We were lucky enough to be donated the other day a classic old course racer and thought I'd better share the pics.

This was the last course racing board raced by Hedgie just before course slalom came and changed the game.

Very different to today's current crop and without a doubt won't be easy to sail well but it still looks the biz for when the wind gets up.









Sam.

Go take it to the raceboard worlds Sam and give it a crack!! Looks fast in the right winds.

When I tell lay persons I windsurf I'm sure this is what they imagine I ride. How times have changed.

Hey Sambo I reckon Geoff will be there asap to buy that one!

I've got Mark Pauls PWA(world cup) race board and Chris249 has Robby Naishs

Hi KA 360 that's a nice board. I just wanted to fact check- I don't believe Mark Paul competed in the PWA or WSMA as it then was. I guess he used that board in other events like the Rip Curl Wave classic at Point Danger or the Sony Contest etc.

It would be interesting to see Chris 249 post pictures of his Robby Naish race board.

Best wishes

^^^ Yes I think you are correct and he did compete in the Sony surflite at Longreef. I think all 3 boards are of similar vintage . The peterson board may be the youngest and the Naish would be the oldest.Looks like the Pederson board has the lowest volume. The Naish has the most volume. I rode the red Naish board in a comp in Queensland/Currumbin when I was about 16 or17 in the early 80's. It was a marathon and a big fleet with lots of carnage .By the end of the race there was big chunk missing out of the rail about a meter back from the nose.Yeah sorry about that Chris I placed somewhere in the top 10,ahead of Robby So my Bombora is in better nick than the Naish

In the wave section of the event there was even more carnage. Waves were above mast high but with light winds.I was on fire with my NP RAF 10/20,1 of only 3 in the country at the time.I was light and could get enough speed to make it out through the breakers and thats all i had to do to win my heats. My luck ran out after my heat against Hawaiian Maui Meyer .Next heat made it out again but on the way back in I didn't have enough speed to outrun a massive set wave and it just ate me up.Next day I was able to get half the board,the shreaded RAF and an Ampro mast in 4 pieces of the rocks

KA, I just went out to the shed and grabbed some old mags. It looks as if you got your contests mixed up, just like it turns out that I had the identity of the winner of the amateurs in the Qld Pro-Am mixed up; for years I thought Lachlan Gilbert beat me for the Overall in the "amateurs" (which included world champions who were fully sponsored, as you'll recall) but it turns out it was Grant Long, Australia's first windsurfing world champ.

Although there were a dozen World Cup pros in Queensland, Robby wasn't there; he left after the Sony. Maui did the same. Randy stayed on and it must have been him you beat. We started the marathon ahead of the pros and in the light winds it was D2s first, second and third (yours truly) home ahead of guys like Longy and Phil McGain and the rest of the World Cup pros on raceboards.

The Sony event immediately beforehand had very small waves for the wave performance. I think the Sony you remembered was the next season, when there was big swells and no wind. I'd pretty much dropped out of windsurfing and had no big wavesail, and I remember you kindly offering me your big sail before the heat, and me turning it down because (a) I didn't want to break it and (b) I had drawn Robby Naish so I had no chance anyway! I can still remember getting one good jump, crashing, and then spending the whole heat trying to waterstart while Robby was doing his thing.



Aribenasher, this pic is either of the board I have (which is what I was told when I bought it from Luke Hargreaves' sponsor and the guy who refinished it) or one of Robby's copies. I have seen a pic of Robby with two of these boards and the other looks a bit more like mine, but there's just a small difference in the paint.

It's actually 14 feet long but a tiny board compared to the modern ones and stuff like the Hedgie special. They were something like 230L or more whereas I think this one is about 190L; it's skinnier and much less deep than the later boards. It's a magic thing to handle but as Robby told me, the concave boards with their chunky rails were much quicker in the marginal planing and tight reaching of the World Cup's European rounds. As late as 1985 he and/or his dad Rick told me that this board would still be the fastest thing around on a broach reach in big waves - it's basically an enormous gun with rounded sections ahead of the mast.

The other Naish I have is similar to the centreboard area and then runs out to a square tail with twin fins. I lent it to my bro and it came back covered with peeling white paint so it needs a redo. Bruce Wylie used it in the '84 Rip Curl and said in the marginal planing stuff it was as fast as the early concave raceboards that Robby was using (with the board I now have as a spare and high-wind board) because it had so much planing surface. The bizarre thing is that it gybes beautifully, which you wouldn't expect from a square tailed board 13' long.

I don't do raceboards any more, but if anyone ever said I could only ever sail one thing for the rest of my life, it would be a raceboard. They've got the most incredible range of fun; you can cruise around in glassy calms, through them through one handed duck gybes, put on a backpack and go away for the weekend, have some great racing, teach friends, and go for epic long offshore reaches knowing that you can get home safely and quickly no matter what. And the complexity of handling something with mast track, centreboard, various strap positions and sail controls across the full range of wind strengths and angles is fascinating.

