You seem to be wanting to create a board that has enough drag in the tail to still effect some control. Well for cryin out effing loud, why not use a FIN or FINS which allow control with minimal drag?
That said, my grandfather, born in Waikiki on the grounds of the present Halekulani Hotel, made me my first board “just like we used to ride”. About 7 feet long, kiln dried redwood, rockerless, solid, finless. My brother and I got identical boards. We had been bodysurfing and paipo boarding until then. Needless to say they were heavy and didn’t float much. On any wave, those boards would, in the olden days terminology, “slide ass” at the slightest provocation. This always and inevitably ended up in a wipeout of one sort or another. They were essentially unrideable, except prone, and even then wanted to slide ass. Until we carved mahogany fins and screwed them on through the deck, I have no idea how one could make them successful.
Now I’ve seen gifted paipo riders rip on finless 3/8" mahogany ply. And I’ve seen standup boogie board rides that looked okay to pretty good, but most of them went mostly straight.
FINS RULE. That’s why surfboards have them. But go right ahead, hack up some foam, waste some resin and glass, come one out and surf with me. Leashless. Hahahahahahaha
this is what is so great about going finless, in that it shows you how narrow minded we as surfers can be.
if the goal is to have fun, you would try anything, and possibly find fun in anything. sliding sideways out of control can be fun (except if there is a rock in the way!).
its like waking people up, pulling them away from the hype, pulling someone out of the matrix (poor movie ref).
people are waking up to the fact that the over commercialized image and peer pressure of surfing (competition based surfing, white boards that fall apart and MUST be 3 fins) is the most narrow minded approach.
as Martin Worthington once said “i dont think you can sit on top of surfers for too long” in reference to the over commercialization.
beware of any statement of absolutes.
everything is open.
its not ‘performance surfing’,… thank heavens for that. but to carve a fully functional cutback standing on a 3/4" piece of wood or foam or anything other material and experience effortless acceleration, is going to open you mind.
In no way am I attempting to say that a finless board is better than one with fins. IMHO no surfboard is really better than another; from boards like your grandfather made for you to modern equipment made by machines and everything in between. A time and place for them all.
The question I am asking myself is why use a fin? What other ways is there to ride a wave without one?
Where is that place, with drag, that some control is established without the full drag of a fin?
Yes on some level I did “hack up some foam, waste some resin and glass” but on that same level all boards made are wasting those things.
To me it was not a waste, I was moving forward in the direction I wanted to go. Experimentation.
I have a 6’6 Alaia that trims, turns and cuts back as well as any finned board I’ve ever owned. But I kind of agree that making foam boards without fins seems like riding a bike with the front wheel removed just because you’re good at doing wheelie!
Have you tried a combination of roll and concave ? On the Alaia this seems to hold into the face really well. Combined with a hard edge, this allows me to ride deep in the pocket. It would seem to me that channels are used normally to allow water to travel a straighter line through the belly of the board, sort of bypassing the rocker. They help to generate speed, but not to hold into the face. Anything with an edge releases. A single concave in a rolled bottom effectively creates two smaller rolls running down the rails. These actually suck in and hold really well. The hard rail lets you break it free for controlled side-slip, but the roll sucks back in as soon as you weight the inside edge again. I’ve been building and riding finless boards for nearly 3 years now, and this design seems to work better than most. I haven’t tried it in a foam board yet though. Keep up the experimentation, this is how we expand and enrich the surfing experience !
Hynd began surfing without fins one absolutely miserable little day at our local spot about three years ago, when he was bored s**tless and decided to take the fins out of his normal board just to enliven the session.
He was always a sucker for slide 360s, even as a teenager, so all of a sudden there he was doing endless semi out of control 360s to the beach on two foot closeouts. It clearly appealed to his twisted sense of humor – it being the TOTAL AND COMPLETE opposite to the other weird craze beginning to raise its head around the place at the time (yes I’m talking about the SUP…arrrggghhhhh!).
It took him about a year to begin to make it all work. He used to ride these little rip bowls and sort of slide sideways in the bowl until he could get a rail to catch and stick, then he’d lean forward or back to try to get the rail to stay stuck.
He often grew frustrated and would occasionally go back to his other craft of choice, an immense 11’-plus round nose swallowtail, with which he’d catch waves about 100 yards outside everyone else at this fat right at the south end of the beach, and spend that 100yds setting up the first turn.
But he would always end up on the finless again…it was like a hopeless romance and I among others feared it’d break his heart (joke).
However the romance has blossomed and he and Finless now appear to be happily married. Of course it’s only a matter of time before he gets bored again, the sex dries up, and the inevitable divorce.
