LOOSING MY JOB WAS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

Baines Crescent factory 1994. Peter Clarke (in blue)

It was way back in 1977, a 21 year old, Peter Clarke found himself unexpectedly out of a work, just being retrenched from his job as a wetsuit cutter at Dive & Surf in Boston Road, when there was a down turn in the what could loosely be called the, “Surf Industry”.

Most surfers at that time would have seen this as a golden opportunity to just go surfing. Not Peter.

Thinking on his feet Peter soon identified a gap in the legrope market, jumped in his car drove along the coast in both directions from Torquay calling in on surf shops along the way asking the retailers if they would be interested in buying legropes from him.

Back in ’77 a legrope consisted of a piece of surgical rubber tubing with a nylon rope coiled inside with a loop at one end to attach to your surfboards fin and at the other end was a piece of seatbelt webbing with a Velcro fastener. Crude by today’s standards, but none the less, effective.

With no grand plan of taking over the legrope world, and with only $50 in his pocket and no business or finance experience, Peter bought the necessary materials to start production on credit.

As for a name to call his product, Peter didn’t have anything but a deadline to work with. On the drive up to Melbourne to register a business name Peter’s brother suggested “FULL BORE” as a name, that Peter readily admits he was not fond of at the time, but hey, at least, it was something, so “FULL BORE” it was.

Working from his lounge room in Torquay, the materials Peter had bought would allow him to make 1,100 legropes. It was now time to call on all those retailers that said they would buy his leggies. Loading up his car, he drove to Warrnambool, then to Noosa and back, selling his “FULL BORE” legropes.

The product was as good as anything else around, if not better and business began to tick over for “FULL BORE”. The lounge room workspace, was becoming a problem as orders increased. It was time to build a garage.

“FULL BORE” continued to grow and soon there was need for more room, so Peter bought the house next door to use as a warehouse. The carport was the makeshift dispatch area.

PROBLEM SOLVING

The problem with legropes in those days was that they just hung down from your ankle and you would more often than not stand on the cord when you got to your feet. It would be a common sight watching surfers do the one legged stance to free their leggie.

It was an “off the cuff” comment by a surf industry friend that would change legrope design the world over, “Make a leg rope you can’t stand on and you will make a million dollars Pete”. Peter took up the challenge and began to experiment with proto type after proto type.

The big break-through came in 1984, with his invention of an insert moulded urethane swivel housing that was stitched into the ankle strap and stood out at a 90 degrees right angle from the ankle strap. This eliminated the problem of standing on your legrope when getting to your feet. It didn’t take long before other companies started to copy Peter’s – “FULL BORE” design.

After all these years this design is still the world standard.

In the mid eighties, the Wind Surfing phenomenon hit. Working with a handful of the world’s best Windsurfers that lived in Torquay, Peter’s creative juices came to the fore with major breakthroughs in harness design.

It was no surprise that; “FULL BORE” Windsurfing products would soon be at the forefront of development.

In1993 the business couldn’t function efficiently from the garage or the house next door any longer, and “FULL BORE” built a new factory in Baines Crescent.

John Aitkin, working at “FULL BORE”, showed Peter a new product that was around at the time. “The Soft Surfboard”. Together they worked on the project and redesigned it using alternative materials and construction methods. The extra workload proved too much, so he decided to sell that part of the business.

That was in 1996, you would know that business today as “G BOARDS”.

In 2003 after 26 years of living and breathing “FULL BORE”, Peter decided to sell his successful business and take life a little easier.

Not needing industry validation, Peter moved on knowing he had played a big part in surfing’s early development.

At their peak, the “FULL BORE” brand was heavily in demand around the world and made great product advancements.

A fantastic achievement from such humble Torquay beginnings.

After interviewing Peter, I tried to track down “FULL BORE” to see how it was all going, but came up empty handed. Where are they now?