Nat Young shaped "Sam" in early 1966, and rode it for about nine months, during which time he won the State and National Titles, Bells, and the World Championships in San Diego. Sam was still on the longboard side of the shortboard revolution, but it was small and thinner than what was being used at the time, which allowed Young to turn harder and find more acute angles on the wave, which in turn led directly to the deep-vee "plastic machine" shortboard-launching boards that Young's friend Bob McTavish began making in early 1967.

Excerpt from "Viewpoint: Nat Young," Surfing magazine, December 1966; recorded just after the 1966 World Championships

NAT: Sam is the board’s name because he’s magic. Magic Sam. It’s nothing like California boards.

Minimum flotation, to put it further back in the hook. Suppose I was JJ Moon and wanted a surfboard and walked into a shop. "I’d like a board, how big are you going to make it?" And the guy at the counter says, "Okay, we’ve worked on this for years and we think the best surfboard for you is 10'6" and four inches thick, and now we’ll add three stringers, because it makes the board good and strong."

But my board doesn’t work like that at all. It is a little under two-and-a-half inches thick, which gives it no flotation at all, and it is as small as I could possibly make it. Sensitivity is the one word to describe [what Sam is]. It works because of its minimum flotation. There is one little thing that I always say and there is so much truth in it that people don’t really listen. If you want a paddleboard, and you want to get out in the back, then go out and buy one. But surfboards are made to 

 waves and have nothing to do with paddling. So you get something with minimum flotation and it will put you further and further back into the hook. A surfboard should have an accelerator and a brake just like a car, but more subtle. On Sam, I know exactly where to put my feet so he will take off, and I know exactly where to put them so he will stop. Which means it virtually has an accelerator and a brake.

Excerpt from Nat's Nat and That's That, by Nat Young, 1998

It felt great to be back in Sydney [after returning from Hawaii in early 1966], covered in foam dust, the electric planer like an extension of my arm as I took the initial clean-up cuts off the blank I’d retrieved from Woodsie’s loft. The plan shape wasn’t that different from what I’d been riding in Australia all along, with the 22" width located 6" inches behind halfway, and the board itself 6" shorter than what was considered the normal length for someone my height in 1966. But this slight difference would be enough for people in the United States to seize on as an explanation of my [forthcoming] win in the San Diego world contest in October 1966. It may have been the best they could come up with to describe the difference between the Aussie boards and their own—ours were up to a foot shorter—but length wasn’t the most important factor; the most significant difference lay in the thickness of the new Australian boards.

One of the most important lessons I’d learned from Bob McTavish and George Greenough was that you had to get a rail down in the water to control a turn, so the first modification I made to the board was to drop the overall thickness by at least half an inch, making a huge difference, both in the flotation for paddling and the amount of rail you could bury in a turn. The new board was 2.5 inches thick, at least an inch thinner than a US board made for someone of my height and weight would have been right then.

The other McTavish-inspired element was the rail. I’d experimented with a few since [visiting] Noosa the year before and found that getting rid of the bulk was key; the soft egg-rail was best for my style of board. This really broke new ground for me, giving me some well-needed control in a turn. The big, fat round rails used on all boards up till then didn’t have the responsiveness necessary for drawing a turn out through a section, because under pressure they’d spin out.

The final element was the bottom shape, which was really no different to look at than the boards being ridden elsewhere in the world. The nose was flattish, for nose-riding, then rolled slowly into a full-curve displacement hull, deepest right in front of the fin. It complemented the thinner profile and just flowed into the soft-egg rails.

When I’d finished shaping, I handed it over for Darryl to wrap up in the super-strong Volan fiberglass cloth that would give the finished board the light-green tinge I’d always admired, especially with the wide laps that were fashionable at that time. I’d laid up the fin panel before I left for Hawaii, giving it time to cure, and I’d done everything exactly as George had told me, using only enough resin to saturate the 36 layers. In plan view, the fin’s shape was that of a normal Greenough Stage III, with a flat foil to deliver maximum thrust out of a turn—shaping it with the coarse pad on the grinder was like carving butter. I’d learned a lot about making Greenough’s fins since the day at Long Reef when one I’d based on a normal fin panel broke in half from the pressure of a loaded turn.

I’d need a quality wave to test my new board, and Sydney at the moment just wouldn’t provide it—unless there was a miracle—and I couldn’t go up the coast right then because too many other things were happening. The board had been curing for a week when a miracle in the shape of a strong swell did arrive, and I took “Sam” on his maiden surf.

The first problem was the flotation: just paddling out was much harder on Sam than on any of my previous boards and I was a bit worried; I wanted to surf the board in the State, Bells, and Australian titles. What had I done wrong? I’d probably have dumped the board then and there if not for the fact that it planed really well. Sam had me half underwater and catching the waves wasn’t easy because I had to paddle so hard, but when I caught a wave with a bit of a wall I could feel the fineness in the rail giving me better control than I’d experienced with any of my earlier boards, even though the waves weren’t really long enough to give a true picture of the board’s performance. Funnily enough, the first place I put “Sam” in the water was at my old stamping ground, Collaroy, at a break called The Kick, about 100 meters behind the tide-filled swimming pool.

