Pete Dooley

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Pete Dooley rode his first wave in 1963 and was immediately hooked, but it was his superior board making skills that gave him notoriety in the surfing world. In 1965 a friend left a 9’8” in Dooley’s care and, deeming it too big, Dooley cut it down to 8’ for his surfing pal. His friend proceeded to make better turns than the rest of their surfing crew and suddenly everyone wanted Dooley to redesign their boards.

By 1966, on the cusp of the Shortboard Revolution, word of Dooley’s shaping skills had filtered out, and people came to him from miles around to commission “customized” boards. He soon moved to Cocoa Beach and assembled a cardboard lean-to, where he shaped boards for the local surfers, working part-time to raise money for college. Business boomed and tuition money poured in, but instead of using it for school, Dooley ended up starting a full-time shaping business.

He joined together with friend Scott Busbey to launch P. Dooley/S. Busbey Contact Surfboards. Dooley shaped, sanded and polished, while Busbey laminated, hot-coated, pin-lined, and glossed. When Dooley tired of the dust and fumes, he recruited young East Coast champ Greg Loehr to shape, and they renamed the business Natural Art. The team made 72 boards in 1970 and 140 in 1971, before selling out on a sales tour through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, where they picked up new dealers and 40 custom orders.

Dealers were now begging for Natural Art surfboards, so throughout the 1970s, they built out their crew and constructed more factories, eventually reaching the capacity to churn out between 2,000 and 3,000 boards per year. By the end of the decade, they were working with dealers in France, Japan, South America, and the Caribbean, as well as along the entire East Coast and Puerto Rico. In response to growing demand, they built a 6,000-square-foot factory, the first designed strictly for surfboard manufacturing. Each craftsman had his own distinct shaping bay. The shapers agreed they could each do 12 to 15 boards in a day — and they did.

By the 1980s, production had reached 4,000 to 5,000 boards per year. In the 90s, Natural Art became one of the first companies to add epoxy boards to its line. But the return of pop-outs, among other things, took the stoke out of the company’s serious board production. Dooley eventually sold Natural Art.  

Pete Dooley was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of fame in 2004 and the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame in 2015.

Photos by Tom Dugan and courtesy Pete Dooley.