Yea I know the mat guys will say none, the old timers will say one and chippy and shwuz will say as many as you can…
But I’ve been riding quads for a while a Mandala fish and a Alexandar Gemini Twin Nose.
Both have impressed me with their speed and positive control especially on the forehand but not so on the backhand.
Recently though I’ve been getting almost a similar response off of Solosurfer’s 6’8" Cheyne Horan Replica using a single Lexan Keel with better backside performance especially in steeper faces.
But lately I’ve been totally intrigued by Greg Griffin’s 5-fin designs which have been out for quite a while now and are popping up more and more in the line up.
After watching 50-60 year old Craig Sugihara tear up some 2-4 footers this weekend at Oneula I was even more impressed with Griffin’s design. According to Greg he somehow divides the volume of the back fin into three and places them further out on the rail where they become more efficient. So it’s two regular or larger front sides and thre smaller rear fins. Being that Greg also makes his own fins out of G10 material I’m sure theres some foil stuff going on as well. Craig Inouye’s son has both a Linden quad and a Griffin 5-fin and swears by the 5-fin over his quad… Although he said it’s hard to order a board from Greg…
Be interested to hear what the fins guys have to say about the new interest in quads (Stretch/Clark/Lokbox) as well as the resurgence of the 5-fin from Griffin…
Are the 4 and 5 fins more efficient than the thruster or are they designed more to a specific board design?
Haven’t seen a quad on Bert’s boards yet but I’m sure Greg’s done them…
And Chippy no crazy 21-fin pics from down under… You guys always come up with the craziest stuff anyway…
And I know that what’s his name goofy foot with the gloves ripped pipe on a quad as well as that famous Curren segment in “the Search” was supposidly on a quad as well. They seem to like long point waves but guys are riding the at Mavericks as well…
Before I order a Griffin which I have been very tempted to for a while I’d like to try and understand what going on here…
oneula, hopefully you’ve checked out Griffen’s post on surfermag.com - he has plenty of photos of some interesting designs. Also posts contact info for getting boards, sounds like quick turn around.
I think for really driving off the bottom into a vert snap backside, nothing can replace a thruster. The 5-fin may come the closest I’d imagine, but quads and twins can’t do it backside for me.
Brian Bulkley has some nice shortboard quad set ups as well. So many options right now, its so hard to choose where to go next. All you/me really need is infinite time and money to figure it out.
Griffen has some demo boards if you can get ahold of some in your area, I think that would be the way to go.
1 is great – it’s smooth and depends very much on excellent board charateristics but then fin set-ups have to serve board configuration & Visa versa.
2 – OK and has it’s place in the surfing tradition, definitely lots of fun a plenty fast when set-up right.
3 – tried and true and very forgiving thus the the most popular.
4 – in several combinations is taking the surfing world on and is proving to be a very strong contender high perfromance boards. I expect we’ll see 4 fin boards on some boards the top 44 are riding soon.
5 – too stiff IMHO unless the lead rail fins are just small canards like Herb Spitzer’s “Superchargers.”
6 works very well and holds a higher angle of attack with power than anything I’ve ridden to day.
Note: small lead fins ahead of rails have a wonderful way of scavanging water flow and make fins work better – Ask Wil Jobson why. He can tell you but it’ll take 15 minutes
Got an aloha shirt and pajamas from big dogs like that…
help’s me get through our cold 68 degree winter mornings here in Hawaii-nei (haha)
I’ve tried the 5-fin setup with those baby canards on the outside like what Rusty had… George Ku makes them out here and I had both an 8’0 hybrid and a 6’7" full concave pocket rocket I used to a couple of years. The boards only seemed to work well when the waves jacked up but slogged in the daily mush. I must admit though the pocket rocket on a 4-6 foot ultra day was my fastest/stickiest board till I got my Gemini. Been even contemplating these Gordan Gaspar longboards with the Peterson Fireball bottom and Redex 5-fin setup you can ride as a 5-4 or 3 fin .
Never did my hands on spitzer’s fins but I did get some of Mark’s MVGs and really liked them placed infront of my back fin in a thruster setup. I use them on all my thruster miniguns and they smooth out he ride quite a bit.
