During the late ’50s and early ’60s Californian Phil Edwards was widely regarded as the best surfer in the world. With his carving turns, swooping drop-knee cutbacks and unique embellishments of body english, Edwards made surfing into art—a dance on a liquid stage. Amazingly, Edwards never won any big contests, in fact he largely shunned such events, but his reputation was made through word of mouth from first hand observers and his featuring in several surf movies that showed him in action on the West Coast and in Hawaii. In one of those films, Bruce Brown’s “Surfing Hollow Days” Edwards is shown successfully riding an eight-foot wave at the Banzai Pipeline, which earned him credit as the first surfer to conquer that notorious North Shore Oahu break. The accolade that has since been disputed, but Edwards was certainly the first person to be captured surfing Pipeline on film. The following year, 1963, he won the inaugural Surfer Magazine Readers Poll and in 1966 he was the subject of a Sports Illustrated cover story. He was, without question, surfing’s first major star.

In addition to being a great surfer, Edwards was also a skilled craftsman and surfboard shaper. In the early ’60s he was the premier team rider for Hobie Surfboards, which launched a “Phil Edwards Model” in 1963. In 1966, Edwards moved to Hawaii and for a two-year period made a relatively small number of surfboards under the label “Phil Edwards Honolulu.” This pintail board, which bears the serial number C-38, is one of the now rare survivors of that brief production run. The board is of foam and fiberglass and features a redwood center stringer along with offset reverse t-band stringers of foam and redwood. The rakish, cutaway fin suggests the board dates to 1967 when fins began being cut down in area.

Phil Edwards and Bruce Brown -- first time documentation of surfing the most famous wave on the planet. From the Film: Surfing Hollow Days - 1961 - Directed by Bruce Brown. The same director of Endless Summer I and II