Here's a really nice tribute/bio of Col Smith of Newcastle (salty language warning).
My friend was in Hawaii when Col arrived that year and took photos of him at Pipe and also wrote to me about him in a couple letters. No one used email back then. Letters and postcards were the norm when traveling. I kept everything.
I rode a few channel bottom boards and they were great. Never in big surf like in the video though. Just stuff around here.
Here's one of them. A double-wing swallowtail twin fin. Mostly I just got what my board maker was making at the time, with limited input by me. After a while I just bought his boards when he was done with them. Seemed to be the easiest path to getting a nice riding shooter.