Read all of greg write-ups on Skurfer regarding his 5-fins and talked to several guys riding them who have all had good things to say. I appreciate that especially from guys who can get any board they want for free… In fact alot of guys are backing up about Greg’s design… It’s too bad the quad is getting all the current airplay because of Stretch and Mavericks. Guys have been riding Greg’s 4 fin high performance longboards here for years.
Maybe Bill can confirm but Greg claims the surfboard builder guru in Northshore was written after him and his friend was the inspiration for Turtle… My two all time favorite cinema artificial surf stars outside of Gary Bussey in Big Wednesday…
One day too I’d like to try a set of your mentals on my Gemini like you made for that guy in Europe or the East Coast… Been stuck on the Vector 3/2’s…
Greg had alot of interesting things to say about the problems of the back fin in a thruster setup in one of his essays’ on skurfer, if I can find it I’ll post it for comment… But pushing some of the back fin out to the rail seems to make some sense. Even the McDonald/Brom Tigerfish has those little fins on the tips of the swallows.
Wisj you could still buy those wide based stick on fins we had in the 70’s so you could experiment with stuff like this without drilling holes or laying up glass…
Stretch uses 4 because his boards - especially the tails - are way wider than most.
Good example of shaping/designing for the materials. Just like Greg, Bert, et al say - wide for planing, thin for flex. Splitting the trailer into two makes rail-rail quicker on the wide boards…what works for EPS/epoxy might not be best for pu/pe & vice versa…
4 on a wide tailed board is harder backside, and very tough to hit vert…in transition you end up on no fins mid snap…tough to adjust.
The 3 finned board compensates for this and backside performance…
The reason for poor backside on a quad is leverage. Most people can ride with weight on their toes easy, and most people put their toes further from the stringer than their heels. With all the weight on the heels you can’t get your weight close enough to the rail for a wide-tailed quad. You eventually learn to stand closer to the up-wave rail and it evens out.
The thruster engages all three fins in most turns done by anyone but REALLY good surfers. Better surfers will turn on three fins until they want real thrust, then they angle the outside rail fin out of the water and accelerate through the turn.
Best?? For any board you could start with the rail fins, big, powerful for turns, necessary for high performance shortboarding. You could add canards and boost performance. You could use a single rear fin, or split it into two fins, and as long as the rear fins are inboard a little the backside problem will not be very bad.
I don’t see any reason to use three rear fins though…I know people who use 2 and move them in off the rail instead, my guess is you could lose a fin and not even notice if you positioned the two rear fins inboard a little.
You could also let the two rail fins rotate with a rear fixed fin and then you don’t need the canards, and the board is fast as f*ck and handles with two-fin turns every time. But if you do that you will need to hit the lip twice as often as usual just to scrub speed.
5 is better than 4 , the middle fin adds the element of fine control on the transition , which quads lack , big wave quads get the control back because of a narrower tail giving a quicker rail to rail transition leaving less room for eratic behaviour in the transition , plus your generally loading one rail with no transition for longer …
if i was to make a quick summary of all the things i didnt like about quads , then adding the small centre would have fixed the problem , plus still give some of those interesting feelings and benifits a quad can give …
i used to make boards with 7 fins , you could ride them with 6 or with the centre 7th being optional , they always went better with 7 , which always highlighted the importance of the centre fin for control …
3 is the benchmark for the largest range of functional performance in the largest range of condidtions …
any other number and you can tune for a very specific condidtion , but them the board itself needs to be adapted as well , which means 3 fins can still be tuned for those same specific conditions …
in any case 1 to 5 fins can be made into a functional surfboard, actually 0 to 5 fins , more than 5 and your just complicating things …
The part green and orange(looks red) 5-fin in the group shot and above pictures on this thread is my first one! I have ridden 3-fins, and older high performance and retro twin fin fishes from various very famous shapers (who’ll remain nameless)in the past but they don’t stack up this short board.
I’m slightly over 200 lbs and it floats me well, is easy to catch waves, is quick and flows overs flat spots easily. I could not believe it when I rode it for the 1st time.
In fact I used it only 3 times before entering a HASA (Hawaii Amateur circuit contest) and came in 4th in the shortboard division in my age group!
I am really enjoying it in waves from 1-2 feet to 3-5 feet Hawaiian scale, in all types of waves! I moved the glass fins back about 1/8" as Griffin suggested and it thrusts and drives even more! So I ordered a 4 fin shortboard and will get a high performance twin from him next.
