The Bluff

Bob McTavish Interview

Bob McTavish Interview
October 1995 Alex Mal Club Newsletter
by Noel Woods

Our own very special Interview of the Month by Noel Woods, talking to surfing legend, Bob McTavish.

Noel - Congratulations on your team riders success in the National Longboard Titles with 1st and 2nd in the 9ft Open. Do Ray (Gleave) and Jason (Blewitt) give you much feedback on board design or do they listen to your ideas?

Bob - Both guys are very fussy. Each board I make them has some new feature they have requested, all I do is make sure the lines are correct. When some feature is proven, we incorporate it into their model, so the customer wins.

Noel - Since the 60's you have always pushed board design hard towards progressive shapes. Are we going to see any changes in the 90's or just fine tuning?

Bob - The first five years of the 90's has seen the development of many features in longboards - hips in the tail, tri-plane rockers, trim channels, forward mounted fins, stabilizing bevels up front, better nose concaves and rails, double concaves in the tail.

That's a lot of development! The boards I'm shaping now are nothing like what I did through the 70's and 80's (basically just recycled 60's stuff).

The second five years of the 90's will no doubt see more real change - not just refinement. For example - big wave longboards, barrel-riding longboards, probably a revolutionary trimming board to go faster in a straight line than anything before. Also some young guys are demanding better floaters and lip bashing characteristics that could demand development there.

Noel - Longboarding is making a huge resurgence worldwide. Good or bad and why?

Bob - Great!

Firstly, time pressures of modern life limits most of us to scheduled recreation times - you've gotta surf whatever's there when you roll up to the beach. Longboards allow that.

Two, the family can surf small funky waves with you.

Three, longboarding has always been a legitimate part of surfing. Small zippy waves just suit longboards better than short. It never died out in my mind. My wife and I surfed more alone at Ti-Tree in the 70's than the 60's! No one wanted small perfection on short boards, they preferred bigger onshore slop at Sunshine Beach!

Noel - I noticed an ad recently with Gaz riding a soft MAC-T. Tell us a more.

Bob - The MAC-T is my solution to several problems: 1.finally an entry level safe board 2.cleaner on the environment 3.cheaper 4.how many shapes are left in my 51 year old arms?

Noel - The classic 60's photos of you at an empty National Park at Noosa has always made me wonder about the era. Was it really the good old days?

Bob - Life is only as good as your view of it! Surroundings help, that's for sure! Yes, the Sunshine Coast was paradise in the 60's. And our attitude was good - we were fully appreciating it - not blind to it. We knew it was paradise surfing the Bluff, Moffat's, Currimundi, Main Beach, Johnson's. National Park and Ti-Tree by ourselves, just a half a dozen guys on the whole coast, week days anyway. We were very fussy, travelling daily to hit the best! We had the maturity of Bob Cooper and his American friends who'd visit, to fill out our knowledge envelope.

We worked at Hayden's, fully tuning our hot trimming 9'3" boards. It was the hottest act in Australia, tucked away in the rurals. It lead to the development of the short board, the world wide revolution of 67,68.

Yes, it was the good old days.