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1. "The Pod"

George Greenough's dream of an alien visitation inspired him to create "The Pod", a Bosten Whaler retro-fit featured in "Crystal Voyager" and in "The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun". The 1st in a series of ultra functionable surfing/fishing boats he designed and built. His designs,as in the surfing world, are still being used by boat manufactures today. Denny Aaberg writes below:

My friend, Ernie Knapp, who played bass guitar in the Beach Boys' backup band, said to me recently, "I've known two true geniuses in my life, Brian Wilson and George Greenough."If a genius is, by definition, somebody who has an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work in science, art, or music, etc., then Greenough fits the bill. During the early '70s in Santa Barbara, Ernie and I nicknamed George "Gyro" after an eccentric Donald Duck comic book character, who could fix anything with a bit of chewing gum and bailing wire.

I see George as a visionary who has dedicated his talents to improving his passions. In surfing, sailing, sailboarding, fishing, and photography he saw possibilities others could not, and he possessed the innate genius to bring his dreams into reality.

When George began filming his 16mm surf film, The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun, he decided he would be the first to shoot moving pictures from deep inside the tube, while carving turns on his kneeboard. First, he needed a lightweight camera set inside a watertight housing he could strap on his back. At the time there wasn't any such equipment available; so George disassembled an old, cumbersome, high-speed Air Force movie camera and – out of a pile of springs and wires – fashioned a camera, complete with a fish-eye lens, which was light enough to take out surfing. With the camera encapsulated within his homemade fiberglass water housing, George dropped into huge barrels at Lennox Head, Australia, and, as crystal shingles of seawater swirled over his head, gave us our first view on film of the "Green Room." George's attitude has always been, if he needs something for one of his projects and can't buy it at a store, he makes it himself.

I first met Greenough the summer of '63 while surfing Cojo near Point Conception. A couple of buddies and I were soaking rays in our motorboat, anchored just outside the break, when Greenough roared up like a madman in his Boston Whaler. With his mane of long blonde hair blowing in the wind and his blue eyes shining brightly when he grinned, George was immediately friendly and talkative. In a sort of high-pitched excited voice he talked for 20 minutes without stopping. He told us how he had been surfing alone at secret spots in the Santa Barbara Islands, got locked into square-shaped barrels at "Little Drakes" with no one around, and how he was designing a new spoon-shaped pocket rocket he rode on his knees and called Velo.He nodded at our stack of 9'6" surfboards, wrinkled his nose with disdain, and said he didn't like riding those kinds of "slugs" with all that board "flopping around in front of you."

George said he preferred a tighter package. He likened his kneeboard to a sports car – a machine with a low center of gravity, capable of razor-sharp turns and quick acceleration. While we were mostly into doing whip-turns on our longboards and running to the nose, Greenough spoke of "pushing G's", cranking parabolic S-turns, and disappearing in the "shade" (tube) for seconds at a time.

I had heard the name George Greenough before, but this was the first time I'd seen him in person. As he continued mesmerizing us with his wild surf stories, I took note of the pile of crab claws and lobsters filling his boat. Even though he was only 20 years old, he had the wisdom and depth of the old man and the sea … and he had the gnarliest bare feet I'd ever seen. I found out later he never wore shoes, but almost always wore resin-stained Levis and baggy gray sweatshirts. His calloused hands had the look of a hardcore fisherman. A three-day growth of beard covered his handsome, boyish face.

George explained that he had come down from Government Point and was tending the lobster traps he had strung out all along that sacred Hollister Ranch coastline. When he finally sped away in his boat, we looked at each other and cracked up. What a classic! We'd heard an earful from Greenough, but all of it fascinating stuff. Even though he was only a few years older, we agreed his knowledge of the ocean and the art of wave riding was light years ahead of us.

Like most surfers, the first time I saw Greenough surf was in Bruce Brown's film, The Endless Summer, when it came out in '64. There was a shot of Greenough on his 4'10" balsawood kneeboard, ducking beneath an endless tube at the Santa Barbara Sand Spit.

I didn't hear much about George again until I traveled to Queensland, Australia in December of '65, when I had the good fortune of hooking up with another energetic innovator, Bob McTavish, who was ablaze with stories about Greenough. Apparently, George had just been in Australia ahead of me and had the local Aussies raving about his revolutionary concepts for surfboard design and his radical approach to riding waves.

