Too tight or too loose?

[stemple]

albert's break down of tight and fast vs loose got me thinking about the boards I ride. I definately find my tighter boards faster. I also agree with fisherrat that certain types of waves, mainly big and rolly, lend themselves to loose boards. Having a more responsive slower board works on these waves much better as staying in the pocket becomes a bit harder to do unless you can do tight radius turns.

I think the speed of the wave is a key variable that drives how a board's turning characteristics (or surfability?) are percieved session to session. A tight fast board is going to feel much different in a quickly dumping shorebreak or reef as opposed a point set up that peels at a moderate rate. The board's characteristics may mean the difference of making a critical section or carving a beautiful sharp round house out towards the shoulder to get back into the pocket.

[Howard]

I,ve always been set with a fin set up of 14" and 6".This setup　combined on a 6` x 22 1/2 wide board definitely goes off. Tends to be a little sluggish out of turns in junk waves but as soon as it gets bowly reef waves 4ft and over it comes into its own.

With fin placement set back the board does not want to go sideways in the soup after a round house and absolutely no need for rail holding thru turns or in the barrel.

Got to bang on with your knee placement though otherwise your not turning that thing, strickly straight lines.

Interested in feed back on this

Howard

[DrStrange]

test

[albert]

thats a pretty tight setup... have you considered having a small wave board with similar dimentions and the fins up higher??

mine are typically at 16 1/2" and 7 1/2" (slightly further back on bigger boards). my boards doesnt behave the way yours does by your description, but it also doesnt do all the other things you say. I know there are people on this forum that vary from these dimentions, and there are also people in this forum that have ridden boards with really tight fins setups.... they could probably be of more help on the matter...

However I cant stress enough the importance of trying out new things in equipment.... be it your own or other peoples.

[toofast]

this is comming from a guy that is "still" riding single fin boards... I rode a friends board the other day. 6' quad. I don`t know what the fin set up was, but, what I did find out was "my" postionning was everything. The first time I got a wave, I just jumped up and where I landed was in the middle of the board. I found I couldn`t turn the board. The next few waves, I paid attention to wear I was on the board. The farther back I was, the better the board was. It got looser. All of my boards have a fin box so I can move the fin back and forth, depending on the hold that I want. The quad was nice, but i`m staying with the single fin

[red]

HW,

Looking at the fins for fulcrum is a nice idea, but an oversimplification. Boards turn on a combination of plane-shape, rail, rocker, edge, toe-in and fin placement - not to mention rider.

My foot surf bumps are directly over the trailing edge of my rail fins (which means I kneel about 1/2 way up the board). My fins are about 17" up.
Kyle kneels about 1/3 up the board from the tail but his fins are further forward.

Kneeling further back and leaning forward to hold trim provides a range of weight locations so the board may better be controlled (think late drop - kneeling too far forward means many guys have to arch backwards to try to pull the nose up. My boards are so good that they can submarine and recover without loss of speed, so I don't have to worry about pearling - but that's another story).

Of course it helps if you are 6'4" like Kyle and built like a brick s*house - all that upper body weight to move back and forward. The lean forward position requires good lower back strength - something moribund desk jobs fail to aid, so most of us struggle with it.

Toofast,
You may find a good thruster somewhat similar to the single fin in many ways, yet providing acceleration through turns. My fin setup is similar to Albert's.

[albert]

HW,
Toofast,
You may find a good thruster somewhat similar to the single fin in many ways, yet providing acceleration through turns. My fin setup is similar to Albert's.

thats true... the only main difference is that red is about a foot taller than me.... which means he tends to use larger boards.

the fin placement is very similar though...

I too have a single fin slad Peter Crawford ripoff type thing, I take it out every once in a while and I can kinda turn it, I put pressure on the same spot as I would on my regular boards. As opposed to quads (with which I can do absolutely nothing on) The only problem is that kind of board wasnt really made to be put on rail like my other boards (the tail is about 19" at 12" from the tail and about 18" at 6" from the tail) so the tail is pretty hard to bury on the wave.
Anyway, my point is that the idea when riding a single fin can usually best be translated to a thruster setup as opposed to a quad.

Thats my opinion on the matter

[toofast]

Going with the idea of the fulcrum point being at the fins..I agree... I just went out a measured where my fin is compared to the tail... 4-9 board=16"... 4-10 board=20" ..... 5' board=22" ... all in 10" fin boxes with the fins all the way up. 95% of the time, the fins are all the way up. Think about that and we haven`t even talked about tail with.
With my boards being short, you don`t have a lot of room to move around.Yes, you do have to watch the steep drops. Does missing your board completely on a late take off count as pearling ??

[albert]

I actually took that slab out today, made sure I had some 5 cent pieces in my booties so I could tweak the fin around to get the desired looseness. Once I got the desired effect it was a lot better....

I think the main reason I took that thing out was because I had flashbacks of Simons video and the Peter Crawford commercial got me going...