What does your local, favourite boogieboarder owe to the Bahai faith? Well, Tom Morey, bodyboard inventor and Bahai convertee, attributes the short, wide, foam board’s 1971 invention to the following passage in Bahai prayer “Convey upon me, oh, my God, a thought which will turn this planet into a rose garden.” A stand-out eccentric in a sport that has more than its fair share, Morey changed his name to “y” in 1999 and has been at varying stages an aircraft engineer, composites expert, inventor, entrepreneur and jazz musician who played with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie (hence the Boogie name). other achievements include wake surfing behind an ocean-going yacht (no rope) in ‘55, and developing the world’s first interchangable fin systen in 1964 called TRAF (fart spelled backwards), as well as offering $1,500 1st place prize for the Tom Morey Invitational Nose Riding Championships in Ventura in 1965, regarded as the world’s first pro surfing contest. His latest return to surf craft manufacture includes collaborating with Catch Surf for the y boards range. “When a guy removes smoking, drinking, gambling and chasing women from his life,” says y, “there’s a whole lot of time to do other neat stuff.” Like bodyboarding, presumably.