Update 9/30/2010 - I'm doing pretty darn good for a geezer, did a jamming bottom turn on Sunday, small wave, waist high and started running for the nose, but my feet were along the rail instead of the center line. I slipped off really fast and my left arm was over the board, I hyper extended it, not really bad, but a wake up call on how bad it COULD have been.  I haven't even tried to surpass the $8000 Rising Sun board, but one day in the not so distant future I will out do it.

Update 8/1/2009 - Billabong is hosting an event Sept. 10-12th at the San Diego Convention center during the Action Sports Show, it is titled "The Art of Shaping", 25 shapers from the San Diego region have been selected to build their most outrageously delicious board which will be auctioned to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to several Surfing related charities.

Jim and his board built for the Reef Brazil "Master Board Builders Build-Off" in 2007.  Greg Nolls' son won!


The other attachment is my entry to the Billabong, a tribute to Wayne Miyata, a Japanese-Hawaiian surfboard craftsman who passed away recently from brain cancer, his motif always was a rising sun on all of his boards. The stringer work is for the rest of the wood to foam transition period craftsmen, Joe Quigg, Fred Wardy, Dale Velzy, Hap Jacobs and Andy Jones, all masters at their craft.
        
I went right from Hawaii to Dover, Del., after that surfing took me along the entire east coast. I traveled to Ca. to shape for Channin-Diffenderfer and then returned to New England for 5 years where I had a very unhappy marriage and a very good surf shop. Afterwards I moved to Fla. and opened my factory there for the next 20 years. 5 years ago I married the most wonderful gal [2 time U.S. women's Karate champion] and we packed up the kids and moved to Oceanside, Ca. where I continue to manufacture some of the finest surfboards in the world. I have some great friends on the east coast, but Ca. and Hawaii is where the real surf industry is. I have 7 children ranging from 28 to 3 years. With all that I still had time to become the 3 time U.S. surfing champion. I've never forgotten the times that I had at Radford with the whole lot of you. As for Chris Yaeger , she is one of the people that Mikal Perry was always on the hunt for. It was a good feeling to get Dottie and Mikal back in touch with each other . I saw Barb Foote and her brother in Ocean City, Md., but that was in the summer of '65. I also saw John Henry, I don't know if he attended Radford , his father was a General Henry. Other Rams are Bob Longacre, lives in northern cal and Roger Brucker in Savannah , Ga. My sister Dolly , who was on the Radford swim team and set a Hawaiian and U.S. record and swan against Donna Deverona in the junior Olympics, lives on Cape Cod. My brother Terry lives just a few miles away from her and my mom. Jim Andrews , my surfing pal is now retired Major General James Edward Andrews, USAF. The other member of the three surfing stooges was Steve Preston , deceased since 1982. Steve was killed in San Diego during a construction trench cave in. Mike Owen is in Oklahoma and headed back to "da rock". That's about it for any Radites that I have knowledge of.

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