“It’s amazing what some people throw away,” says Al Lindsay with a smile, glancing proudly at his impressive collection of vintage surfboards. Picked up from rubbish dumps and car boot sales, found overgrown in gardens or washed up with the tide, Al’s boards prove that one man’s junk is another man’s gold.

Words by Helen Gilchrist, photography by Kirstin Prisk

(First published in Stranger 16 - August 2007)

“My collection has happened quite accidentally really – kind of raking and scraping,” he explains. “I haven’t actively gone out looking that much, I’ve just kept my eyes open. You never know what you’re going to find. It’s nice getting something that’s really crap and making something nice out of it… saving it. Otherwise it would probably just get chucked away.” Happy to admit that he is obsessive about getting hold of old boards, Al does, however, point out that he tries to surf as many of them as possible.

With boards dating back to the late 1960s, including one with a Newquay No. 10 registration sticker, the value of Al’s cherished collection is unknown. One thing is for sure, however: every board has a story.

1.  Newquay No. 10
“I’ve had this one about 14 years. It’s my first old board. I was going up to Scotland on holiday, and we stayed in the Lake District for one night with my dad’s friend. In the morning we were walking around his garden and there was a lump of moss down the garden with a pink fin sticking out. I asked him what it was and he said it was a surfboard he used to surf in Newquay in the early 1970s. We peeled the moss back and there was this Bilbo longboard. I didn’t know that much about surfboards back then – I knew it was quite special but I hadn’t really heard of Bilbo before. I looked excited about it, and he said, ‘Oh well, if you can fit it on your car you can have it.’ I had this crappy old Polo with no roofrack, but we found all these bits of rope and tied it on.

I was a shortboarder back then. It appealed to me because it was free and really old and something completely different to surf. I thought it would be quite fun to get my mates on it and have two or three people riding it. It’s about 9’8”. Everyone who’s ever ridden it has loved it. It always gets looks when I’m in the water.

The guy I got it off got it second-hand, but never really used it. The board was probably made in 1966/ 1967. The registration sticker – Newquay no. 10 – must date it to the mid-late 1960s. It must be very rare, because they went up to the 1000s by the late 1970s. I reckon the sticker’s worth £50! I don’t know what the board’s worth – I’m not really interested in selling it though.”

2. The Rubbish Chute
“My girlfriend and I were going for a nice romantic walk along the creek near Looe Beach. We were walking along the shore and there were loads of posh gardens coming down to the beach. On one, there was a rubbish chute that the people had been throwing garden waste and compost down – and it was this Bilbo longboard, tied on to the window with rope. The surfboard had loads of purple paint all over the outside of it, and looked a bit grim, but you could just see the deck and the logo, which caught my attention. That was about three years ago.

I didn’t do anything at the time, but I went back with my flatmate, Nick, about two months later, and we knocked on the door and talked to the woman who owned it. She was incredulous that we wanted it because it didn’t have a mast or a sail with it. We said we’d still be interested in buying it, and she said she’d ask her husband. Another year passed.

I told quite a few of my mates – I wasn’t going to have it at first, as I already had an old Bilbo. I thought I could do a treasure hunt and see who was going to get it. There was a lot of talk about it in the pub at the time. Some people found out where it was, but they didn’t get round to contacting the people. There were vague plans of even trying to lift it in midnight powerboat James Bond-style missions, and mapping out where any security cameras might be.

In the end, I was driving home one day and I thought I’d stop by and see if it was still there. I spoke to them and offered them £40 for it. A few days later, they called me. I wasn’t in, and Nick was there, and they said, ‘You know the Bilbo that you want to buy?’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes…’ And they said, ‘We would accept £40’. I think Nick had a bit of a moral dilemma! When I got home he said to me, ‘Guess who I got a call from?’ And I said, ‘Was it the people with the Bilbo?’ and he was gutted I knew. But he knows he’ll be able to use it once I’ve got it fixed up.

This one is slightly newer than my other one – it was registered in 1969 – it could have been made earlier, but this one is no. 51, and my other one is no. 10.”

3.  Kitty's Board
“This one is for Kitty, my firstborn child (age three months); it’ll be her first board. It’s from a guy I know who got it from the dump. I know him from the car boots. He’s an antique dealer and he goes to the dump every day – we call it The Honeypot – and he picks up boards. I bought this from him in a job lot with some others – I got five for £70. This one is a 5’ twinnie. It’s got three layers of car paint on, which has preserved it really well. It’s as good as new underneath.”

4.  The Estuary Board
“I was driving to Tesco one evening to get some ice cream for my pregnant girlfriend. I drove past the estuary and it was full tide – a nice sunset, and there was this thing floating out in the middle, glowing pink in the sunset. It looked a bit like a windsurf board; it was that far out I couldn’t really tell what it was. I thought there was nothing I could do about it, so I just kept going. On my way back, I noticed it had disappeared. So I stopped and got out and looked over the wall, and there it was just floating there, ready to be picked up! So I took it home.

I think it was in pretty good nick until a day or so before – all the dings are new, so I think it had been quite a nice board. So I reckon a tourist probably had it at home in the loft, and it was quite a nice board, and they brought it down here and went for a surf. They probably didn’t have a leash, or maybe the leash snapped, and they probably panicked or just abandoned it and swam in. So it floated off around the corner to the river mouth, and then just floated in on the flood tide, and banged off a few rocks on the way in. When I found it, it was slimy and covered in seaweed, and even had a few bits of rock stuck in it! I reckon it had only been in the water for a day or two though. I took it to the shapers to see if it was saveable, and he was actually quite enthusiastic about it. It’s ALIAS SURFBOARDS, ENGLAND – I’ve never heard of them, and they didn’t even have a logo, so it must have been a very small company or maybe even just a garage board. I think it’s from about 1973/1974 – you can tell by the shape and the leash plug.

Leash plugs changed a lot. Quite often they went off the fin in the 1960s – there’d be a hole in the fin. In the early 1970s they’d have this loop of fibreglass, or a drilled hole that went through into the fin box, so you could see straight through the board. The ones that are actually plugged into the deck are usually from the mid-1970s onwards. So you can tell a lot by the leash plug.

This is the board that’s in the worst condition that I have. Just finding it like that, I felt sorry for it. It kind of felt like I was meant to find it and make it better. In fact I’d probably be the only person who’d be bothered to dig out an old slimy surfboard! If it was a new one, I probably wouldn’t have bothered… but as it was a nice old 1970s one I thought it had to be worth saving.

5.  Over my dead body
“My friend who doesn’t actually surf, but likes nice old things, got this one at a car boot about six years ago for £25. He came round to show me, and I asked to buy it off him – he didn’t even surf it or anything. He said ‘No. No way, Al, sorry! I know you really like old boards, but I want to keep it.’ Over the next four years I kept badgering him, whenever I saw him I asked him for it. He said, ‘I’ll die before I sell it to you!’ So I thought I had no chance. Then one day, five years after he had bought it, he called out of the blue and said ‘I’m getting rid of a load of my stuff and I’ll sell that board to you if you want.’ It was really hard bartering – I thought he might want about £60 for it, but in the end it took £110 plus two records and a couple of other bits. Quite a lot, but in those five years I’d never found a Bilbo in that condition before – it’s pretty immaculate.

I haven’t surfed it yet, because the nose needs fixing up, but it’s going to be a lovely mellow ride. It’s really old – late 1960s – pretty early for a shortboard. It’s about the same age as the longboards. There aren’t many shortboards from that era around.”

www.alasdairlindsay.com
www.kirstinprisk.com