Clif Evers did a nice interview with Derek Hynd on
finless surf craft, the progression of women in surfing, the disappearance of “the Sunset Cliffs Fish”…and lots of other things.
Thought you might like it.
http://www.theinertia.com/surf/interview-derek-hynd/
Moving now onto your finless passion. You’ve been popping up
in films and online, for example in clips on YouTube and Vimeo, on
your finless boards and spinning like a top. You have been into this
gig for awhile, as far as I can tell. More recently, people have
started coming out questioning the functionality of your finless
boards. That is, asking what’s he trying to do here? Do you have an
ideological reason behind embracing the finless ride or is it just
purely getting back to a different sensation?
That doesn’t have a quick answer to it because there are perhaps
several different avenues that came together within six months of just
tossing the fins. The main thing was to feel free, feel free of
constraint, the constraint of getting older and being unable to
appreciate the exuberance of trying something and stuffing up, of trying
to do something you have tried forty thousand times before and finally
making it. It’s also been about relating more to sea life and bird
life just through the loss of friction. It feels like a different
sport and I’ve been very lucky that, in the well over four years now,
this is my fifth year, that no one’s picked up what I’ve been doing and
really giving it a good hard bash. Although, it’s great that people
have taken to Tom Wegener’s strength in making Alaias and the like.
Mind you, people have moved dramatically forward compared to his
original breakthroughs. For myself, riding finless reminds me that
surfing can still be like listening to a great independent record, say
like Galaxy 500 from the late ’80s, and not getting bored with it.
It’s not yet gone Kylie Minogue, and for that I am I’m really grateful.
The longer it lasts the better.