Likewise, Southern California’s surf cognoscenti has known of Yater’s boards for roughly the same amount of time, from back when Yater worked for Hobie Alter and Dale Velzy, preceding Yater’s fateful, permanent pilgrimage to our “Western Riviera,” where he eventually established Santa Barbara Surf Shop and fished for winter lobster between Ventura and Point Arguello.

Yater dually harvested the clean, green winter waves at Rincon and Hammond’s, also venturing deep into the empty coast of Hollister and Bixby ranches, which quickly became off-season summer staples. But it was Yater’s innate board building talent that eventually bridged his gap between summer and winter at a time when Santa Barbara was truly one of surfing’s backwaters, a world away from his native Laguna Beach.

That was in the 1960s. Today, Yater’s boards are still revered, and rightly so. If you ride one, congratulate yourself.

You were 27 when you moved here. Back then, fishing came before surfing?
Yeah. It occurred to me after I came up here, ‘What am I going to do in the summer?’ So I thought, well, I could always pull (the fishing) back and make some surfboards. Dick Perry and I rented a place down on Anacapa Street and we made boards for local guys. Well, that was about all eight or 10 of them. That was it. We flooded the market! (laughs)

Now you’re 73 and you no longer fish for a living. What about a retirement from shaping?
I’m not doing as much because we subcontract out all the fiberglassing. I don’t do any of that. Everything’s subcontracted.

All that fun stuff you don’t want to do.
Yeah. So I’ve backed off on a lot of the work. If you go back 20-25 years ago, I did hand-shaping, glassing, retailing—the whole works—and fishing. It was a pretty heavy menu.

So you’re semi-retired now.
Yeah, I am. Lauran does a lot of it. So you might say I’m backing out slowly.

What would you like to be remembered for?
Oh, I don’t know. The fact that I went through all this and managed to stay in all this time (laughs). Very few guys did. Most of them bailed out.

You’ve been in the surfboard industry continuously since when?
Since I first worked for Hobie, I would say. That was about ’54. Building the first surfboard all the way through probably in ’52 or ’53. All the way through, the whole finished product. Had to be somewhere around ’53.

What’s next for Reynolds Yater?
Well, I like to do these more exotic projects, like the abalone boards. Just veer off more to that direction. Eventually, you develop a sport to its maximum of ability. Like the shortboards now—how much smaller can they get? The good thing about it now is finally you’ve got to a point where there’s a board for the surf. You quit trying to ride a real hot-rod surfboard in crappy surf. It just doesn’t work. So that’s really known now. That’s why you’re seeing heavier longboards come back into style, because they work good in a lot of surf. They work better.

Lauran Yater

Heir apparent to his father’s talent, 45-year-old Lauran Yater knows what makes a stellar Santa Barbara surfboard.

Always in the right place at the right time, Lauran believes his shapes are a collective cache of creative yet calculated pointbreak research, whether he’s streaking on the wave of the day at Rincon or garnering feedback from another satisfied customer while shopping in Trader Joe’s.

Skilled in virtually all genres, Lauran’s feet are planted firmly in both the past and the future of surfboard design. Influenced by his father and other notables like Bob Duncan, Marc Andreini, and Bob Krause, the environment into which Lauran was born—his dad’s surfboard factory—couldn’t have been more convenient for his blossoming mind, evident to us with one glance at his boards in the Beach House or while riding the wave of the day at Rincon—assuming Lauran lets one of us have it.

Did your talents arise from your genes?
No doubt about it. I surf a lot like my dad; he knows how to trim really well. He can find the trim spot on the board and come from behind, and that’s what he’s known for. In fact, I was out surfing Rincon one day and I got locked into this really good tube; I came out and kicked out. This guy, an artist who lives in Hope Ranch, just looked at me and said, “You know, for 20 years I’ve been looking for a guy who surfs like your dad, and I finally found somebody. It’s you!” (laughs)

Do you take credit for any one design?
Most shapers tend to shape boards for their area, and that’s basically all I’ve done. I’ve gone to Hawai’i, seen what it’s like, but I don’t surf over there. I’ve learned all the stuff I’ve learned off of other people and just gone to what I like the looks of and tried to do my version of what I think a good board is.

What are the best aspects of your shaping ability?
I probably spend too much time in detail, as far as what I get paid for, so the customer gets his money’s worth. There’s no doubt about that. A guy can bring in a favorite and I’ll spend three days duplicating the thing to get it to work better, not by mistake, but by doing a really good copy. Just paying attention to detail.

How has your father influenced you?
His longevity and his strength, showing up and working, always being there.

How do you differ yourself from your dad?
He’s more stern. I guess I’m a little more looser, more of the artist type, a little more floatier, whereas he’s just really solid. Extremely solid. I take after my mom more.

What’s next for surfboard design?
There’s so much new stuff on the market right now. The fact that about seven years ago, the surfboard designs went wide open as far as you can walk down the beach with anything and it’s okay. In fact, it’s cool to switch boards and ride something different during the day—go from a longboard to a twin-fin. It really opened things up and made everything kind of more relaxed. It’s neat, because now everybody’s working on all this new stuff. There’s not a whole lot of new designs that are coming out of it—they’re just being perfected.