DROUYN Challenger

I made this for Peter Drouyn in 1982. I’d just started making boards for the pros, starting with Ketut Menda and moving through to Shaun Tomson and Larry Bertlemann. The South Africans, Hawaiians, and Japanese surfers got excited about my shapes. All of a sudden, all these guys were out surfing Burleigh on my boards! I’d hit paydirt.

Peter Drouyn—an idol of mine—asked me to shape him a board. He’d challenged Mark Richards to a surf-off. Peter even took out full-page ads in Tracks magazine, showing him wearing women’s tights—a sort of mankini—while holding one of my boards. I wasn’t quite sure it was the best promotion I could get at the time. The surf-off never happened; a cyclone hit the site and blew it away.

I surfed Burleigh many times with Peter on this board. It shows how design had changed from the single-fin look to a more evenly distributed volume throughout the board—most importantly, the narrow nose and wider tail. Compared to the first board, it’s like an inch has been moved off the nose and onto the tail, allowing you to surf on the tail without shuffling back and forth.

It was a really special period to be surfing Burleigh. There were a whole lot of shapers on the Gold Coast: Murray Bourton, Al Byrne, Gil Glover, and others. They were all shaping the most beautiful boards. In the early ’80s, most of the best boards in the country were coming out of Queensland.

I’ve actually been surfing this board recently out at pumping Burleigh. Got some bombs and had crew paddling up to me, asking what I was riding.

Material: PU