Chasing barrels can be hazardous to your health. A barreling wave has a lot of power and there are so many ways it can hurt you. I have a love hate relationship with a certain wave that produces intense barrels when there’s a big swell. In 1988 I was lucky enough to be out with just one other guy for a short while and we were getting deeper and deeper until I found the limit and hit my right tricep on one of my fins after getting thrown over the falls. The impact tore the muscle but it didn’t break the skin. I couldn’t use my arm, but the waves were so good I stayed out and surfed until more people showed up. I was doing what Bethany Hamilton does, surf with one arm. I found out a week later how badly I hurt myself. I’ve had the lip crash onto my head so many times, it may be why I had to have C4-5-6 fusion in my neck. This is photo of my last injury, father’s day 2015. The surf was epic for a couple of days. The day before was really good and for a short while only about 5 of us were sharing double over head barrels. It was like a trip to Indo. The next day on my last wave I stayed in the barrel when I shouldn’t have. The inside gets pretty shallow and too thick where it closes out. The board is a single fin, and there are 5 layers of glass on that rail.
Duuude!!!
…hi Sharkcountry, I am out of the surf since long time ago due to an injury than not even was inside a barrel…I ever wondered about how many lucky guys out there; I have seen guys eaten by the barrel and never ever an injury! or what about the pro guys? extra lucky guys.
Regarding single fins; I have seen this problem since forever. Is a misconception and the collective imaginary that A Single fin board should be like the 70s single finned pin boards.
I mean, single fin is a fin set up; thruster is another fin set up; twin fin is another one, etc Some fin set ups involves more than a fin and transform it in a system, like a Bonzer set up; single fin with 6 channels etc
-if you buy a thruster; what do you buy? a small stubby board like the ´81 Energy one? NO; you DO NOT BUY A THRUSTER you buy: a 5 10; a 6 2; a 6 10 etc you check also what type of detachable system have…alright? Do you get it now?
Why when someone refer to a single fin always think in an obsolete shape?
I surfed a single fin with an inline smaller fin in a modern contemporary small shape for about 3 or 4 years in the mid 90s with great success in small waves. I only changed that loosened board for a bonzer in the same type of shape too.
Here s a photo of a mid sized shorboard that I made for a customer few years ago. He used it on mid sized barrels. Single fin with inline smaller “cleaner”
Nice looking stick.
Very cool Reverb. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t surf anymore. The longest I’ve had to stay out of the water has been 6 months. I used to go down to the beach and watch the surf, sometimes I’d cry. But, I know more than a handful of really good surfers that just walked away and didn’t look back. A couple could have been top rated pros, but back then there wasn’t the kind of industry like there is today.
It’s been almost 50 years since I started surfing. Boards have evolved so much since then, and in some cases we stopped advancing good ideas because there wasn’t any money in it, or in other words, the “pros” weren’t interested. Far too many people are led down the wrong path because of what they see in the magazines or in a video clip.
I never ventured down the path of that kind of board you show, but you are the second person I’ve seen here that had good results, the other person is Wildy. My brother has used very small fins just ahead of the main single. I think they are called Superchargers from Herb Spitzer.
I think it’s cool to see people try different ideas to the point of knowing whether there’s value or not. In the early ‘70s my brother was doing this, making strange boards and adding crazy things to boards we already had. Then he went of to college and didn’t come back for 15 years. We were both working in corporate jobs by then and just bought whatever the local shops had until 2004 when he met Charlie Price.
Since 2005, I’ve been able to make boards I want to try and not worry about what anyone else thinks. It’s allowed me to enjoy surfing again. I have boards from 5’10" to 10’2", with up to 5 fins, and I like everyone of them for a different reason. All of my board shorter than 7’ have a least 3 boxes. As I get older, it makes more sense to move to longer boards to catch waves easier. Eggs from 7’ on work well with just a single fin. A couple of sidebites add a lot of options for the way they work. The downside of singles for me is that I like longer fins, like 9", and they need a bit more water to paddle through. I’ll use a 7.5" in the shorter singles, but I rode a 9" fin for so long that I really got used to it.
My brother gave me this 6’8" Modern Love Child for my birthday last year, but I haven’t tried it yet. I just added a wax alternative grip pad, and I’m waiting for a half decent day to try it. I can ride it with 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 5 fins.
No good at all …surfers didn’t start riding tubes until the thruster was invented…and MP and Lopez never existed…(lol)
Reverb is spot on.
I don’t have a ton of tube-riding experience. I will say that on hollow days I always struggled to get barrelled on thrusters. My best tubes were always on a single fin. The in-line single like reverb posted is an awesome setup (thanks to Wildy for inspiring that one).
All my worst injuries happened in tubing waves (all on a thruster, too). Something about the spinning face of the water causes my board to flip over if I slip off. I got deep gashes in both feet and shins from hitting my fins on different occasions.
