The story of the BAJA BOARD /1968-1971/

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B A J A … I dare say 99% of windsurfing folks know this name…
but 99% have never seen the original BAJA board named after favorite (wind)surfing haunts in Mexico.
The name BAJA board was used by Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer for for the small handmade series of “custom designed foam boards in a wide selection of contemporary colors with the surfboard like finish of polyester and fiberglass”(2) made from 1968 to mid 1971. About 70 +) of them were made and one is now a prized exhibit on display in the collection of the Windsurfing Museum in Prague.

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The BAJA Board chronology (according to windsurfingmuseum.eu):
May 21. 1967 – the first working sailboard model „Old Yeller“ was tested in Marina del Ray ++). It is not generally known that this first prototype was produced by CON SURFBOARDS Co. in Venice, California. According to Con Colburn, Jim and Hoyle in 1967 ‘… came to down here to have some prototypes built for experimentation. So we proceeded to build these designs that they had: I think the first one was 12 feet long and called „Old Yeller“. The second one was 15 feet…’  This confirms Con Surfboards with their shaper Gary Seaman was involved in the early development of the boards in 1967.  +++) 
August 1967 –  a launching party in Pacific Palisades where Jim Drake and Hoyle Schweitzer shown the „Old Yeller“ (not really functional yet)… At this party they also „ came up with the solution of attaching the mast base to the hull with a rope“  and “within several days re-outfitted Old Yeller was sailing in Marina Del Rey“ (3)
December 1967 –  The SKATE (SK-8) name begins to be used. A universal joint is in use but  fixed directly on the top of the daggerboard.
1968 – a year of development – the second prototype aka Big Red was launched. But the name “SKATE” was already taken, so it was renamed to the “Baja Board.” According to Bruce Matlack´s memories even „the sport was called Baja Surfing which was done on a Baja Board“ (1).

February 1969 – the Baja board was baptized “Windsurfer” after Bert Salisbury´s  proposal. But “BAJA” logo remained on the deck.
April 1969 – Jim Drake summarizes the state of the development efforts and predicted future  evolution in his paper „WIND SURFING – a new concept in sailing“(4). Btw. he is using the term “Windsurfing” for a form of sailing  and the “Baja-Board” for the boat.
March 1970 –  „… the first production board was manufactured“ . From this statement we understand that 22 Polyethylene boards were produced  using rotational moulding this year.  
1970 year – a DuPont short film promoting “plastic” windsurfer was made and released (we can see #195 sail in the film).  Perhaps this is proof that at least 195 windsurfer sets had been made.
July 1970 – PE windsurfers (for $300) and “BAJA custom-built model” (for $450) were  promoted as two products alongside each other (9)
Summer 1971 – A “custom designed foam board in wide selection of contemporary colors with the surfboard like finish of polyester and fiberglass” (2)  is STILL offered by Windsurfer International dealers (!) and is 50%  more expensive than the “yellow PE Windsurfer”. (2) … But “at first all dealers were required to buy one BAJA board kit” (1)
… and that’s the last trace, the last mention we found of these “beautiful hand shaped and hand fiberglassed hulls” (3) known as the memorable BAJA board creation …

BAJA board Surf roots… Con Surfboards team picture from 1963. Note the boards design and Gary Seaman /future shaper of the first WINDsurfers. Rare picture/ad from Surfer Magazine (Vol 4/Nr 6 1963) retrieved from schredsletz.net (8) Thanks!
By the way … When Hoyle and Jim went to CON SURFBOARDS, and asked him (Con Colburne) to supply a hull – the BAJA board… the creation of Drake doesn´t impress Con.. „ we wouldn´t have given ´em two cents for the thing“ but they were paying customers so Con swallowed his inner chuckles and put his number one shaper Gary Seaman on the job… (5)

Our friend and supporter Bruce Matlack sent us very rare and useful comments and clarifications on our BAJA:
–  „ about 60 (or 80) pcs of BAJA´s were produced
– … all the first boards, maybe all the BAJA boards were shaped by Gary Seaman in Con Surfboards 
– Clark foam was used – it was essentially a tandem, wave, surfboard blank. The first 60-80 boards were these. The first few were not pointed in the nose like this one, they were rounded or spoon nosed, like the one under me on #25 in the Dupont cover. Still, this one is an important find IMO… the nonskid material seems to be too far fwd and none aft where the back foot would slip…
– … if the boom has a loose D-ring floating around on the stainless jaw, it is one of the earliest as well.
… the mast (on display) is really the original Brown one. It came from a small sailboat called the FLIPPER… Jim Drake sent Hoyle on a mission to supply a mast and the Flipper mast is what he came up with…“

P.S. Some other BAJA Board facts and my assumptions:
– a fiberglass BAJA Board was offered / and handmade still (!) in 1971, when mass production of PE windsurfer boards was already underway (2) (5)
–- Jim Drake /at least in 1969/ used BAJA BOARD term for „the boat itself“ and term Windsurfing for the activity (4)
– the BAJA board was offered in 5 color scheme variants: sun yellow, hot orange, strawberry, racing blue and lime (2)  
– two BAJA Board stringers /a thin strip of wood that adds stiffness and rigidity to the surfboard/ were made from redwood (Sequoioideae) (4)
– the standard Windsurfer and TEN CATE universal joint is compatible with the hole of our Windsurfing Museum BAJA Board
– YES, the BAJA Board is our oldest exhibit! When I founded the museum, I never dreamed I would have such a jewel.