After about an hour of riding the consistent 5-foot, right-hand walls, I fell off, right in front of the pool, on an absolute purler of a wave that for a minute actually had me thinking that I could make it around the point and into Collaroy Beach, something I’d never managed to do. Swimming toward the rocks on the point I was really mad with myself. I just knew my new board would be buggered—I couldn’t even see where it had gone. But when I climbed over the pool wall, there was Sam, without a scratch, floating in the middle of the pool as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t begin to imagine how it had managed to float across the rocks, over a brick wall, and into the pool—it looked impossible, but there he was, surrounded by a crowd of people! Someone who’d seen the whole thing told me that after I’d fallen off, the wave catapulted the board straight into the air, over the wall and into the middle of the pool, where it landed without touching anyone—I began to think there might have been something a bit odd about this board I called Sam.

[Santa Barbara, California, September 1966]


After enjoying the Greenough family's hospitality for a few days, it was off to a place called the Ranch, about 50 kilometers north of Santa Barbara. We passed inside after George gave his name to the armed security guard at the gate, and it was like going back in time; an oasis of space in overdeveloped California. George and a few of his mates [from the Santa Barbara County Surf Club] had access to an otherwise private coastline extending some 30 kilometers up the coast from the southern entrance to the Ranch, and it was the original surfers’ paradise.

We wound along a one-lane track, catching glimpses of one perfect point break after another every time we rounded a corner and crossed another ravine. The swell looked quite small, only 3 to 4 feet, so George headed for a break called Rights and Lefts—and when I saw it for the first time, I just about wet my pants! It wasn’t big but it was a perfect peak going in both directions and no one was out there. Offshore wind was fanning the barrels and it was with a great feeling of relief that I realized I’d found my training ground for the World Championships. Sam loved it, performing beautifully as though the waves were made for him. I’d paddle really low on the board, stand up fast at the last minute and turn very slowly but accurately into position; holding him back, storing the power until the wave was about to break then I’d release him like an arrow from a bow—straight through the tube and down the line.

Driving home, George commented that he thought I’d get more spring out of the turns with a bit more flex in the tip of the fin. I thought the fin felt okay, but it was true that the Californian waves seemed to break a lot slower than those in Queensland so, with nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain, I let George re-sand the fin that night. The next day headed for San Diego.

[World Surfing Championships, San Diego, October 1966]


My luck changed when we moved to a right-hand beach break called Ocean Beach: the 4-foot rolling rights would give me a chance to show everyone what I was on about. I still felt a bit stupid, paddling out half-submerged [on Sam] when the other surfers in the heat stroked along high and dry. I had to work much harder and John Witzig reckoned I looked like a praying mantis because I had to stretch so much to keep up.

Sam had that bowie-knife feel on every wave: all the weight forward, delicately balanced and ready to propel forward. I felt confident and clean, constantly turning to stay in the waves’ power with the fin George had tuned giving added spring. I rode the nose whenever the situation allowed it, but really didn’t get anything to compare with David Nuuhiwa's efforts the day before. David bombed out, as it turned out, not getting the required number of waves to make the final of the round. I felt bad for him, I knew what the pressure to do well felt like, but at least got to meet and talk to him after the heat. We talked about our surfing and the differences in our approach: the main emphasis in his Californian style was on getting those long nose-rides, whereas I looked for the hollow, most powerful sections of the wave and stayed there. David told me he thought his way of surfing was best for Californian waves, but he didn’t surf like that in Hawaii. We got on really well and decided we’d go to Las Vegas and do a little partying after the titles.

I won that day at Ocean Beach, which gave me an unbeatable lead of 193 points; even if I finished last in the final, I was effectively the new World Champion.

Roy Crump, as quoted in Surfer's Journal, August 2020

I receive an inquiry from Nat every couple of years about the whereabouts of Sam. Shortly after his total domination of the [1966 World Championships] contest, he gave me Sam to ship to Honolulu. I worked at Harbour Surfboards in Seal Beach, and we shipped a lot of boards around the world. In awe of Nat’s win, we decided to memorialize the victory by removing all the wax. Then we used fine-grit sandpaper and gently dulled the surface. We then used an indelible marking pen and wrote “Aussies Rule,” “Get out of my way, I am the world champ,” “I am Nat Young and I am the World Champ.” Some of the artisans may have used vulgar language. But what happened to Sam? We shipped the board, as instructed by Nat, to: Freight Pick Up C/O Nat Young, Honolulu International Airport, Honolulu, Hawaii. I believe Nat was so busy [in Hawaii] that he never thought about Sam until it was too late, and some surfer working in freight at the airport snagged a free board.

MAGIC SAM

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