Introduction
This edition has two design features, Hulls by Robert Conneeley and Michael Cundith (Wilderness and Sky Surfboards) on Twin Fins.

Other articles include:
Phil Jarratt: California Dreaming, Part One.
Jarratt Interview: John Milius on Big Wednesday.
John Holmes: Yanks in Oz- Greenough, Bob Cooper, Jack McCoy, Rusty Miller, Michael Cundith, Derek Betner, and Richie West.
Central America
George Greenough Interview : Alternative Energy and Power
Good Vibes.

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Page 29

When Country Soul, Angourie and Lennox were the pillars of surfing, the names Greenough, Brock, Keys, Conneeley and chine hulls were supporting them at the base.
Chine hulls lost popularity when Brookvale flooded the market with a design that looked similar but didn't work.
Once bitten twice shy and most Australian surfers looked towards California and Hawaii for new ideas.
But Robert Conneeley continued experimentingwith the hull concept.
Robert's something of an emigma in Australian surfing.
In '64 he beat Nat for the World Junior Championship, starred in a few surfing movies, made a t.v. commericial, and then cut most of his city ties.
The  hull concept has been evolving over all these years and this is where it stands at the moment.

shape the concept is to produce an all round Australian hot-dog board Optically the plan shape is a curve reaching its widest point 5" forward of halfway and running into a parallel taper until just in from of the fin area. At this point, when your back foot rests, the parabolic taper transforms into an accelerating curve running into the tail. The tail is a rounded square tail, with two points of circumference that change the plan shape curve and then become one fixed radius curve thru the plan shape of the back.

bottom
let's look at the rocker first.
The nose has an initial accelerated nose lift then a gentle feed in curve.
At the widest point the curve greatly flattens and almost becomes straight, then at the same place where the plan shape curve accelerates the bottom curve gently accelerates, and rises out thru the back of the board.
The rocker shape uses the tip for lifting when wet, the feed in the curve to allow water to enter the planing area and then a flow out rise thru the tail.
The simplicity of the rocker is designed to compliment the plan shape.

One of the most misunderstood ideas in surfing is the hull bottom concept. Basically, when you look down on the plan shape off the bottom you observe a centre plain 12 1/2" wide which looks like an inlaid miniature plan shape of the board. Off the side of this miniature planshape is the tri-plane, a strip 4" wide and 3/16" thick, at a slight angle to the centre plane. The chine tappers out nose to tail. When looking along the bottom of the board from the nose, you see a plateau in the middle of the board with two side flats diminishing until they reach the fin. This design gives the board a flat planning section both on its side during a turn and when moving straight. It gives a depth below the water line and allows the board to sit buoyantly on it's curve when being turned.

The rail centre is 1" above the water line at the widest point and the rail shape blends off the tri-plane.
At the nose the rails are low and soft, towards the widest point the rail foil becomes more dominant, then tapers out to the rail but never becomes hard.
 
Sitting on top of these curves is the deck, shaped as complimentary to the bottom and incorporating a flat and shamfered (?) rail shape purely subservient to the bottom.
This is the basic difference in the hull bottom concept and many downrailed boards where the bottom is shaped purely to maintain the hardness of the rails produced by the shape of the deck.
The most important factor of these boards is that they place the planing area, a workable engine-room, completely under your feet.
The nose feed in and the tail release are designed to get the most out of this one planing area situated directly underfoot and constantly under control.
As the trim point is directly underfoot it is not a board designed for walking, its purely a wave riding vehicle rather than a board riding one.

fin Because the board is designed around this one planing area it requires a very special fin to drive it. My first fins were shaped by George but as his fins were not designed for all round surf, but rather specialist tube surf, the fin has needed to be greatly changed. The basis of the fin is a blunt leading edge flowing to a thick spine 1/5 of the way back, then a flat taper. The concept of the fin's area shape is to have a medium width base with a calculated all the way to the tip. There is also a concave taper in the thickness from the widest point in the base through to the tip.

