Your first board

First board was an 8' WRV Funshape...still a good board. I busted the nose completely off and got some good exp fixing dings, in fact I need to attend to her b4 I float 'er again, I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these days

 

As I mentioned in another thread, my first board was a 9' yellow Liquid Shredder. I must have been 8. Rode it for a year or two before it snapped in half on a sandbar. I was so pissed. I still remember walking it out to the trash can. A couple pulled right over and asked if they could have it. The husband was going to try and repair it for their son, who was interested in surfing. Never saw the board again, but I do hope that it saw action once more.

 

You definitely have game sir. On the beach and on the web.. Yankee HOTY..LMAO.

 

My first board was a 7' waterlogged, green with ducktape highlights, Nomad single fin. After I learned how to stand up on it, I moved the fin all the way up in the box so it could turn. It got stolen a couple of months later, because I had to hide it from my parents because they told me I would put my eye out if I surfed. So I kept it hidden in the bushes at Haunted House, which was an old abandoned house where we surfed at day and partied at night. Once it was gone, I manned up ( I was 14 ) and told my folks what happened and told them I was buying another board no matter what ( I had a paper route back then ). The rest is history..surfing has ruined my life.

 

Is your neighbor having anymore yardsales?

 

Geeze reading these posts tells me that I am really old, lol. My first board was a styrofoam board with a woven plastic skin, blue on top white on bottom with no fins, this was 1977. I rode that thing for 2 seasons and would paddle out right along the other guys like I was one of the gang. I could never understand why I couldn't get rides like the other guys. No one said a word to encourage or discourage me they just let me do my thing. I don't think young surfers today realize what an advantage in equipment etc that they have over people who grew up before all the advances. I can remember looking at magazines and see guys defying gravity in a committed bottom turn and trying a whole summer to do it. I mean even on waist high mush my whole wave would be about getting into that layed out position. I would blow wave after wave trying it. I never realized that it was a picture of a fraction of a second and then he was upright and moving towards the lip. Without moving live examples it wasn't that obvious. The only time I saw those maneuvers in motion was during one of the local surf movies that I could get to once a season.

 

^^lol, my first wave riding tool was a canvas surf mat then sponges came out.

 

I had both! I rode the blue/white styro behind the boat. Surf mats are just classic--especially given the amount of skin they can wear off your stomach and chest.

 

i had the rebel flag and the budweiser ones!

 

6' WRV rounded pin twin. Then moved to a couple of custom In The Eyes. Trashed the WRV turning it into a wakeboard (called a freeboard back then) by bolting sailboard straps to it and chopping the tail into a squash.

 

This thread is awesome! I love old boards, and admittedly have a problem with buying old/new/used boards simply because I like the shape or brand even if I have no intention of riding it. Boards are addicting whether they are for surf, snow or skate. I just want them all.
My first actual surfboard was/is a 6,0 Town and Country (I think) with glassed in fins and some sweet barbed wire painted around the edges of the top of the deck. I have since broken off the rear fin and fixed it, so now its a twin. The think is yellowed beyond belief, partially spray painted and feels like the foam inside has disintegrated to nothing so it feels hollow. Its in surprisingly good shape despite the aforementioned issues. The kid I bought it from was waaaay too big for it, and so was I pretty much. But for $50 bucks I didn't care. It was thin and narrow like the old Al Merrick Kelly Slater models that people bought and then realized they are impossible to surf unless you are Kelly. I surfed it for like a season. Maybe I caught a wave or two.
The next year I saved up and bought an orange and white 6'2 Oxbow fish from Kittery Trading Post as they were liquidating their surf stuff to stop selling boards. This is what I really considered my first board. I did all my progressing on it and also had those "never forget" rides on it. Over three or four years of all year surfing it got real beat up. I put it to the side while my quiver grew. Last summer I pulled it out and had it all professionally repaired. She looks sweet as hell now. I took her out early this spring and loved it! I'll never get rid of these or any boards. I'm too attached.

 

We used to do the same and called them skurfers. My shaper friend still has one ( he just reinforced it with carbon fiber/kevlar) with a hydrofoil that gets pulled behind a jet skii and he does crazy stuff, like flips, backward flips, and some how pulls it off. It is a tough learning curve.

 

Was looking for a picture of one of these online a while. Loved those things, but my big problem was by mid July the styrofoam would be in three pieces under the cloth. Still rode it in pieces til the end of the sumeer every year.

Forget the age, anywhere from 8-10 yrs old, I graduated to hand-me-down boards from my brothers. My favorite was a 5' 2" Egg with a small single fin, Smithie Surfboards by Australia. My mother bought it used in the early 70s for my oldest brother and we all learned on it. She has held on to it all these years, and won't let any of her grandkids surf on it as it is a family relic.

We also had a real nice 5'8" Rise Surfboards single fin that we passed through the family as well. Don't know what happened to that one.

 

Mine was a 9'8 heavy and rotting 60's hobie that had been my grandfather's then my mother's. It weighed 40 lbs before a surf and 60lbs after. Hardly any rocker and my most consistent trick was pearling. the skeg was ripped off so many times even duct tape was ineffective. Wasnt too sad to retire that thing.

 

These are my oldest boards and definitely some keepers. farthest left is a friends old beater.
Correction... What I thought was a Town and Country is an "Island Path" Second to right.

 

Which reminds me that my first surfboard was just a slab of Styrofoam in the shape of a surfboard my dad bought me in '65 from the PX. We were living on a fort in Bama and were going to Da Guff for summer vacation. I got a horrendous belly and nip rash the first day. And that was just playing in my bedroom on the Fort.

 

Paddington has a gnarlaroo fatty.... Its his first board.... he still surfs it.... being that he just got it like 3 months ago.

 

Man oh man those blue boards would tear your nips and rib bumps to shreds! I still have scar tissue from those things. Mine would break in half too and would still surf them as they flexed all over. I went out to a local store last year and bought two canvas inflatable mats for my son and I. They are really fun in big waves ( if you can get them to the lineup).

 

A blue 6'6" swallow tailed epoxy canyon.. Damn china pop outs.

 

6'2" Planet Blue.