This is a 9'6'' Rick UFO model from 1966/67. It was, in some ways, a caricature of the trend towards step-decks...which started with the Yater Spoon in the summer of 1965. Like several other radical models in the mid-60's, the UFO featured a step tail as well as a step deck.
It also had a glass-on fin that was pretty sophisticated for the era...it had elements of both the narrower Greenough-inspired flex fins, and the nose-rider tip-bulb fins.
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Both boards had glass-on fins, during the hey day of the WAVE Fin System era.
3 comments:
That UFO is from the first era of specifically made decals for the model. ('67) Before that the letters were cut out of the word sUrFbOards. I think the polisher John Shandera (spelling?) was behind the model name and maybe the model design. I started sweeping the floors at Ricks about this time as a totally stoked 19 yr old going to Jr. College. They were noseriders and John Leininger convinced me to NOT get a noserider "performance" board, but to get a Barry Kanaipuni pintail like the one below in the blog, and devote myself to "power surfing" and blending with the wave energy rather than posing. Sounds just like mat surfing, doesn't it? Riding that maroon gloss BK pintail with red foam outside stringers (rather than t-bands) really improved my surfing, because it was so edgy. In an odd way, it prepared me for the Greenough "Baby" 6 months later that blew the doors off my surfing and made it a life-long commitment! In a nutshell, that's why I go by Speedshaper.
Oh, yeah the UFO fin was cut out in the back, we started doing that in '67, hacking down the "D" fins of the era to get more performance. I'm sure this UFO was one of those. The BK pintail I had possessed a Waveset fin box and probably had a Greenough fin, but we still made glass-ons. They kept getting smaller and smaller profiles as Greenough led us down the path to design obsession and personal experimentation. (Thanks, George!) Speedshaper
Thanks SS, that's good insight...
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