McTavish, Bob

Cheerful Australian surfer and surfboard designer; inventor of the vee-bottom surfboard, and a key figure in the 1967-launched shortboard revolution. McTavish was born (1944) in Mackay, Queensland, the son of an accountant, and began surfing on a 16-foot plywood paddleboard at age 12, not long after moving with his family to the south Queensland city of Brisbane. At 15 he dropped out of high schoo...