– Ron & Randy Galman´s board has clearly visible  number 70 59
(we fully agree with Bruce, that it probably means: board number 59, produced in 1970).
– Our museum board has a hard-to-read number 7* *1, perhaps 71 31 /?/. 

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THANKS to Rainer Becker, Andreas Klein and Bernd Neumann for their support, contributions and coordination of the BAJA acquisition in Hamburg. Special thanks to David Hájek for BAJA transport 🙂

Special thanks to Bruce Matlack for the valuable eyewitness comments and access to his unique archives.
Thanks to Carla Laney and Wind Wizard Studios who digitized and made the Bruce Matlack archives available to the public.

And last but not least… a HUGE thank you to Ben Oakley and Pierre Coupal for pointing out new old sources and professional final proofreading.

This story just focuses on the very to the first custom made boards – BAJA (1968-1971). Please visit the stories dedicated to the earliest Windsurfer (R) sails (1967-1972) and how the plastic mass production process was discovered (1970) – Polyethylene heroes: the Windsurfer-Missiles link.

SOURCES – literature and documents used:

1. Personal correspondence with Bruce Matlack – windsurfing world champion and Windsurfing International dealer since 1971
2. Order form – Windsurfing International, 1971 – Bruce Matlack´s archives
3. „10 years with the free sail system“ by Hoyle Schweitzer. Promotional Windsurfing Intl. brochure for the 1978 Cancun Worlds –  Bruce Matlack´s archives
4. WIND SURFING – a new concept in sailing, James R. Drake, paper presented at AIAA Technical Symposium Los Angeles, April 26, 1969 retrieved from www.rand.org  
5. „Con talks custom“ article  in BOARD and SAIL, 7-8/1981 – Bruce Matlack´s archives
6. The story of Windsurfing 15 years ago. SURF magazine, 5-1982 – Bruce Matlack´s archives
7. www.originalwindsurfer.com – in 2023 available only in archive
8. Con Surfboards ad –  www.schredsletz.net
   Image sources and credits are listed above for the respective photos

More nitpicky comments – only for historians, freaks and pedants:

There are 3 total numbers of fiberglass BAJA boards mentioned: 
a) Bruce Matlack mentions 60 or 80 pcs series (1)
b) Hoyle in 1978 states 70 pcs (3)
c) SURF magazine wrote “ they two (Jim and Hoyle) had about 100 boards built by Con Colburn and mostly sold to friends (6)”.
Well, let´s take the middle path 🙂

+) BAJA quantities produced and serial numbers:
It would be interesting to know the share of BAJA within the company production. Reliable sources (7) propose following total numbers of Windsurfers produced per year:

1967-1969: 22 pieces (according to our calculation it may include 7 prototypes + 17* BAJA glassfiber handmade boards)
1970: 189 pieces produced (according to our estimate perhaps a maximum of 50* BAJA glassfiber handmade boards + 140 PE yellow Windsurfers produced since March in roto mould production)
1971: 325 pieces produced (perhaps just a handful – 1 to 10* pcs of handmade BAJA boards + rest should be PE yellow Windsurfers) – according to sources 1) and 2) glassfiber boards were still offered in summer 1971(!)
*) windsurfingmuseum.eu estimates

– Ron & Randy Galman´s BAJA board /surviving till today/ has a clearly visible number 70 59 (we agree with Bruce, that it probably means: board number 59, produced in 1970).
– Our museum board has a hard-to-read number 7* *1, perhaps 71 31?

++) Not so well known is that the first prototype MAYBE did NOT have a completely “free sail” system yet. At least according to Hoyle’s recollection (3)… „the mast was permanently fixed to the daggerboard and was free to move through a slot in the hull ONLY FOR AND AFT! That would be absolutely revolutionary information, but unfortunately unidirectional movement of the mast is not visible even on the film that captured the 1st windsurfing attempts. So let’s just leave it as a footnote only 😉

+++) ” Yet, 14 years later Con answered to direct question whether CON Surfboards actually built the first windsurfer in their shop: „Yeah, and they were quite narrow. I think it slowly graduated down to there we finally put together kind of a tandem-board-look of the old style parallel surf board. It finally got down to where we were producing a foam/fiberglass Windsurfer called the BAJA. That all went along about a year, maybe a year and half“ (!)
<< this is a key eyewitness account of the early phases of BAJA development and production that brings a bit of confusion to the established chronology.

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