McTavish, a totally involved, dedicated surfer and surfboard shaper, began applying Greenough-inspired ideas to his craft. His boards were becoming shorter and more hydrodynamic. Greenough showed Bob how to sand down a fiberglass fin to give it flex and make it "spring loaded" out of a turn. Because of George, the Aussies began riding deeper and tighter to the curl.

In the fall of 1966, while attending Santa Barbara City College, I contacted Greenough at his parent's Montecito home. Now we had Australia and Bob McTavish in common, and we soon became friends. Hanging out with George was very inspiring and always an adventure. If I was a Tom Sawyer, trying to tow the line and do what was expected of me by society, Greenough was a Huck Finn, a free spirit unencumbered by what people thought, a rugged individualist nature boy who did as he damn well pleased.

Greenough would come by and help me with my physics homework so I'd have time to venture over to the Santa Barbara Islands with him. We'd make the crossing in his Boston Whaler with a school of dolphins swimming alongside the boat the whole way. George knew the channel, the weather patterns, and the islands like the back of his hand. He took me to remote breaks on Santa Rosa Island where we rode waves untouched by man or board. It was a pure surfing experience, almost religious – the kind of solitary surfing that George grew up with and thrived on.

I remember surfing big days at Second Point Rincon with George and having the privilege of watching the maestro rip. He had the place wired – late take-offs, 30-yard bottom turns, giant swooping cutbacks with spray flying from his red-railed kneeboard, hissing through section after section, always making the wave. On smaller days he'd go out on a surf mat and make waves many couldn't on a regular surfboard.

In 1968, George began to film The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun. He'd never made a full-length movie before, but he went about it like a seasoned professional. His knowledge of photography and filmmaking was amazing, but it was all self-taught. By his own admission, George only had a "crude high school education." But to watch him in action, behind his lathe in his workshop, fashioning parts for his cameras or what not … he should be awarded an honorary Ph.D.

At the time I was playing guitar in a rock-and-roll band. George liked our music and generously gave me the gig of music coordinator for his new film. Even though George was not a musician, he could communicate the sounds that he wanted. There was to be no narration. The music had to tell the story and evoke the mood and feel that he envisioned. I enlisted the expertise of Dennis and Doug Dragon, Ernie Knapp, and Phil Pritchard; we formed a new band called Farm. George paid us well and funded the recording cost for the soundtrack. It was his idea to rent the Lobero Theater, set the band up on stage, and have us play live while he projected his inside-the-tube shots on the screen above our heads. He told us to let our guitar and organ riffs spill in unison with the curling waves until we got the feel he wanted.

In 1977, while making plans for principle photography for the Warner Bros. feature film Big Wednesday, which I co-wrote with director John Milius, we decided to form a special "Water Unit" – a group of master surfers and water photographers who were capable of capturing the demanding surfing footage needed for the film. My first idea was, "Get Greenough!"

I remember the day George showed up at Milius' Warner Bros. production office. Always uncompromisingly himself, Greenough was right in character – no shoes, resin-stained pants and t-shirt, and an almost maniacal gleam in his eyes. Milius was fascinated by him and ended up being very pleased with his contribution to the film. Again, George built special cameras complete with water housings to do the job. Along with Bud Browne and Dan Merkel, George went out on his air mat at places like Sunset Beach to film in Hawaii. He'd get right in the impact zone so he could get close angles on Billy Hamilton, Peter Townend, Jay Riddle, and Ian Cairns, who were the surfing doubles for actors Jan-Michael Vincent, Bill Katt, and Gary Busey. Much of the spectacular surfing footage in Big Wednesday is pure Greenough. The mean-looking brown tube that closes down and wipes out the Matt Johnson character is a shot taken from Greenough's Innermost Limits and blown up to 35mm to fit the big screen.

To this day George continues to make breakthrough innovations in boat and sailboard design … and with his latest film, Dolphin Glide, which is filmed from the point-of-view of a fish.

Bob Simmons was the genius that took surfboards from the realm of mere planks and turned them into hydrodynamic planing hulls covered with fiberglass. George Greenough is the one that helped take surfboards to the next stage. Along with Bob McTavish, Nat Young, and others, Greenough pioneered the shortboard revolution of the late '60s. The surfboard designs and approach to wave-riding that George envisioned 40 years ago revitalized the sport of surfing. His influence is indelible.

– Denny Aaberg (legendary California surfer, guitarist, and surf writer)

http://www.artreview.com.au/artrelated/article448.asp