Tim Lynch Followup ...

A couple of people have emailed and asked me about Tim Lynch and his boards. So, I thought I would elaborate...

As I implied in the previous post, Tim Lynch was -- from a hull rider's perspective -- the best low-railer surfer in the world outside of Nat Young and Michael Petersen. (Again, this is just my opinion.)

I was working at Gordon and Smith down in San Diego during the early 70's, and got to see Tim's boards and surfing first hand. If you have even a smidgen of appreciation for hull surfing, you wouldn't believe how good Tim was. He was a big guy -- with big feet -- and stood in the middle of his board and carved the whole thing over on it's rail like the bottom was completely round and the fin was a foot up. Except the board was dead flat and the fin was set back on the tail. WTF???

I took some 8mm movies of Tim surfing out at the Cliffs, and later showed them to a bunch of "up north" hull surfers. "WHO THE FUCK IS THAT???" everyone screamed in unison after about 15 seconds.


Tim often said that he loved the way Frye/Staples Eggs surfed, but couldn't get them to work himself. So...he wanted something that worked for him, but surfed along the lines of an egg.

John Holly was shaping at G&S at the time, and was developing a swallow tailed single fin with a fuller outline than most contemporary boards. This was at the height of the pulled tail, needle nose "Island Gun" phase...
 

The board John came up with -- inspired by the Lis Fish -- was eventually called the "Summer Fish" by G&S, and Tim took to it like a duck to water.

Here are a couple of John Holly Summer Fishes, from 1976, made under his Seagull label...

It actually makes sense that Tim would find his voice on a board derived from the Lis Fish. The Fish is probably the closest thing to hull surfing practiced on a flat bottom board... 

 

 

Jeff Ching

Steve Lis

...and the boards Tim rode came directly from the Fish, albeit with a single fin. 

I was so blown away with Tim's surfing that I spent a couple of years, off and on, fiddling with the type of boards he rode...trying to replicate what I had seen in the water. To no avail, I'm afraid...

As I recall, Tim used a solid glass Brewer template fin, set back near the tail. His boards were generally 6'10'' long, 21" wide, with a 16" nose and a 14" tail. I forget what the swallow width and depth was. The decks and bottoms were flat. Very "blocky." Maybe a bit of V in the back. When he rode them, they looked 6" to 8" shorter...in part because he was a big guy, in part because he would sink the entire board when he turned.

Tim only had moderate success as a mainstream contest surfer, and my guess is that, a) he was never that into it, and b) his lines were too powerful and drawn out to garner the attention of judges. Their loss was our gain!

Mr. John Holly, today, cutting out a board with that familiar nose curve...