They're a funny lot, vintage surfboard collectors. Forever looking backwards at the artefacts left by shapers, treasuring them as museum pieces, and putting more store in the past than the future.

I can say this with confidence 'cos I'm one of them. So when a board recently appeared on the Vintage Surfboard Collectors page I, along with many others, thrilled in its appearance. We marvelled as if it was a missing link in a story we thought was complete.

The board, a Bonzer, was shaped by Simon Anderson in approximately 1974. The buzz, of course, is that Bonzers have three fins and seven years after shaping this number, Simon shook the surfing world with his own three-finned board - the Thruster.

Much speculation ensued: Was this a proto-Thruster? Did it influence what came later? And while the conjecture was exciting the only path to the truth was via the touch screen. I called Simon at his factory where he set the record straight.

Swellnet: First of all, Simon, do you recall shaping the board in question?
Simon Anderson: No.

Rightio. Well did you shape many Bonzers?
I'm sure I did a couple, but again, I can't really remember. My memories of that time was that the Campbell Brothers brought out the Bonzer and there was some excitement in the surfing community. There was a guy at North Narrabeen, Sharky. He had a Mike Eaton Bonzer, and he surfed that forever, and he loved it too. So I probably had a wave on his board and it must've been good enough for me to want to shape one.

My take on the Bonzers was that there's a bit too much fin in there, and really, surfing just moved on. Obviously, the Campbell Brothers kept doing them.

A common description is that Bonzers are like a turbocharged single fin, and that they hold better. You're a bigger guy, so theoretically they may have suited you. Do you feel you could've explored the design a bit more?
What year was the board shaped?

'74 I think.
At that stage, I probably wasn't skilled enough as a shaper to take on that sort of complex design and contribute to its development.

In fact, I may as well have discarded it as not the way I wanted to go.

Fifty-years old and in immaculate condition, only the lightest restoration for upkeep, the unlikely Bonzer is now owned by Rod Brown (Rod Brown)

Do you recall what developments you were working on during that mid to late-'70s period?
Mainly developing my shaping skills and being able to put ideas into action. My own personal development programme was the key. I'd have a look in Surfing World and see what I thought was good and then adapt those ideas to my own shaping.

So was I designing anything new..? Not really. I was just taking other people's work and doing my own interpretation of it. I think, generally, that's what most board makers do. Obviously, the Bonzer was a new development.

Assuming that board was shaped in 1974, how long had you been shaping when you made it?
I started shaping in '71.

So still early in the process?
Yeah. And back then we had big giant planers and blanks were fully shaped, so a real high skill level was required. You needed to have a vision of what you wanted to make, and then make that from the blanks that we had back in the day.

Also, the Bonzer includes intricate bottom contours, meaning there's extra work and understanding.
Yeah. Looking now, I can see why that board didn't work that well. I get it. The fins are too clogged up - there's just too much fin.

Before the Energy panel sprays, before the no nose concept, before the flyer rounded-squares, but both ideas share the number of fins (Rod Brown)

OK, now let's jump ahead to late 1980, early 1981, and your great breakthrough with the Thruster. You gave generous recognition to the people who inspired you, yet I don't recall any mention of Bonzers. Were Bonzers irrelevant to your development of the Thruster?
Yeah. The Bonzer had its day, particularly in Australia. People had moved on, there'd even been tri-fin boards: single fins with the little trailer fins on the rail. I don't know when they fit into the timeline.

I've seen photos of Col Smith, Narrabeen Col Smith, with a three-finned board, a single fin with the two trailers all set in a line. They weren't triangulated. They sat in a line. Early-70s I'd say.
Yeah, that was the tri-fin design at that point. That design, like the Bonzer had had its day and we all moved on.

So during that late-1980 period of development, Bonzers didn't cross your mind when you triangulated the fins for the Thruster?
No. Like, I was happy with single fins but the tour was going to more and more small wave venues around the globe, so I had to surf with twin fins. I didn't like twin fins, they were too loose for me. I didn't mind them in one to two foot surf, but three to four foot is another question though - too loose.

Even then, I wasn't good enough to make a good twin fin for myself, so I just had this gap - waves between two to four feet - that I needed to fill. The twin fin was too loose and the single fin was too stiff and slow.

So that was my thought process before the Thruster. I saw my mate Frank Williams surfing one afternoon, and he had a twin fin board with normal-sized twin-fins, but it had this half-moon keel fin-type thing at the back. I later found out that he had a full single fin there but the board was too stiff, so he sanded that single fin down until the twin fin wasn't too stiff. He ended up with an inch deep, half-moon fin.

So I asked him what that thing at the back did and he said it helped make the twin fin more stable, and that's when I had the epiphany. I wasn't thinking about the Bonzers or tri-fins or anything. Just this problem area that I had on the tour.

At left, Kelly Slater 1996, winning Jeffreys Bay on a 6'3" Bonzer-inspired Thruster shaped by Simon. There's irony in Slater winning on a Bonzer/Thruster fusion as the person he beat in the final, Taylor Knox, was a sometime-devotee of the traditional Bonzer (Callahan). At right, Slater riding the same board during a trip to Isla Natividad later in '96 (Hank)

When we think of three fins now it's through the prism of the Thruster. Bonzers might have three fins but they fall more into the single fin category. Would you agree with that statement?
Well, they are a three fin board because they got three fins.

They certainly do...
But the dominant fin was the single fin. So yeah, despite having three fins they designed them like a single fin.

In the conversation that was on Facebook, there was a lot of people saying, "I wish Simon would build one of these Bonzers." Would you ever do that?
In a way I already have. I've done Thrusters that have a similar bottom contour to a Bonzer. They had a shallow double concave, and I called them the Clampett series. So I had a name for it.

They had a forward vee...like a Maurice Cole EEV, but it flowed out through a Bonzer-inspired concave, a double concave. It was a fairly shallow double concave, not as a deep as the Bonzer but the curves were similar. So I guess I've done that already. I made one for Kelly Slater* when he won J'Bay in '96 and Adam Robertson had one that he loved.

So rather than a mere reproduction of an old design, you created a modern incarnation of it?
Yeah, I don't feel the need to rake over that design. The Bonzer works, there's nothing wrong with it, it was a step forward in surfboard design development. It's got its place in history.

// STU NETTLE

*In 2005, Kelly won J'Bay, plus four other contests, riding another Simon shape, the later one dubbed 'Brown Beauty' due to its age and complexion - it'd been creased three times.