Feedback on Star, Gullwing and Spitfire Fins

General Discussion
1

Hi,

It would be great if people could give some feedback on how these fins perform. Especially in comparison to dolphin style fins and trifins.

How do they go in more sizable waves. Do they pump at all, or is it just about positioning. I have three McCoy surftechs, 7’, 7’6” and a 7’11” single and I’ve owned a 7’11” trifin and an 8’2”. I’ve ridden epoxy boards exclusively for about the last 10 years (starting with Bert Burger’s balsa veneers).

I have fond memories of a 5’ 10” McCoy lazer zap that I rode in the 80s with a starfin. It was fantastic, fast and could gouge great cutbacks, but I was pissed off with the way my leash got caught on the fin, and in the end my sessions were spoilt by this annoying habit of the starfin.

So, I would like to hear of peoples experiences with the Gullwing and the Spitfire so I can determine how far my 7’11” can go to replacing the trifins, and, maybe even some mods to the other McCoys so that they can be used as singles (both are about 4 years old now and well travelled).

Cheers

2

I have yet to get myself a spitfire fin but I have two boards with Geoffs Gullwing fins. One is an 8 footer, the basis of your 7’11" Surftech shape and the other is a 7’5" big wave board.

Ive tried the wings in both of them and although I liked the glide through the turns I really missed the top-turn ability that the Gullwings have. Ive tried a few other fins in the 8 footer but have pretty much given up thinking that there is anything better out there than the Gullwing for that board. The one I still hold hope for is the Spitfire and will get my hands on one as soon as Typhoon season kicks in here.

The Gun is the one that surprised me the most, I have always surfed tri fin setups in my big wave boards and when I ordered my last one Geoff REALLY urged me to go with a Single so I took his advice and went for it. Changed my World! The Gullwing in big waves is just incredible, it took a bit to learn not to do the triple pump bottom turn and just let the board flow around the sections but as soon as I got the Single fin line worked out in big waves I was blown away by the speed at every point in the wave except for the part of the top turn where you are really hacking at the lip, just there the tri has the advantage because it can give you projection out of the lip where the single needs time to build its speed again. BUT by the time your at the bottom the single feels like its going faster than I ever felt on the tri fin setups.

Where the Gullwing really shines in my perception is the turn initiation, it has a zero lag response time. My tri fins all take time to change to the turning fin where the Gullwing just turns instantly. Any of the “normal” singles Ive tried just dont allow the board that same FREE feeling in the water.

The last big positive I`ve felt from the single fin gun,(it may well apply to all single fins and not be specifcally related to Geoffs boards or the Gullwing fin) is the magnetic attraction to the Tube and then the ability to just stay there without getting rocketed out and having to do a hack or stall your way back into the Tube. Just find the line and weight up the nose and it just sits in the tube with full control untill your ready to come out which requires just a weighting on the back foot and a pump or two to give some rapid acceleration and your home and hosed…

All subjective I know but that`s the way I see it.

I`ll give comparative feedback on the Spitfire in a few months…

3

Thanks Glaucus, that’s a glowing review of Geoff’s boards and the Gullwing fin. With the really thick leading edge and the widest part of the foil well forward I would have guessed it was more suited to smaller waves and lower speeds. Plus the fin is just so different to anything I have ridden that it was hard to make any predictions as to what its performance envelope might be.

Where do you have it placed, and does moving it forward or back make a significant difference?

I’ll be interested to hear how the Spitfire fin goes, especially in comparison to the Gullwing. Did I read in some other posts of yours that you also had some experience with the Starfin?

Cheers

4

Timely thread mate, in the next week or so im planning on ordering a starfin for 2+1’s. Keen to hear the reviews, although i’ve heard some good things about them.

5
Quote:

Thanks Glaucus, that’s a glowing review of Geoff’s boards and the Gullwing fin. With the really thick leading edge and the widest part of the foil well forward I would have guessed it was more suited to smaller waves and lower speeds. Plus the fin is just so different to anything I have ridden that it was hard to make any predictions as to what its performance envelope might be.

Where do you have it placed, and does moving it forward or back make a significant difference?

I’ll be interested to hear how the Spitfire fin goes, especially in comparison to the Gullwing. Did I read in some other posts of yours that you also had some experience with the Starfin?

Cheers

I have obviously ridden all three. The gullwing is not as loose as the spitfire…but has less fin in the water so the difference is not as much as other raked singles. The gullwings snap out of real bottom turns, the spitfire wants to go into the lip as soon as you make a bottom turn, the keels work best in mushy conditions…the gullwings work great in the tube and pocket and the spitfire has much drive like the winged keel, but it no so rocker sensitive. The fastest of the three is the spitfire. The best all around fin for a variety of boards is probably the gullwing…but it’s close. The biggest I have had the spitfire out in is head high. I have had the gulls in double overhead pluse. Winged keels…I have had them out in big surf, but don’t care for them as well. Leash grabber.

