Flashback To The 'Summer of ‘69'

The “Summer of 69” film dusts off radical shapes previously lost amid surfing’s most revolutionary period

- Randy Rarick

The Shortboard Revolution began in 1967 when longboards reigned supreme and over the next 2 years, board lengths dropped from 10-foot tankers to 7-foot “mind machines”. Such was the era of hippies, psychedelics and anything goes.

The designs that defined the summer of ‘69 actually had their genesis in the fall of 1968 at the World Surfing Championships in Puerto Rico. Back then, long before digital media, GoPros, videos or cell phones, the bi-annual gathering of surfing’s best was where surfboard design concepts came together and where the agenda was set for the coming year. While Hawaii’s Fred Hemmings eventually won the contest, it was the influence of the Australians that was the talk of the event. Defending champion, Nat Young, lead the charge and it was his designs and those of his fellow Aussies, that set the American manufactures on a path that came to fruition in the summer of ‘69. Nat had spent the months in the lead up to the event in France and, along with Wayne Lynch, had been testing and refining his equipment, which consisted of a slightly fuller, yet pointed nose, round tail, straight bottom rocker and a flotation-favorable S-deck. Keith Paull, the defending Australian Champion, also turned up in France with his version of a similar shape before heading on to the Caribbean. This was at a time when the Americans were still coming off their passé vee bottoms and the Hawaiians were adapting their pintails into miniguns.