1970 America's Teacup, Baja boards and production challenges   The America's Teacup Regatta was the Windsurfer's "coming-out" event to the world of competitive one design sailing. During this era, Hoyle and Matt had been exposed to the concept of the manufacturer's one design class. They learned that many popular and successful sailing classes have one exclusive manufacturer for their hulls, components and parts, which guaranteed uniformity of specifications. Ensuring that all boats weighed the same and had the same specifications is attractive to competitive sailors and helps build a successful sailing class. At this event, some of the manufacturers with one-design classes are the Sunfish, Laser and Hobie Cat.   This 1970 regatta inspired Hoyle to keep with the Windsurfer and opened his eyes to the manufacturer's one-design classes and the sailing industry. Hoyle returned to California determined to make all Windsurfers uniform and follow in the footsteps of the established one-design classes. To do this he had to develop a uniform manufacturing process for the board.   Up to this point, the design and construction of boards has gone through several stages. The original prototypes were named the SK8 and were hand-shaped boards of different designs — with names like Old Yeller and Big Red. Settling on yet another shape for the board, production shifted to a uniform design called the Baja Board. These were constructed using foam blanks designed specifically by Gordon Clark for the Baja Board. Gordon was a friend and classmate of Hoyle and Diane's from College. Using a specifically designed blank ensured more uniformity, and the density of the foam underneath the fiberglass provided a stronger construction. Because these boards were hand-shaped and hand-glassed, there were always slight variations. After the Teacup Regatta, Hoyle began working with rotomolders, creating polyethylene boards that were more uniform than handmade boards, but they could not withstand prolonged exposure to UV light and developed surface cracks. To address this problem, zinc oxide was added to the polyethylene to help reduce sun damage (which was why the boards were white in color).