6

Solo, is that the only issue with the starfin?. Also, do you sell the spitfire in Oz??

7

OK, it’s late and I’m tired but fins are fun. Tried the Spitfire and the winged keel and like 'em both. I’d lean toward the Spitfire as the best all rounder- fast as the keel but feels a little less draggy. They both hold in amazingly, really snappy and fast. The winged keel feels amazing when it’s planing just right though, and I’ve surfed the spitfire so much it’d be good to go back to the keel and see what’s up. Never tried a gullwing (yet)

8

I have had limited experience with the Starfin, basically, I tried it for a few surfs and then gave it back to its owner… Enough said.

(Surf Addict)Can you pump them? YES! Definitely. Different to a Tri-fin of course and not as responsive to the pump but absolutely doable in any part of the wave. It feels like its a combination of the flex of the fin releasing energy after the push and the depth of the fin as it dissects the vortex of water we call waves. I mention the Vortex theory specifically because the more in the vortex the board is the more pronounced the effect… exponentially by my guess. ie. on the flats it`s slow and minimal in effect but in the Tube it takes a mere flick/twist of the ankles and the board is accelerating. I hope that makes some sort of sense?

Your 7’11" is a rare breed, the dim wits at Surftech stopped making that board and it was, in my opion, the best board they had in their line-up… Dont EVER sell that one, it will become a board you can surf pretty much anything on and the more hollow the waves the better it will go. I used to surf my 8 footer as a small wave board but over the years it has transformed itself into a board that I can surf in just about any conditions, if I can paddle it out (cant duckdive it) I`m stylin!

As for your other boards getting some mods, you can try it if you like but if you look at all the boards together you`ll notice that the rails and edges are very different in the tail region on the Single compared to the Tri fins. Geoff shapes Singles and Tri fins very differently. (“Very” is hard to see with the eye but if you take some measureing devices to the board it will all become clear.)

The one Mod that may be really good is to change your fin boxes to some thing like the Probox system so you can play with the fins a lot more than you can with the Future boxes.

In that same vein of thought, YES, positioning plays a huge part in the feel on the McCoys because of the way the water feeds around the Loaded Dome. 1cm fore and aft is about all I ever change mine depending on the steepness of the waves Im surfing. Ive never really measured where the Gullwing fin sits, I just do it by feel.

Lastly, right now is prime season just a few hours south of you Surf Addict, take the 7’11" for a drive and test its limits, I think it will surprise you…

9
Quote:

Solo, is that the only issue with the starfin?. Also, do you sell the spitfire in Oz??

It’s not a problem getting the fins to Oz. Shipping is not that bad for a single fin maybe two. I am looking for a shop over there. I am sending one to Cheyne and probably Geoff also for feedback. We have some other stuff coming down the pike along these lines. Will keep you informed.

10
Quote:

I have had limited experience with the Starfin, basically, I tried it for a few surfs and then gave it back to its owner… Enough said.

(Surf Addict)Can you pump them? YES! Definitely. Different to a Tri-fin of course and not as responsive to the pump but absolutely doable in any part of the wave. It feels like its a combination of the flex of the fin releasing energy after the push and the depth of the fin as it dissects the vortex of water we call waves. I mention the Vortex theory specifically because the more in the vortex the board is the more pronounced the effect… exponentially by my guess. ie. on the flats it`s slow and minimal in effect but in the Tube it takes a mere flick/twist of the ankles and the board is accelerating. I hope that makes some sort of sense?

Your 7’11" is a rare breed, the dim wits at Surftech stopped making that board and it was, in my opion, the best board they had in their line-up… Dont EVER sell that one, it will become a board you can surf pretty much anything on and the more hollow the waves the better it will go. I used to surf my 8 footer as a small wave board but over the years it has transformed itself into a board that I can surf in just about any conditions, if I can paddle it out (cant duckdive it) I`m stylin!

As for your other boards getting some mods, you can try it if you like but if you look at all the boards together you`ll notice that the rails and edges are very different in the tail region on the Single compared to the Tri fins. Geoff shapes Singles and Tri fins very differently. (“Very” is hard to see with the eye but if you take some measureing devices to the board it will all become clear.)

The one Mod that may be really good is to change your fin boxes to some thing like the Probox system so you can play with the fins a lot more than you can with the Future boxes.

In that same vein of thought, YES, positioning plays a huge part in the feel on the McCoys because of the way the water feeds around the Loaded Dome. 1cm fore and aft is about all I ever change mine depending on the steepness of the waves Im surfing. Ive never really measured where the Gullwing fin sits, I just do it by feel.

