Bilbos

This is an interesting Bilbo from the Gul collection. Pretty gun like shape, narrower and lighter than most in the late 60s. From memory I think its around 7'10 and it sort of reminds me of some of Greg Noll's fains formula era shapes. It has reinforced knee patches, although it seems quite a small board to knee paddle. I guess old habits die hard. With its gunny template it may have been a travel/ bigger wave board. Cribbar rider ?

Bilbo sponsered the British team at the '68 world campionships with a quiver of these 8'6 boards with union jack decals. Unfortunately they were outdated by then, with many surfers on sub 7 ft streamlined singlefins and two of the team ended up borrowing boards off Skip Frye ! In solid 10 - 12 ft Rincon the British team struggled a bit, although Barry Jenkins did beat Greg Noll in his heat. Above is Dave Grimshaw of Jersey. I don't know if any of these team boards still survive but I can think of a few individuals who'd be chomping at the bit to get hold of one.

This is another Bilbo from the Gul collection, similar length and date to the team boards. This one is a pretty plain , probably stock board and has the dents of knee paddling. The only individual things it has are the swirly resin artwork on the underside which is quite an unusual shape for Bilbo, and the small black strip which normally has a serial number on but this time has 'SWEET' written on. Sweet shape or Dave Sweet ?? Who knows...

Mid 60s transfers from Tony's collection