For a surfer, there's nothing quite like the ritual, anticipation and excitement of ordering a brand new custom board. There are few sports with a comparable aspect - a hand-built from scratch instrument to realize your goals. And it's always a different experience, depending in large part on the shaper and your expectations. Plus, you never really know what the board will perform like until you hop up on a nice wave, which of course just adds to the excitement of it all.
The above photo documents me with my 3rd surfboard, and my first custom shape: A 6'2" Herbie Fletcher rounded pintail with twin concave wings. The red rails and blue Fletcher logo were my choices and man, was I stoked. This board was ordered about 2 years prior to the thruster coming on the scene. It probably would have been more of a revelation for my surfing if I'd ordered this board as a twin fin (and I almost did, inspired by the surfing of MR and Bertlemann). But the Herbie performed well for a couple years at my home break, and even on a sojourn to Hawaii, before I jumped on the early 80's thruster bandwagon.
Photo by Poppa Loppa, aka Grandpa Rosie
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