fish on top of an Alaia , then add fins.This is in California.
Fins for bite when you need them and out when you don't.The foam will certainly help the paddle into a wave.
The fish and the Alaia marriage is an interesting one, but not unlikely.I would say the Simmons is pretty well involved in there as well.This is the sort of thing that will be seen at the Fish Fry in 2 weeks time.

Sandia for Ryan

New green 5'6 Sandia fish for Ryan.

Sandia Collage

Doug Wilson

I was sorry to hear about Doug Wilson, who has recently passed away after an operation. Doug was an important figure on the early surf scene and became a pioneer of Britains surf industry. Born in Sussex, he came to Cornwall to lifeguard in 1959 and became a surf photographer. He was good friends with Bill Bailey and the two were some of the earliest malibu surfers in Newquay, welcoming and learning from foreign surfing visitors, and often using their boards.Doug was one of the four founders of the European Surfing company, better known as Bilbo surfboards , and was a successful manager of the shop from 1965, the year Bilbo was born. The shop was the first large scale surf store in the UK or Europe and was a focal point for the Newquay surf scene, even importing the first surf mags into the UK, Surfer magazine from the US.In 1994 Doug co wrote 'You should have been here yesterday ', an invaluable study on the roots of British surfing. Top - Doug meets Bruce Brown at Heathrow in 1967 ; Brown was in London for a premiere screening of the Endless Summer.Above - early surf trip to France, Doug in centre, 1966.

Bill Bailey and Doug at Newquay 1963; the blue board was the first foam model in the UK made by Bob Head.

the "apache twin"

this is my newest board for the week, this model is the "apache twin" its my rocket fish template,

 it has the speed and glide of a twin fish but is more performance oriented.

this model draws great lines and is the mac daddy at point breaks.

if long fast arcs are your thing and your a bit of a smooth operator then this is the board to get you operatin' correctly

this one is in double orange tint with black and white pinlines, has rasta's signature future fins

 they are a vector foiled fin. again to push the performance aspect,

she measures in at 5'11" x 20" x 2 1/2"

Wellen

We are now carrying a few choice items from Wellen.

Almond Shop 1-Year

Ciro just sent us this!

























Many thanks, friend!

Wish you could be here next week!

FreakFish calling Daz…

Its nearly fully sanded and then comes back for pinlines and artwork… the big decision, speed coat and get it in the water straight away or gloss and polish and wait at least another week… Hmmmm

This one will also be on demo so email if you want to try it out.

Demo blunt diamond…

Was surfing a great little break I call “Scalps” this morning, lovely right reef (don’t ask where) with a few friendly compadres… and one asked about the blunt diamond demo – so if you happen to be reading this post… here’s a pic. It’s just waiting for Daz to polish it. 6’8” x 21 1/8” x 2 5/8” It has a wide tail but foiled through so its easy to bury the rail and the double concave bonzer bottom keeps it really lively and fast. The fin set up is EVO3 with American Hardwood fins by yours truly. resin tint on the bottom. 6oz + 4oz deck with a 6oz bottom with a 4oz fin patch. This one was glassed by Jason. It also has a Go-Pro camera mount on the nose…

Baby bonzer fins

Seren’s board gets a step closer – having just tacked on her baby bonzer fins that I foiled out of American Ash… they will get glassed and hot coated on on Monday and the rear fin will probably be an FCS plug based Protect fin to start with and then a larger custom FCS EVO fin that I will make when the time comes…

Which one?

I just designed these for Gotcha. Which one would you wear?

Tigger Newling singlefin

Early 70s singlefin from the talented Tigger Newling , from Alex's collection. It's 6'6 and would have been made around Constantine where Tigger grew up surfing, becoming a local standout and winning the British title in 1973. Alex has a new book coming out about his photos of British surfing from the 70s, and can be contacted at alexcam@eclipse.co.uk .

Line up for the British championships held in Jersey in 1969. Tigger on the left with a similar board, Pete Jones in the middle.

CUSTOMS

these are a few of my favourite things...

surfboards with wings and guitars with strings, these are a few of my favourite things

New Slide Issue

Just got some copies of the new Slide Magazine in the shop.

Stop by and check it out. Adrian Knott did some artwork for a feature on Ryan Tatar. And there's a nice little article about Cyrus.

Kookumber Illustration | James Kamo

James Kamo did this illustration of a Kookumber and passed it along to us.

I threw in a couple other illustrations he did as well.

Thanks James.

Cutty Animation from James Kamo on Vimeo.

Surf art 'Beyond the blowhole' by Daryn McBride

Mount Maunganui's Blowhole on a big cyclone swell, seen from jump rock. Daryn's painting captures the feeling as a set sweeps in perfectly.

Skip Frye interview with John Mollusk: the shaper's tree myth

Here's the full transcripted interview from part one of 'Skip School: Life lesssons with Mr Frye:http://mollusksurfshop.com/2010/02/skip-school-life-lessons-with-mr-frye/" That board's got lift in the nose most of these are Simmonses this is a twin fin Simmons and this is a singlefin, this is Dave Sweet and ah Buzzy Trent, malibu, ( John Mollusk: that's Buzzy Trent ? ) yeah, ( John Mollusk: That's great ! ) yeah, young Buzzy Trent, teenage Buzzy Trent, you know I dunno how old he was but, I just really like that shot, the board's just slicing across the wave, afternoon at Malibu look how glassy it is, the sun's on the back. I stopped there for a second.You know I was influenced, influenced probably by Edwards as much as anybody, Hynson, you know Hynson I grew up with Hynson, I think Phil Edwards had probably as much influence in a lot of ways you know, just his kind of philosophy, of you know surfing you know. And it all came from the guys that mentored him, you know, Joe Quigg, Kivlin, Simmons. And I never really thought about it when I was young but as I got older, and just my, love of surfing, I wanted to ah expand my knowledge of who was in front of me you know, like the board design, and you know ah like I said Edwards was really an influence, and then who influenced him and right up the tree you know "This mindless name dropping ramble of Frye's does not qualify as a 'life lesson'. It's just an affirmation of the Californian old boy buddy network which has had a stranglehold on the surfing for the past 60 years. In the video Frye appears to struggle to remember the obligatory list of names in his area of the surftech 'shaper's tree', but eventually manages to recall a few of them. Calling this moronic ramble a 'life lesson' is an insult to surfers, and publishing it as such is typical of the arrogance and complacency of the surf industry cartel. Of course the majority of the gullible surfing public accept this sort of dribble without complaint, as they have all sold their minds and souls for places, however lowly and ingominious they are, as the bottom feeding consumers of the toxic surf industry hierarchy.The surftech shaper's tree was invented in order to propagate the myth that all surfboard shaping knowledge has been passed down from mentor to student, and to establish a list of all supposedly legitimate shapers which is controlled by the Californian old boy network.It's a fascist regime which allows no dissent or discord, with a carefully sanitised corporate facade designed to keep the consumer unaware that the 'variety' in their menu is all just the same potato served different ways.As part 2 of this series will show, there's really nothing intelligent behind the mask. In reality there's an abysmal lack of intelligence and hydrodynamic knowledge, married to a tired and worn out decree of what surfing is supposed to be and how one is supposed to feel about it..

Von Sol by Boardworks

My Newest Design: The SHADOWavailable this Spring....in TEC by Boardworks5-95-116-26-46-87-0www.boardworkssurf.com/shapers/von_sol/index.php