We were stoked that people were catching on to the idea of three fins, but were extremely disappointed that in all the hoopla, nobody gave the Bonzer it’s due. We built some Thrusters to check them out and found it to be a solid design, but a relatively inefficient fin system compared to the Bonzer. We added our single to double concave Bonzer Bottom to the Thruster set up. This greatly improved their performance, but the system as a whole still had some major drawbacks.
In 1983, with the instigation and inspiration of our friend, we built the first Bonzer 5 fin. The 5-fin design was based on exactly the same principals as the original 3-fin Bonzer. Basically we just displaced the fin area differently. The boards worked unreal. We knew the Thruster was going to dominate the scene for quite awhile, so we decided to keep the Bonzer on the shelf and just make them for friends and ourselves. It was time to sit back and wait for a crack in the seams.
Actually, the timing worked out well because we were not really sitting back at all. Our lives took on a much grander dimension. Duncan and his wife Jaquie were raising their young daughters Noelle and Meagan. In 1983, my wife Lise and I had twin boys, Ian and Jacob, and in 1983 had our daughter Oriana. With the overlap of raising our kids and the manifestation of the second phase of the Bonzer Revolution, it was truly life at the speed of light.
