SEAL BEACH : Surfboard Maker Celebrating 30th Year

For 18-year-old Rich Harbour back in 1962, the choice was simple: Stay in college and pursue a career in architecture, or drop out and make surfboards.

Architecture never stood a chance.

“I was doing well (at classes at Orange Coast College) but I realized, that’s not what I wanted to do. I don’t know how much you like sitting at a desk, but that’s not me. I like freedom.”

Now, nearly 15,000 surfboards later, Harbour, 49, is known throughout the world as one of the best board shapers around. This year, his shop celebrated its 30th anniversary and is one of only four stores in the nation to be so long in a single location and under the same ownership.

In the beginning, his parents helped him open the small shop at 329 Main St.

Actually, he said, “it was (intended as) a short-term solution for a kid with an itch to make surfboards.”

During the decades he’s been in business, surfboards have evolved from longer, heavier boards with a single fin to shorter, lightweight, high-tech boards with three fins. But the process of making them has essentially remained the same.

Starting with a slab of polyester foam, he scrapes at the edges and the sides with hand tools to achieve the desired shape, and coats it with multiple layers of fiberglass.

The shaping is accurate to within one-sixteenth of an inch of the board’s design specifications, and good surfers can detect changes in how a board handles, even when they differ by so little, he said.

The ultimate surfboard should be quick, stable when you want it to be, but easy to turn. The search for that board is never-ending, and that keeps the job fresh, Harbour said.

“It’s always the constant search to build a better mousetrap. You can take a look at things I made a couple weeks ago and they’re obsolete.”

Although Harbour still likes to surf, he does so only rarely. After shaping surfboards for so long, he suffers from bursitis in his shoulders and can only ride waves for about an hour before the pain makes it unenjoyable. As a result, his doctors told him to give up shaping boards several years ago, so he grudgingly cut back drastically from the 500 he was making annually. But after three years, he returned to shaping full time, and “I was the happiest guy in town.”

He said those who have stayed in the business have done so out of a love of the sport, rather than to make money. “It’s a real good, exhilarating sport to be in. You’re not propelled by fuel, it’s nature that pushes you along.”

Although he regrets ditching college and would have stayed in school longer if he had it to do over again, he said: “I think I’ve had as enjoyable career as anyone else I know. I don’t think there’s anyone happier with what they do.”