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Bob McTavish (May 14, 1944-) |
 The Largest Surfing EncyclopediaA-Z: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Advertisement
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It's impossible to picture Australian surf history without Bob McTavish. In a nation where the surfing culture slumbered for years beyond the Californian Malibu explosion, McTavish was one of the first to awaken. His willingness to devote himself to what seemed an outlandish outlaw sport paid off for the millions of Aussies who followed him -- and other such single-minded souls -- into the surf.
McTavish was born in Mackay, northern Queensland -- a small sugarcane and fishing town inside the Great Barrier Reef. A loner at heart, he was seduced by waveriding on family trips down the coast and, by the age of 18, was looking for surf at the northern New South Wales and southern Queensland pointbreaks. Without fully knowing it, McTavish was living a new kind of life: one of a totally committed surfer, working to get enough money to search for surf. He was among the first to realize Noosa Heads' potential -- an awe-inspiring chain of points that was barely known to Australians. Among his fellow surfers, McTavish had a strong reputation as a highly skilled waverider and something of a hellman. In 1962, he and Sydney surfer David Chidgey stowed away on a ship bound for Honolulu, only to be caught by authorities and sent back after a month on the North Shore. One of the few work opportunities for a committed surfer -- just as it is today -- was surfboard building. McTavish's natural tool skills and curiosity led him into board design, a skill matched by few people worldwide. In 1965, he hooked up with Nat Young and George Greenough on a trip to Noosa. This resulted in Young's extraordinary thin-railed, high-aspect-finned board dubbed "Magic Sam," which he used to win the 1966 World Contest and kick-start modern performance surfing. Later, working for Keyo Surfboards in Sydney, McTavish produced the first true vee-bottom boards, short- and broad-tailed, which he named Fantastic Plastic Machines. On a trip to Maui in 1968, he and Young rode the vees at Honolua Bay, showcasing the flipside of a great design debate that went on for many years -- what worked better: the vee or Dick Brewer's mini-gun? A meticulous record keeper, McTavish kept notebooks of information on his design work, only to destroy them later in an attempt to shed his ego after a conversion to Krishna. By the mid-'70s, he'd been married, divorced and was living at Byron Bay on the NSW north coast, designing the first production swallowtails. Work and study in the sailboard arena led him to injection molding-manufacturing techniques, which surfaced in a new style of surfboard that McTavish unveiled in 1989. The Pro Circuit Board (PCB) was a rock-solid epoxy-mold board that theoretically could be made to the exact specifications of any top pro's equipment. It failed in the market, despite years of effort, but McTavish bounced back through the late '90s with a high-quality range of conventionally made longboards -- just in time for an Australia-wide boom in long equipment. In partnership with Rip Curl, he is also engaged in designing and marketing a range of surfwear aimed at the older market. Living and surfing at Byron Bay when surfing and surfboards are as homogenized as ever, his undying devotion to innovation sets an example the rest of the surfing world should follow. -- Nick Carroll, October 2000
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