This is the second part of our series exploring Eric Beyer's collection of boards at Beach House Classic Boardshop, Bay Head, NJ. This time we get the story behind this beautiful Bing Bonzer.
"This is an original 5’10” 1975 round nose Bing Bonzer," Eric told us. "It was brought in to the shop in June 2010 by a good customer. He found it in the used rack at another local surf shop and thought I’d love it… he was right! I rode it a couple of times and it worked really well… super smooth ride and really responsive in the turns. Really nice logo, super cool fins and some extreme concaves!"
"This board is a piece of history… a piece of the puzzle that got us from the logs of the 50s and 60s to what we currently ride. The Campbell Brothers put 3 fins on a board well before Simon Anderson designed the Thruster, and they were on to something. The Bonzer was designed and created by Malcolm and Duncan Campbell in the early 70s on the points of Ventura and Santa Barbara." We spoke with Bing Copeland of Bing surfboards who filled in the details. The Campbell brothers made a short super-8 film demonstrating their innovative shape. They drove around showing their clip to several shops, but Bing was the only one that took an interest.
"The brothers convinced Mike Eaton and Bing Copeland to shape some Bonzers for Bing’s team riders to try. The response was awesome. Besides it’s history in the timeline of surfboard design, this board is special to me because I still deal with Bing and carry Bing Surfboards. I sent them pictures of the board and this is the response I received: 'Nice looking Bonzer Eric. Your board would have been 1975 or later. Mike Eaton was in San Diego at the time he made the rounded noses and he also rounded the trailing edges of the Bonzer Runners.'"
Eric explained to us that the trailing edges of the runners, which were originally sharp angles, were rounded off to reduce the number of injuries the boards inflicted in the lineup. The deep concaves force water out of the back of the board in powerful jets, giving Bonzer's fantastic drive and acceleration to project laterally across the face of the wave.
The runners, a pre-cursor to the curved fins used in thrusters, gave the boards much more bite and control in turns than their single-finned counterparts. On a point break, where the wave face is a 'fatter' slope, the runners offer an advantage over the deep draw of the lateral fins on a thruster: because they are shorter they have less drag and no flex. Thruster fins, developed later, have more drag but provide better traction to hang onto the face of steeper, barreling waves.