Now days we have performance long boards, high performance long boards. Before surfboards started to get short there were no high performance surfboards. We just had surfboards. Making a surfboard high performance was up to the surfer.

The last year of the long surfboard was 1967. and reality is in ’67 there were some boards that could’ve been considered performance or high performance boards, but we didn’t call them high performance boards, they usually had the words “light weight” or “feather light” along with a model name. Basically a board that was in the low 9 foot range and a little thinner, not as wide as some of the other boards you might find on the rack in a surf shop and also, of importance, was they were laminated with lighter fiberglass cloth… of course that's why the were called light weight models.

These shorter, thinner, narrower, lighter boards were the performance boards of the late 60’s. I designed one for myself while shaping at Morey-Pope in 1967. A 9 foot 22 inch wide thinned out narrow nosed light weight board that surfed really well. Quick turns, playful off the tail, good speed in trim. Nose rides, coasters, cutbacks, all the great performance stuff. I liked the board so much and felt you could push it to new and higher surfing performance levels that I used the design in most of the early William Dennis boards when Blinky and I first got started.

I’ve now got a reissue of this board, I call the ’67. A traditional single fin performance long board with a slender over all foil. Nice curve in the outline back of center with a soft rolled bottom and accelerated rocker out the back for quick turns and playfulness on the tail. Narrow nose for lighter swing weight and better wave face fit. A long and low rocker curve through the nose for good trim and nose riding.

The ’67 takes traditional long boarding to new performance levels. The boards are available at Wavefront Surf Shop.

Dennis Ryder

Vince Felix noseriding the "67"