The 80's kayak that never happend, YET

In the 70's I made about 1500 fiberglass kayaks out of fiberglass. Some I made myself and then got fiberglass shops to make the parts that I put together. My friend Jerry Hurst added up the figures and said that if we worked real hard and everything went just right we might make poverty wages so I gave the boat building business a rest for a while.

Around that time I was sailing a Malibu Outrigger off the beach. This one is in my back yard getting worked on. There was another guy on the beach named Hoyle Schwitzer who made the windsurfer or sailboard popular around the world and was selling tons of them.

I thought maybe I could make a sailboard that would paddle then people might buy them so I made this hybrid board that could do both. The only hassle was that you could do one or the other but not both.

What's funny is this board is a lot like the new SUP's, Hummmm.....

The board was foam and fiberglass and I still have it in my present backyard and it has a nice shape. Bob Jensen used to shape a lot of the boards for Hoyle's Windsurfer International and really liked the shape. It was a lot like old Pan Am boards that were for light and heavy air before the boards got small and fast for heavy winds

The board surfed ok and you can see how floaty it was. I chopped off about 18 inches off the back and it went better especially sailing. This would make a great cruising SUP with a different sail because it paddled well and surfed well.

After a litte while I came to my senses and started Ocean Kayak with the Scupper kayak which was the first really popular sit on top. The timing was perfect because the Sailboard market peaked then crashed and I got all of the sales reps that could sell a product with next to no learning curve and our sales took off. We put a totally new flavor to kayaks. Before Ocean Kayak the kayaks were all whitewater with helmets or uptight Sea Kayakers.
I was always in awe of Hoyle making 1200 windsurfers a week. We actually made more than that making over 200 a day. After I sold the company Larry Schonemacher I think said he did over 300 in a day. The pink one is a fiberglass prototype that never worked that well and the one on the left is one of the first roto molded Scuppers without a hatch.