New Fin Material Developments

[knee-rider]

Hi folks I stopped looking for fins in surf stores and have turned towards diving stores and straight on to manufacturers
I am lucky that I live in Italy now and this is the country that manufactures the greatest fins for all different water sports
This is home to the greatest water sports factory brands such as Cressi, Technisub, Mares, Scuba Pro just to mention a few

So my research, and my curiosity to experiment, has led me to this new wave of fin products that use Fiberglass blades-- yes you are reading this right
the advantages are:
1) the fin is much lighter then anything you could ever wish to have on your feet
2) you get to choose what STIFFNESS blade you wish to be assembled on your shoe/foot mount

Fiberglass blades come in two different styles-- all carbon and or the less expensive plain fiberglass
The blades are all very very thin and feel like feathers on your feet
The stiffness comes in three modes -- stiff blade (maximum power), Medium flex balde (most people choose this as it does NOT run your legs tired or in craps) and Soft Flex blade ( this is more for ladies)

These new generation fins are used and manufactured for various sports and applications-- for water rescue purposes, for free diving (very very long blades) and more recently for underwater Football/Hokey

Just came back from visiting one of the factories located in Northern Italy and after having viewed and tried different models (mostly rescue and water Hokey) I bought the Pool Hokey model with Medium Blades. This unusual pool sport requires a player to have maximum sprinting ability, witch is perfect for my Paipo and Kneeboarding activity. We want to sprint out fast to get into the wave. Also we all tend to like light weight fins with less drag. These fins are half the weight of what any of y'all are used to riding with and will allow you to easily hold your feet out of the water if you wish. Other advantage I see also with this particular model I ordered is that the manufacturer has placed a rubber gasket for protection at the point of the fin in order to avoid cutting other people and yourself up with the sharp edges-- something that the other styles used for life saving do not have

I have also bought three life saving models, in the past, from another brand which can be purchased by choosing from three different blade widths as well as fiberglass stiffness (surf medium and hard)
The blades also vary in length according to foot size-- the XL having the longer blades while Small and Medium sized have shorter blades

I have a very hard time posting pictures on these forums but if anyone of you would like to see how thin the blades are and what I am talking about feel free to get on Instagram and look me up Bumbastic58 and scroll through my pictures till you get to see them-- PS they are laying on my cotto floor tiles to get good photo contrast towards the end of my library and right next to a picture of the black pick-up

One last thing I forgot to mention and that is all these fiberglass fin blades of all makes have a rubber gasket shaped like a wing in order to give the fin direction while pedaling and avoid the fin slipping in the water surface and waisting your foot/leg pedaling energy