Consafos, the fin is just like the one I remember from the 80’s, glass, 5.25 X 7, pretty upright ,thick and well foiled. The trailing edge is almost perpendicular to the board.
It wobbles in the box a fraction, as they originally did too,( all hand made fins) but a bit of tape on the sides fixes that and makes the fin slide smoothly.
It was popular to run a bit of electrical tape over the open box as well,( green/yellow tape in pix) to reduce drag, but it probably held water too ! They have some retail thing like that for Futures now, dont they ?
Feraldave, thank you for the offer, I get up to The Goldy every year to see the folks so I will call you next time to see if you’re still keen.
Cuttlefish, finlocks still might be available from Surfblanks, or a quick google or Ebays. Stainless steel, with a little rubber doughnut that always wore out but was easily replaced. But the steel part lived forever, as you can see.
3rd ramp eh? Cheyne used to live on a side street off Campbell Pde down the southern end so we used to sit on the Southern grassy hill and wait for either of the Horan brothers or Ant Corrigan / Dominic Wybrow / Storm Carter et al. to show up and give us a lesson in cutting edge surfing. Great days.
I’ve sent a PM to Cheyne and an email to Geoff as an invitation to add some facts and fill in the gaps if they have time.
Yep the early Zaps before things got too extreme were the cutting edge in performance singles. Beautifully tuned and balanced boards for their era.
I agree that thrusters are not faster than singles , the beauty of a singlefin being able to set a line and not have to pump to maintain speed. I think for me thrusters allowed me to go faster on parts of the wave than I could on the singles. At the time there was a lot of twins around as well but they never suited my style or vise versa with one exception being the Glen Winton twinflex with those deep flex fins which I could ride in small surf.
That was one of those classic periods in design and innovation. Really laid the ground work for the next 25 years of fine tuning.
Cheers and Merry Xmas
Mooneemick
it was a magic time in design. I still think much of it is valid. Especially some of Geoff’s designs. I actually still live there in that time with the boards I deal in ha Ha. I think what happened in the early ninties was regression…not progression. People got brainwashed into thinking thin and narrow was good for the average surfer. Even blanks were mostly rockered out, narrow elf shoes for awhile.
I lived there from 81-84 because I went down to Sydney to go to Uni. I didn’t want to be landlocked going to Brisbane so applied for Sydney Uni.
The latter part of those years Cheyne and his brother Steve had a place right in the middle of Mackenzies bay. So got to see them surf there in those great left hand barrels.
Billy Powers was the best surfer out the crew from the “valley” then (still looking for my licence he borrowed to get into the pub one time. Though the cops eventually stopped looking for me after they realised I didn’t do whatever whoever ended up with that licence did).
Saw a picture of a lard arse looking executive type who runs ch 9 in Tracks the other day and its scrawny Dave Gyngell all grown up and out. LOL.
I’ll now start hunting down some of the finlocks. By the way, any more progress on the Spitfire fin, Oz edition?
The Spitfires Ive been making from a mold just like the ‘Sidebites for Sidefins’, which are mini horizontal Spitfires up to 4" high.
So its one… at… a… time… and I give them away for testing…
The Sidebites are being tested by Dave Pimm a local comp longboarder, but they are getting ripped off the fins, so theres still some experimenting with area and gluing techniques but the reports are that they give excellent “roll” stability, esp when on the nose. And with 0 deg AOA.
These are the initial plugs as all the fins are on boards or floating out to sea. Its fun but slow work trying the various dims and aspect ratios. Were you after any particular size Spitfire or a set ? I havent been able to figure out a quicker/cheaper way of making them.
SF.
edit: I couldnt find the fin locks or similar on the net so Im going to walk down to Bennets and Midgets and see if they have any, I’ll get you two if they have any. They’d have them if anyone.
Sidebites I’ve been using Fcs Gx’s on a 6’4" Stubbie and pretty happy with how they perform. Simply curious to see if you’d ended up doing them. While looking for the cam finlocks I at least came across a Qld company that does stainless button head nuts with hex (Fcs tool) holes for fin plates.
Re Bondi: My best mate “Goosh” and I were about the only ones who weren’t surrounded by a cloud of smoke.
While I greatly admire Cheyne for doing things his way, it really would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he ridden a thruster. On the few occasions that he did crossover back then, he did with success, winning the Billabong Pro at Sunset during the latter part of his career as a touring pro. His surfing definitely was cutting edge at one point, one of the better examples of it seen in Stylemaster 2. Floaters and lightning quick snaps off the top done on his Zaps were definitely ahead of the rest. On the one occasion I did meet him a couple of years ago, I was totally blown away at his down to earth, open, sincere manner.
While I greatly admire Cheyne for doing things his way, it really would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he ridden a thruster. On the few occasions that he did crossover back then, he did with success, winning the Billabong Pro at Sunset during the latter part of his career as a touring pro. His surfing definitely was cutting edge at one point, one of the better examples of it seen in Stylemaster 2. Floaters and lightning quick snaps off the top done on his Zaps were definitely ahead of the rest. On the one occasion I did meet him a couple of years ago, I was totally blown away at his down to earth, open, sincere manner.
Here is a list of cheyne’s competition results. What is does not show are the seconds, thirds and etc. You will find that between 79 and 83 there were very few fourths, fifths. My opinion is that he didn’t need to ride thrusters at all, but got ripped out of at least two world titles. I think the tour was rigged. I can’t prove it, but take a look at his results in 82. Three wins out of twelve and seems like two seconds and a couple of thirds out of 12 contest. I was reading in one of the magazines were the tour considered using fish cheating after Curren jumped on the Fireball…so there you have an example of how the tour simply wants to control what surfers ride so it will help the industry side that is the reason it exist in the first place. There is little fair about it.
My point is Cheyne did right by sticking to his guns and ripping on what he liked rather than giving in. We need more of his kind and less of the sponsor whores you see in magazines today. Heck even when a surfer tries to go creative and on their own someone packages that and attempts to create the next look.
I’ll take function over fashion any day with boards. Not that I don’t like some fashion…only that it shouldn’t cross over into the realm of surf with any amount of seriousness.
Geoff McCoy has passed on his phone number to find out more about that era of his boards so I will let you know later.
Still 2 fincams to give away…
SF.
There are also quite a few post on this era in the swaylocks archives. Most all of this came directly from my dealings with Geoff. A true interview would be nice.
Cuttlefish and RDM, I sent them today around midday. In the yellow express envelopes so you should get them tomorrow or Thurs at the latest.Your delivery has a code, MN2766036 for Cuttlefish and MN2677037 for RDM, just in case things go pear-shaped…
Cuttlefish and RDM, I sent them today around midday. In the yellow express envelopes so you should get them tomorrow or Thurs at the latest.Your delivery has a code, MN2766036 for Cuttlefish and MN2677037 for RDM, just in case things go pear-shaped…
“Bouyant for paddling, speedy rocker, the perfect outline, it rides like a modern board without all the effort to get it going”.
Sounds, and looks great. Man, i hear so many good things about mccoys im hangin to try a single fin nugget. Im a bit of a drawn out turn surfer. Some local shops have surftech nuggets, but, they’re surftechs, and they just dont feel that great to me, they’re also thrusters. I’ve been thinking of selling my shortboard and fun board and getting a single fin nugget. I like short chunky boards, and while im not a high performance ripper, i like boards that can turn when im in the mood ( and im lucky! ).
Until then its my twin keel for fun in knee to bit OH.