Leaving the beach today, I spotted a board with its fins facing backward. I have never seen this set up before. Is there any reason why the leading edge of the fin would be facing the tail? Does it create a certain “feel” or effect, or was this guy just a complete kook? I’ve been searching the archives since I got home, but no luck. Thanks.
Ken
Have you ever watched a plane try to fly backward? Hammer head stall or Lensivack manuever? They foils start to create all kinds of turbulence, stall and want to reverse direction.
Ken,
I saw a guy on my beach with the fins as you described and the wetsuit with the zip on his chest... i think it was just a kook, not a innovator.
Anyway i show you a picture of something really similar, but this may work better.
A Webber reverse fin by change? I think even back then it was a joke. I did surf one and it surfed fine, maybe it was that an old keel fin didn’t care which way it was facing. Or maybe this as you say, was just a kook that did not know which end was the nose. Did you happen to ask him how it surfed? I ran into a guy a few months back that had a board that a friend of his made for him. It had no glass on it. He was happy with it and the way it surfed. To each his/her own.
maybe it was one of those glassers who isnt sure of which way to install futures boxes.
coque, that’s one funny photograph
Funny pic, Coque. The board was on car racks and I didn’t see the owner near by, so I couldn’t ask him or her how it surfed or the reasons behind doing it. A few months back I would have wrote this guy off as kook, but since joing swaylock’s and spending countless hours in the archives I realize that there is more to surfboard design that I DON"T know as compared to what I do. Better to ask a stupid question than to mock what I don’t understand. Thanks for the feedback.
What you are seeing is simply the latest design innovation from those cutting edge shapers in China, who are free to work in an environment totally unpolluted by the constraints of actual surf and surfers. Was it a Realm board?
Ha Ha too funny. I love seeing things like that. I love seeing kookies with their wetsuit on backwards. It’s summer time and it’s open kook season. or maybe his board rides better on the roof rack with the fin back wards?
Not to laugh!
Back when (late 60s, early 70s) there were some capable surfers who made and rode “reverse fin” designs. The (single) fin wasn’t completely backwards, but the rake angle became more nearly perpendicular to the board as you neared the tip, rather than sweeping more and more aft near the tip.
Jim “Floyd” Patterson was one. In my memory, at least, he surfed better than most at Honolii. I remember it being said that no one would steal his boards, cuz they couldn’t ride them.
Big difference between surfing a zeroe or negatively raked fin with the max girth still within the first 35% of the leading edge of the foil and putting your fins in backward.
hell of a name that “coque” - do you pronounce it as i’d imagine?
complete kook gets my vote…
Kind of a funny story. Live and surf in Cal. I’m pulling off my wetsuit after a surf. Two guy get out of their car. They have two boards on the racks(nose first,wax up, no board bags ). Anyway, one guy ask me how the surf was etc etc. He ask how the beach breaks on a North. I tell him. He ask me how it is on a South. I tell him. His buddy ask me,“Is it any good on an east swell?” I look at him thinking he just bustin my balls. But, he’s serious. I tell him, “Bro, around here we call an east swell an earth quake.” I try to be nice to everyone. Mike
Silverback,
I know it's hard in english, when i work with english or french people some of them call me "Cock", of course i here laughs every time... Needless to say that my father wasn't thinking on that when i was born.
My name is pronounced as "cock" but adding an "e" pronounced as the ones you use in the beginning of words as "enigmatic".
Swaylocks is really blowing my mind, fins theories of fins pointing backwards, east swells on california surf spots... this is too much for me, but i'll try to open my mind.
Up here in Santa Cruz we get some east in a few swells. Any swell that is less then 180 deg. is south east. I have heard of wind swells at 170 deg. that is called a south, south east, I think.
I’m having a hard time visualizing it, Bagman. I’m one county to the south. Maybe I’ll grab my daughter’s globe. Maybe I owe that kid an apology. Mike
Rooster, Monterey Bay faces a little North, If you look at 122 deg longatute you will see that it runs right into Santa Crus Harbor, and just misses the Monterey Point,while Carmel faces a little more to the south, as such that area can and does pick up a little east swell. as does the Davenport area. I was jokeing about a east swell one time to one of my friends and he told me I was full of it. I did some searching and found that we can get some east in our swells. It does not happen very often but it does happen.
Yeah - I never heard of it on a thruster, but I remember pics of Buttons ripping the South shore, and showing his single fin with the fin in backwards. Supposed to have been extra loose… Probably more of an experiment, but it did work.
Taylor E. Olson
…I have a board with outboard Edge fins and a Red-X center…a couple of times I have turned them side ways and/or backwards and walked it down to the water just to watch heads spin.Never surfed em’ that er way ,but it was great for a laugh.
…As for the backwards wetsuit,…I never tried that one,at least consciously.
…A couple of times back in the 70s, I took unshaped blanks and glued-in a make-shift fin out of plywood and rode it at my local breaks.Funny how the snickering stopped when I got barreled on the set wave of the day.Then took it back to the shop and shaped them(except one that was a glue-up Rogers foam blank,it snapped)Herb