Starring alongside Robert August in the Endless Summer, the best surf film ever made, Hynson gets a little bit of credit for every Pipe barrel ridden from about ‘67 onward. Why? The ‘down rail’ design, which is of his invention, allowed early Pipeline specialists to finally cut the corner on their bottom turns. “We could finally put ourselves in the eye,” said the mystic Hynson. The downrail has been called the Rosetta Stone of modern surfboard design as it literally unlocked and expanded surfing as we know it today. The creation came about after some heady, if not totally tripped out ‘experimentation’ on Maui. – JH