Hey Chis, this is a Mistral Pan Am proto.

Chris, This is great stuff you have written, truly fantastic photo and great boards. Owning one of these Naish boards is like owning a Bob Pike brewer gun. Thanks for sharing.

Great history all round guys.

It would be great to see this beside a production raceboard of the era- equipe, lightning, tiga race (if any still exist).

During that period I worked in a shop in Wollongong (Performance Sailboards). Hedgie was riding Mike Davis-MD boards at the time. It was strange, as nearly none of the Wollongong, South Coast, Gerroa crew would ride MD boards (wave or slalom)- they were generally considered to be "dogs"compared to the other available boards (Ralph Riddell, Dave Byrne). It was funny that Hedgie, Josh Adams and at least one other good wavesailor (Jeremy someone) were using MD boards.

At the time (say 86-89) Byrne was making glass slalom boards for Phil McGain.

During the very early wavesailing era (around 83/4), Byrne contracted Peter Cabrinha to supervise shaping at the Wollongong location. Consequently, for many years there were a lot of Byrne/Cabrinha branded boards getting around in the area. This was during the period when Byrne sponsored Tom Carroll and he got a good few world surfing titles. I think they were really trying to build on the international recognition of Byrne surfboards to translate over to windsurf boards.

Again, even at a local level, it was not like everyone was using Byrne wave or slalom boards (maybe 40%). Another 40%+ were using Ralph Riddell/Performance Sailboards wave and slalom boards.

The owner of the shop donated a Performance Sailboards/Ralph Riddell slalom board to Hedgie. I recall the conversation between the owner and Hedgie at the Illawarra Yacht Club. He had taken it to an event in Japan (89) and was very impressed by the way the board went, but said he felt loyalty to MD, so wasn't wiling to switch.

The lines of those particular slalom boards (like Hedgie used in Japan) had been heavily influenced by one of Bruce Kendall's boards, that he brought to Wollongong for a Sony event in 87(?). At the time a lot of slalom boards were very boxy, square, flat things. I remember Bruce Kendall's board being eyed up after the event (maybe even a few templates taken???) as it was a major departure from the thinking at the time with much "softer" and gradual lines then the then standard.

During that time there was a very strong course racing scene at Illawarra Yacht Club. The shop had a strong relationship with Tiga in Australia as far as course racing was concerned. Most of the good local sailors were on tiga pros then tiga race boards. Anders Bringdals course board was in the shop for some time, and I don't know what ever happened to it. Like Hedgies board, it may show up one day if someone recognises what it is.

Clarence

But a huge amount of guys were using MD boards in Sydney and other spots, especially Long Reef. Josh Adams was regarded by Mr Naish as the best port tack wave sailor he had seen. Not bad for "dog" boards. On the other hand the Cabrinha's were regarded as heavy and slow.

Was Tom Luedecke sailing MD's when he won Cocus cup before moving to Tiga?

Yes I recall he was sponsored by MD back at that time and I remember reading freesail back then and I believe the answer is yes.

MD used to write articles on board design in Sailwind quarterly as I recall and must have had some significant credibility. I never like the look of the MD boards but never sailed one. They weren't common in WA except for travellers who brought them here. In the West in the 1980s we had Bombora Protos, Highwinds, Windstix, Santosha, Blaxell, Warren Thompson, Delta Design and Precision Equip by Tom Hoye.

No intention to p1ss off MD devotees. Just one of those things that was peculiar- several sponsored sailors were using Mike's boards internationally, but very few of the locals sailed them. I don't even think it was a rivalry thing- if a Byrne board came in the door on consignment, it would go pretty quickly, but never the MDs. (At the time Phil McGain and Kai Hopf were both using Dave Byrne boards).

Even some of the most devoted Gerroa local wavesailors ended up switching from MD during the late 90s (Mike's shop in Kiama being about 10km from Gerroa). I don't recall what One Knot Warren was using at the time.

MD did have regular full page ads in SWQ. Would make him a preferred author in such a magazine (?).

Clarence

Chris249, Thanks for the detail in your post. I raced a custom PanAm style longboard in the '84 Rip Curl Classic as well, and recall Robby and Randy both had orange boards with thick rails and concaves. They may have been early prototypes for the Mistral equipe, as they resembled the boards I have seen in videos of the European world cups later in the '80s.

Am just getting back into raceboards after 30 years, and agree with your comments on their versatility and wide range of use.

Found a picture of my PanAm from 1984. They certainly were more svelt than today's raceboards:

And a pic of an early board Robby rode around the same time in PBA tour. Looks like a proto of Equipe LCS. I remember him, Randy and Nevin Sayre riding orange mistral prototype raceboards in the 1984 Rip Curl Wave Classic: