I would bet that board wouldn’t have felt anywhere near the same if the razor sharp tails weren’t combined with those long based leverage producing keel fins. That made all the difference in the world for that board. The combo of the two were very dependent on one another to give you the speed and drive. Keels Keels kinda act like quads positioned out near the rails.
Flat IS fast. NO doubt abou it. If flat is combined with really hard edges the boards take on a completely different personality than if they have soft rails. The chineless Wilderness displacement snubbies had really soft rails up front, and the tail rails were not real hard, but what they also had was a HUGE mondo glass on flex fin and DEAD FLAT tail rocker. That combo was one of the reasons Richie West could ride a 5’10" in solid double overhead Rincon… and rip while doing it. The Oz archives that are cited in the first of this thread depicts the fins used on the 1967 to 1969 Vee bottoms of the day… they were mostly 10" to 13" deep. The smaller fins were a G&S Hynson designed "Hy Performance "fin and the Greenough Stage fins. A bunch of them had REALLY WIDE bases and high aspect tips. These fins were crucial to those wide backed vee bottoms because nearly all of them had pretty soft tail rails.Sometimes they’d roll over onto the rail and just keep on going. I used mine to learn how to switch stance; I’d jump up as a regular foot and just lean into the turns, once I hit the top, I’d fall back into a cutback. It took a good amount of time before I learned how to swith brains and snap hard cutbacks.
The distribution of those boards is really indicative of the era of transition. The Vee Bottoms looked like a long board blank with a chopped of tail. That’s because… they were! It all happened so fast. It was about a 24 to 30 month era. The chamfered tailblocks were an attempt to produce a more finished product…an acceptable end to the tail of an otherwise thick aft section. The distribtion moved back in regards to foil becuz the tails were lopped off. They rode differently. Not bad… just different. Displacement hulls reflect that disposition.
Greenough’s spoons were about adjustable tail rocker as needed from flex. Fast when driving, releasing when pushed hard for turns and cutties.
I’ve known Marc Andreini for a long time, and he said it very well, that displacement hulls build speed in swoops of powerful turns, McTavish alludes to that in his dissertation on this thread. Marc said “hulls will fly…building terminal speed”… terminal speed is an excellent way of saying it.
The Stoker V Machines (SVM’s for short) are different in some respects and similar in others. They are more a cross between a hull and a high performance shortboard. I call them “HPD’s” or, Hihg Performance Drivers.
Hulls are fast, SVM’s are quick.
Does that make sense?
…and yes, SVM’s can go great as quads, but Stoker himself is opposed to offering them that way. He’s a purist, old skool, and his style isn’t suited well to a quad. OTOH, I’m a realist. If the people want them, and they work, why not? I’ll just continue to devlop that area and we can agree to call them “UVM’s” or Ultimate V Machines…
HEY WILOBEY!..THROW ANUTHER FIN ON THAT ONE WILL YA!?