Lastly, right now is prime season just a few hours south of you Surf Addict, take the 7’11" for a drive and test its limits, I think it will surprise you…

Good stuff Glaucus…no doubt Geoff does things his own way. I think the proboxes would work good with his bottoms, but Geoff likes glass ons the best still. As you know.

Surftech’s first mistake was changing the 7’11’’ to a thruster and second was getting rid of it.

11

I have and surfed all three

Geoff’s gullwing is my favorite of my 7-11 ST Nugget

I’ve tried the star on it but it’s just too much of a hassle if you have a cord I even bought a floating da Kine cord and a coiled poorboys cord to ride with it but ot you catch a cord expect the drag parachute to kick in.

The gull wing is very versatile frontside and backside especially backside,

The star is a create fin for pocket riding on a no-nose big butt. you can go vertical and hook around in the curl no problem very positive on 18-19 wide tails. But the bottom need to be flat and the board needs to have a low tail rocker. It is also more sensitive to off weight footing and will caught and pull to the wrong direction and throw you off kilter.

The spitfire eliminates this and the cord issue and has all the positives of the keel with the exception that it slips out on the backside.

another fin you should try is the wavegrinder that and the spitfire are my two favorites for low tail rocker wide tailed board right now. The wavegrinder has alot of drive and control for such a narrow no rake fin.

I haven’t gotten to double or triple overhead on these yet pretty close to double overhead though at makaha and at home.

I consider my 7’11" nugget my HP 10’ longboard and my 6’8" Tim Stamps Horan replica my potato chip/fish with these fins.

12

Hey solo, i think i’ll get a starfin for now, but please keep us informed about spitfires in OZ. Would be good to have a star, a gull, and a spitfire to compare.

13

Thanks for your feedback Glaucus, Solosurfer, consafos and oneula

It’s the second 7’11” that I have owned; I traded the first for a 7’11” trifin. I also have a Surftech 7’ and 7’6”. The 7’ is my favourite board, and they get less favourite the bigger they get. But the first thing you have to do is catch the wave; it doesn’t matter if you have the world’s best performing board if you are not catching any waves. I would ride 6’ and 6’6” ST McCoys if I could get my share of waves on them. But I’m nearly 60 now and weigh 85k. If I spent a year in Indo I’m sure that would be what I was riding after 3 or 4 months.

Better throw in the reason that I ride Surftech McCoys (I’m quite ware of the bad press that they get on Swaylocks). It’s simply that the polys are too heavy. Even the Surftechs are too heavy for my liking. My Sunovas were about 20% lighter than the equivalent Surftechs and far stronger in every way. If Geoff ever started doing compsand epoxy I’d be very interested. But the labour involved would probably double the price of the board. Could be worth it though, maybe he could use carbon and Kevlar and construct a superlight, superstrong board.

How strong, how light?

Well, this is a story I relate quite often. I walked into one of our local Surf/Sail shops a while ago and one of the guys had the tail section (about 3’ of it) of a sailboard held in one hand, a quite large hammer in the other. He was holding the tail section by an attached footstrap and he gave the board a solid wack with the hammer.

Holyshit, I said, what are you doing. Check it out he said: there was no mark on the board. He handed me the hammer and board and said have a go. I did so and could not mark the board.

We then decided to see how strong it really was: he held the board, so that I could then step back and give it a really good wack. I did, still no mark on it. So he held it out at arm’s length and I wound up and really gave it all I had. We looked at it and could see a slight crescent shaped indentation, less than one tenth of a mil in depth.

That’s how strong and light. And it was a production waveboard by, I think, Kinetic.

As for the design variations for a single verses a trifin: From memory I think the 7’11” trifin is a different shape to the single (more pulled in and narrower at the nose), but they are also very similar around the tail.

I use a straight edge (an old sailboard batten) to check the bottom contours of all my boards before I buy them. I’ve noticed that going from the 7’ to the 7’6” to the 7’11”s and 8’2” the dome progressively increases, from about 1cm in the 7’ to 2.3cm in the 8’2”.

I think a separate thread is probably needed for the McCoy dome to seek feedback from other surfers, so I’ll save that one up

But I’ve digressed enough. I’ll definitely be keeping the 7’11” single. It’s in my van right now and the Naturaliste wave buoy is reading 3m. the Rottnest buoy 2.5m and both are still rising, so I’m towelling work for the rest of the day and heading to the surf.

Cheers

14

Good move Solo! I`d like to hear what they have to say about your fin.

Didn`t Cheyne give it a run in Hawaii a couple of years ago?