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Legend of The Ugly

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Bob Purvey introduces The Ugly noserider at the 1966 Morey-Pope Professional Invitational Championships noseriding contest.

It‘s dawn on Friday, the 11th of November 1966, when the Morey-Pope Professional Invitational US Championships is about to begin. The three-day invitational surfing contest will test surfing disciplines with timed wave ride length and noserides (considered the quintessential maneuver in a surfer’s repertoire).

The invitational format designed for professionals costs $125 to enter to contend for a $5,000 cash purse. A two to four-foot North-West swell at the “Stables” point break, about a quarter-mile north of California Street in Ventura, California, provided a fair challenge. An objective judging system evaluates the skill test by timing using stopwatches.

The first professional contest in the sport’s history was held the year before, in 1965, at California Street. The judging format then, in 1965, was purely noseriding for time, simple, and nothing else. The objective judging system defuses the many arguments about the subjective, personality-driven, and often unfair point system used in most surfing contests.

Since the formation of the United States Surfing Association in 1961, the parent body organizing surfing contests around the United States, arguments over various judging measures used in the subjective points
system judging style and tricks seemed to favor personalities rather than skills. Timing noserides was declared the fair, objective way to evaluate a surfer’s skill set. After all, noseriding is the quintessential maneuver on a longboard. It took all of one’s repertoire to achieve excellence and became the definition of style in modern longboard surfing by 1966.

For the second professional contest, an audience of about two thousand gathered, paying $1 each to enter the closed-off beach area to see the performances of famous surfers invited worldwide and learn more about surfing at its best.

The objective judging system utilizes a stopwatch to determine the cumulative time on the nose while facing the challenge of riding a wave. There are no points, nothing to do with style, simply time on the clock and nose. Easy to understand by even non-surfers.

Money is the prize for the second time in the sport’s history. It‘s the hottest promotion in the surfing industry and the brainchild of well-known inventor Tom Morey and partner Peter Pope. The second contest
addresses the need for objective judging in the sport to qualify for the Olympics and also displays the artistry of surfing. It appeals to the masses and demonstrates the best surfing skills in their best form.

Day one: Time for the length of the ride demonstrates a competitor‘s ability to master the whole wave from the take-off when the wave first crests through the distance to the beach. The clock runs from
when the contestant stands up on his surfboard to when he pulls out of the wave. Day two: Noseriding for time pushes the competitor‘s skills at maneuvering the surfboard from their front end (the nose area), measured at 25% of the overall surfboard length. The third and final day combines both accumulated nose time and wave time. Each of the fifty champion competitors intends to push nose-time to the extreme to show off their most spectacular poses to get the most stunning photo-ops into the magazines and, of course, enough time to win the contest. There is no overall surfboard length limitation. The nose size rule is simple: The nose area is 25% of the overall surfboard length, with no length limitation.

In the 1965 contest, this rule promoted experimentation among many contest surfers and their surfboard design teams. It also led to some extraordinary devices, mostly appearing in the initial contest in 1965:
World Champion Mike Doyle had a 2″x4″x8′ wood plank rosined to the tail to gain overall length and a greater associated 25% nose area. A 10-pound barbell was duct-taped to the tail of another surfboard, and yet another had a brick rosined to the tail – both inventions were hoping to keep the rear weighed down and, thus, the nose rising. Nose shapes varied from flat bottom to concave, narrow to comprehensive, and flat rocker to prominent rockers. A cross “Wing” was attached to one fin, while another fin had a funnel
running through it.

In 1965, many new surfboard inventions were introduced, specifically for noseriding. The Ugly incorporated all the noseriding design elements introduced in 1966 for the second and last invitational.

The second contest had its share of oddities, but they seemed more thought out. Designers learned from the first contest that a surfboard could not just be lengthy to gain more nose area, thinking they could
get more nose time. Surfboards also had to turn to nose ride and maintain position in the wave’s pocket, where the nose gains the most lift. What became clear was that surfboard designs were advancing in many different directions. Designers were experimenting to find the common denominator that enabled the surfboard to maneuver from the nose and, in so doing, were discovering other surfboard functionalities. This contest may have been one of the most revolutionary in developing surfboard designs, inadvertently promoting short-board inventions that revolutionized the sport for the following decade.

The shortboard revolution that followed sacrificed walking the longboard on small waves for turning the shortboard to gain the necessary speed and face the infrequent challenge of storm-driven big waves and
the adventure of finding them worldwide. Eventually, longboards came back into fashion because of the frequency of smaller waves.

Perched like casual Gods on the front end of their surfboards, striking ethereal poses in effortless motion, each competitor clocked incredible distances. The entire audience would watch, mesmerized, as the length of each nose ride increased. The audience was captivated as the clock ticked off, timing each noseride. They kept a tally while they gambled on who would win.

