Herbie Fletcher 8'5"

Condition: Vintage board, lovingly restored by Bob Merson.

Description:

Herbie/Hamilton

8'4" x 225/8" x 31/4' Herbie Fletcher nose rider Late 1970's step deck shaped by Billy Hamilton

All boards have stories to tell. Some better than others.

This board came from the collection of Kaua’i surfer Mike Kuntz. The board was shaped ay Billy for Herbie who rode it for a while. Billy has confirmed  that this is one of about 30 boards that he made with Herbie. Mike, who was a friend of Billy's, acquired the board and left at at Billy's home so that when he visited he would have it to ride. During that time it was ridden by Billy, Laird and Mike.

When I got it it had been well used and abused. The tail was badly damaged, the rails and nose were banged up and there were soft spots on the bottom. Fortunately the logo was clean and the deck was solid. Just lots of large pressure dents (Laird?).

I chopped off the tail and added a resin and wood tail block. The deck is all original. After all the repair work I pulled the colors from the logo and sprayed a fade on the bottom and rails.

Resin pin lines finished it off. ReStoked!!!

HERBIE WAS AN EXCELENT NOSERIDER. HIS SQUARE NOSE DESIEN GENERATES LIFT.

Herbie Fletcher grew up surfing and skating in Huntington beach in the early 60's. In 1963 he was photographed skating in an empty backyard pool in what has since become recognized as the earliest ever example of pool skating, captured a full decade before the dog town crew took up the mantle. Aged 16 Herbie left his childhood home and headed for Hawaii, where he moved into the back of Dewey Weber's rusted Cadillac, which was permanently parked at Vals's reef. By the following year he was turning heads with standout performances at Sunset and Honolua bay and in '66 he was invited to star in Greg Mcgillivay's film Free and Easy.

After going quiet for a decade, he re-emerged in the 1970's as a protagonist in longboarding's first major post-shortboard revolution resurgence. By the end of the decade, he'd founded Herbie Fletcher surfboards, started Astrodeck and fathered sons Christian and Nathan. In the 80's, Herbie began pushing the limits of wave riding using motorized craft, riding Malai Bay on Maui on a jet ski in 84, and instigating the first ever solid wave tow session with Martin Potter, Tom Carroll and Michael Ho at Pipe in 87. He also took up tools as a filmmaker, putting out the iconic Wave Warriors series.

Over the preceding decades, Herbie would go on to make countless more surfing films, including various high-performance aerial flicks that served as marketing for Astrodeck and dozens of longboard films.

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