The flex is transmitted right down into the base of the fin, it isn't a twangy tip flex but a controlled bending motion that allows the board to be put on acute angles with the fin still remaining in the water.
The fin doesn't spring back into place giving the allusion of speed out of a turn, but rather it bends back gradually as the board is brought 'round.
My idea of flex in fins is not propulsion out of turns as has been the misconception over the period, but rather for the fin to not resist the board when being turned powerfully.
The fin is designed to move out of the way of the pressure of the water during turns and to allow the water to flow past it, for thiss reason they low area fins.
The high speed fin is 8" deep with a 5 1/2" base and 2 1/2"-3" of flex.
With the small wave fin the trailing edge is extended reducing the flex but still maintaining the overall taper.

Robert Conneeley, Cronlla Point.

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Page 28

Design : Michael Cundith Twin Fins Interview with Paul Holmes (?) Photographs by Martin Tullemans. Michael Cundith, new look twin fins.

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Michael Cundith is an American who makes boards at Byron bay under the Sky label.
A definite winner in any George Greenough look alike contest, Michael in fact has a long association with Greenough, dating back to the days when the Ranch was a secret spot and George lived in a shack on the point.
The Greenough influence showed up in Michael's hull designs when he came to Australia and started making Wilderness Surfboards some years ago.
That influence has given way to practical innovations designed for the fast-peeling waves of his adopted home, the north coast.
And, somewhat surprisingly, practically to Michael's special (?) twin fins.

"With so much small surf on this coast I thought it would be a good move to fully explore the capabilities of twin fins," said Michael . With two fins and everything put together right, you've got a simple, fast hot-dogging unit. They have the thrust of a bonza and you can keep the speed up when you really need it, or stall when you have to.  Unreal on roundhouse cutbacks. The new interest in twin fins started when I just happened to make one for myself a few months ago, and decided later that I really didn't want it. Then a friend of mine came in and took one look at it and said "I'll take it," and I suddenly thought, "Wait a minute, this guy's really flashing on this board, maybe I should keep it," but he hounded me and hounded me  and finally I let him buy it and he took it surfing and I took it off him in the water for a wave and I've never gotten off it since. I told him I would make him another one and the poor guy had to wait 3 weeks!" "Derek Beckner's been riding twin fins for ten years. He put me onto them when I was still in the States in '69. He was riding a Rolf Aurness model which Mike Eaton was shaping. But I couldn't get into them back then, they seemed to have too many hangups so I gave up surfing 'em. Even back then I was thinking about maybe altering the rocker and so on, and I did make one which I liked more but it was too big for me. A few months ago there seemed to be a bit of rekindled interest in twin fins, so I thought I would give it another go.

The boards still have a slight hull effect.
I'm doing them differently now though.
The hull is now reversed, it's in the tail instead of the nose?
I put a concave in the nose with (a) slight bit of hull on the outside of the concave.
It's a teardrop shape concave (???) which leads to the 12" point from the tail.
(But?) around the tail it's rolled vee.

There's a 10-12" flat section in the rocker about a foot up from the tail and then there's just (???) rocker throughout to the nose. If you get a straight edge on the flat section there's about ???" kick in the nose, and about 1/2" kick in the tail. That's the kind of rocker I use in all my boards with the flat section and a bit of tail lift. (I feel that) with all through rocker the board tends to (???) and your committed to hooking all the way (??). I like a board that'll run when I need it to and to hold back when I need it to. The fins have to be very accurately positioned with the foils thick at the base and thin at the tips. They work and they will be back in popularity  (??). They're set with the tracking edge set level with the depth of the swallow, about 1 1/4" from the rail and their toed in slightly and (??? ... ???). They're toed in more if only for small waves. This gives them a hydro-thrust effect, they actually off in turns. Also, I'm really (experimenting?) with the extra flex I'm getting by putting the (??)  in the fins.

I weigh 10 1/4 stone and my dimensions are (?ft ??") with 14 1/4" tail, 15 1/2" tail, and a (?" ??).