For three years before endorsing his new sponsor, Con Surfboards, at the beginning of 1966, highly ranked contest surfer and surfboard designer Bob Purvey had designed his surfboards under his mentor and the tutelage of world-famous surfboard builder and designer Dewey Weber and his shaper, Harold “Iggy” Igg,

Purvey learned about the essence of what typically goes into a noserider shape. It had a vast nose, long and deep concave underneath it, and a kicked-up tail. Purvey states, “The Ugly combines the concave underneath the nose and kicked up tail that makes for long noserides. The wide nose was my unique concept. Con‘s best shaper, Gary Seaman, put it all together. I could have ridden the nose on a tongue depressor, and I was that good back then. The combination of these features is what The Ugly Shape looked like, but the details that go into putting the curves together in The Ugly Shape make nose riding a heck of a lot easier and enable me to stay on the nose a heck of a lot longer. Kudos to Gary for his craftsmanship and shaping a smooth, well-balanced combination of curves.”

Competition Surf Magazine reviewed the event and stated: “On the last ride of the day Purvey catches a five-foot wave, turned high and went to the nose, the section came up, he backed off, dropped, repositioned himself with two steps and came out on the nose. Then the wave broke ahead and he straightened off then turned into the wave and clocked two more seconds while in the soup. He made no mistakes whatsoever.” Purvey won the nose riding contest that day and went on to place third overall, winning $500. His board was aptly named “The Ugly” because of its wide, blunt nose shape.

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Word of mouth about Purvey winning the much-publicized contest buzzed around the world. The manufacturer, Con Surfboards, placed the first full-page advertisement in the March 1967 issue of Surfer magazine. The copy in the ad states: “It’s called ‘the Ugly’. Bob Purvey out-rode the top professionals in the 1966 U.S. Championship Invitational Nose-riding contest at Ventura, with the highest nose-riding time of 41.5 seconds for 6 waves. An average of 7 seconds per wave. Purvey won the admiration of every rider and surfboard maker for his superior wave knowledge and ability. Bob gives the credit to his UGLY.”

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“EVERYBODY WANTS IT ANYWAY! No matter how you look at it, the only thing beautiful about the UGLY is its handling in the water. There is certainly nothing handsome about the twenty-inch nose one foot from the tip, able to support full weight on take-off or cut-backs. Beauty prizes are not given for the parallel rails that hold smooth trim as the board glides down the wall of any wave or give precision control in turning from the nose. And the Ugliest part is the silly-looking, scooped-out, popped-up six-inch square tail that sets into the water and causes downward pressure exerted on the tail for an opposite reaction to the nose. We are trying to say that nobody cares how it looks because it was designed to function as an all-around board and a nose-rider!…”

The next full-page ad in Surfer magazine’s summer issue states, “Bob Purvey has been consistently improving his own time…”

Along with the ads, word-of-mouth spreads that the Ugly, Bob Purvey’s model, truly is the most functional nose-rider design. “The Ugly practically makes you want to nose-ride!” Purvey said. By mid-summer of 1967, the surfboard factory must quickly increase manufacturing capacity by approximately 35% because of demand for the Ugly. By the end of summer 1967, the Ugly became the fastest and hottest-selling surfboard globally.

In October 1967, the introduction of the 7′ 11″ “V-Bottom” started the short-board revolution.

Longboards started collecting dust, and endless nose-ride stories faded into faithful memory.
The Ugly becomes the last popular longboard model to dominate the “longboard era.” In response to the shortboard revolution, Purvey suggested that Con make a short version of The Ugly by proportioning the length to the eight-foot size, and the Super Ugly was born as the first “Fun Board” short-longboard. That is a good idea, but shortboard designs primarily focus on turns and tube rides on enormous waves, not walking the board.

As the shortboard trend grew, taking over even small wave arenas in California and Florida, both The Ugly and Super Ugly seemed to fade into the shadows of collector’s heaven.

In the late 1970s, Dewey Weber, a notable trendsetter in the sport, started promoting the resurgence of interest in longboards, and the movement grew worldwide. As a result, longboards of the 50s and 60s got dusted off, The Ugly became recognized as the standard-bearer for nose rider style designs, and the originals from the ’60s became one of the most valued by collectors.

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The Con Surfboards company changed owners three times in five years. The Ugly and Super Ugly styles got lost in interpretation through the transitions, and sales lacked luster. After the last owner, Purvey took over the marketing of his registered trademarks: The Ugly and Super Ugly surfboards. He eliminated the Con brand and placed his name beside both brands to maintain authenticity. Thus, they began marketing them properly, making The Ugly the traditional longboard and the Super Ugly the traditional mini-nose rider and promoting noseriding once again. Bob says, “Today, The Ugly still makes champions and clocks long nose times.”

Purvey supervises the manufacturing of each Ugly model.

Also, Bob is planning to launch a unique made-for-mobile Malibu NoseRiding Invitational to inspire further development of nose rider-type designs, promote the sport, and benefit the surf-zone environment.

If you have any questions, please email us at info@uglyboards.com