I’ve been really on the fence about whether or not the next board I pick up should be a really fun looking single fin from a local shaper here in Oregon. That is why I made this post, and another one about a month ago. I am not sure what is holding me back mentally, but I am going to ignore it and just get the board. Maybe have him put in some quad plugs incase I wanna play around with them or some side bites. Just waiting to sell off one of my boards to help pay for the new board because I am broke :]
Best barre of my life (I will say I haven’t had a whole bunch) was on a 9’4 singlefin at a beach break, before I was even comfortable bottom turning backside. Got plenty of little tubes on exiting sections on the same board. Just gotta be at the right place at the right time
I like how neutral singles are when stalling for the barrell. Multifins with concave can do some weird things during stalling, and then going from stall to accellerate.
I remember seeing the inline single with smaller trailer in a magazine on a shortboard back in mid 90’s. I then modified a smaller trailer fin to hang off the end of a 10" FU box for my traditional railed longboard, and felt there was a much more planted feel with more directional control when trimmed 2/3 or more forward, and less tendency for the round pin or squash tail to lift out of the water during harder higher speed cutbacks. Also placing the tail high in a mushy part of the wave, to connect to the section farther ahead, seems to give this ridiculous burst of speed that the board lacked without the trailer.
My 6’8" shortboard/speed egg has a 10 inch FU box, and I tried the inline single in it and was never able to dial it in and gave up trying. Sometimes tracking was pronounced, and rail to rail transitions were slowed too much. In some parts of some waves it had the thruster squirt, but without the fins fighting each other. Certainly a unique feel that would be awesome if it were present during more parts of the wave and in more types of waves.
As a singlefin only on this board, I kept wanting to step forward and simply trim it, but the board is too rockered for that and getting back on the tail and going through the motions of developing speed with just the single often left me wanting for speed and projection.
I did do the 7.5 inch single with sidebites of various sizes for a while and really liked it when there was enough juice, but in the less juicy conditions it just does not have the squirt compared to when riding it as a thruster with smaller trailer fin, which seems to be the most versatile set up on this particular board for how I like to surf a shorter board when the waves are appropriate for one.
Experiments with inline singles and Sidebites were pretty much a total failure, so much so I took out my fin key and stuffed the side bites in my wetsuit.
My longboards are primarily used as Inline singles, traditional rails, which seem to limit them to 7500rpm in third gear, no fourth gear, no matter how much wave is pushing, but the torque range in second gear keeps me happy with the inline trailer fin, and i miss it when I remove it 85% of the time, the exceptions are in shorter period windswell type of hollowish surf. Tracking is rarely an issue on the longboards with the inline single in my experience, but does occur, but can easily be blamed on the rider for not forseeing its possible occurrence.
The Board shown in Reverb’s post above just looks right to me. I likely needed to experiment more with distance between the fins, and of course have a board built around a single fin, rather than a thruster that had a 10" FU box in it into which I can stuff 2 fins. One LB i fixed a broken fin making it significantly thicker, it rode so much better, it kind of blew my mind.
Still want to try the prefin, and Thraillkill’s Twingle, but the shortboard I am building for myself for the rest of my surfing life, will have 5 proboxes and My experimentations will be limited to what i can make for the ProBoxes.
But the INline single fin shortboard will always be the itch I was unable to scratch effectively, but on the LB’s I am staying the course, despite all the weird looks I get when carrying it to or from the water.
reverb that board looks badass
“Just waiting to sell off one of my boards to help pay for the new board because I am broke :]”
This seems to be working, maybe you should try this:
…hello guys, thanks for the considerations.
Wrc68, would be good if you post a photo about that board that does not work in most parts of the wave.
Also, if you like to experiment better fit 4WFS to enhance the possibilities.
Sorry but I believe in working for my things. And if I need to sacrifice a board I don’t ride much anymore than so be it.
I pretty much don’t surf any more, and I’m definitely not a barrel riding legend, I rode singles for years and in-line in my later years…best riding board for me in most conditions was the in-line setup. Modern shapes.
One of the most fluid feeling fin setups I ever tried was two 8" banana fins set as butterfly, 30 degree splay (15 each fin) asymmetrical foils, trailing edge set about 12" up, with a 3 1/2" wider base banana fin as a trailer. It turned so smooth and easy, stalled and accelerated really well…but it (the butterfly) was a bitch to make and I broke and lost a few before getting it sorted. Best barrels I ever had were on that board.
this escalated into way more than just a single vs tri discussion! what i love about swaylocks 
What difference does a 5/6 channel add to a single compared to a more standard convcave?
Does anybody else think it’s funny that the videos posted on the first page of this thread don’t show anybody making it out of a legitimate tube?.. You know, the videos that were meant to show how well singles ride in the tube…
Chrisp, you don’t consider the waves in the Super Sessions Gerry Lopez video to be legitimate tubes?