By the way his high performance longboards are great too. I won using one of them in the same HASA contest too!
Bottom line is that they work and are fast and quick!
I will be taking some to Japan to try them out next year. From what I’ve experienced they should be no problems using them there, in Calif. I used to surf Calif. NSSA, CSA and the amateur shortboard circuit so am quite familiar with the stength and type of waves Calif. has
JJR’s recap of his:
Quote:
These boards are not gimmicks. There is more design theory behind them then you could ever imagine. Like 25+ years worth. Adjustment of fins plays a major role. Soon they will have even more…
Not trying to speak for Gregg, but the one i rode felt very dragless, but with control…if that makes sense. I think this board has many applications. Small waves crossing into bigger stuff with slight adjustment of the fins…
Greg’s recap of the design:
Quote:
My 5-fin set up has variable drive, in small or weak surf the three rear fins are very loose and as the wave energy grows ,the energy and drive they produce increases at a higher rate than the wave energy.The same board can be ridden at ewa beach or west swell dredging backyards with great results.
To Vespagetti, as the 5 fin bonzer is the super single,in the 80’s I developed my 5-fin as the super thruster. I took the center fin area, semi lost in the center of the board,and split it into 3 ,getting some of that fin area on the more efficient rail area. The rail fins pick up energy quicker than just a center fin, and more of it.The smaller size and more forward placement makes this high energy fin system easy to override in big snaps even at full speed. I have made all sizes and shapes in this design including 9’ 6’ guns. I forgot to add that it does those floater thingys really good as well.
The fin area is sized to work as three, if you took the center one out you would have a driveless four fin. Feihung rode one in the late 80’s.KBV has one and 5FinFishy just got his ,they all basiclly say the same thing about how well they work.
Back in the day as in ,when a writer from hollywood created the charater turtle off of brian and chandler off of myself. If you will be nice to them i have a 5-10 fish and a 6-0 shortboard demo that can be ridden in 4 or 5 fin form
1.61… the divine proportion, golden ratio, golden mean, golden standard, the names go on. actually, it’s closer to 1.62…but we’ll go with 1.61 anyway. what defines beauty? 1:1.61. (although i think 1:1.62 is prettier). hmmm…how can we incorporate this into surfboard design?? Phi = (1+5^(1/2))/2 = 1.618033988…etc. it’s an irrational number, so i can’t write it all. what really trips me out is how the ratio of successive numbers in the fibonacci sequence approach phi.
the greek ideal of “nothing in excess, everything in proportion”, applied to ancient greek architecture (in conjunction with, but not necessarily directly related to 1:1.61), is also known as “the golden mean”. that philosophical concept is what i drew reference to…not the number.
Interesting fin setups. I was a big fan of Quads back in the 80s, gave me the feel of a twin but with more control. Rode a few 5 fin boards at the same period that i didnt like but I didnt like thrusters either at that time.
The positioning of the fins are different than other stuff ive seen also, fins are positioned close to the rail maybe 1/2-3/4 off the rail and the center in is lined up with the rear fins. I wouldnt mind giving one a go.
bpards with five fins are like velcro when doing floaters, bonzer style set us are good, a smaller trailer really helps loosen it up and i like bonzers better with a thruster sized trailer(but hey i am only 126lbs.) i would have to try one of these griffen 5 fins before i reached a conclusion
[I think it was YOU who wrote , "build it , ride it , report back here " , yes ? I think the same goes for fins . But that’s just <span style=“font-style:italic”>my</span> opinion , though …]
In Hawai’i where big wave power is no object and control is I see no reason not to use more fins. By distributing the strain over more of the tail it’s easier on the board and the rider and with proper designs, dimensions and placement I see some real advantages. Maintaining fin volume ratio is a good place to start. Take a known good board fin combination, measure the fin volume and use that as a baseline.
hopefully I’ll find out from the man himself this week.
He was kind enough to contact me
Really interested in giving this a go this year cause like I said I have seen them in action
If I do Ben… It’ll be a full report at 10… Meanwhile take care of that head you don’t want strep to get in there…
And yup…
Solo even 1 fin like the keel shreds on a proper board and waves…
Had alot of fun these past two weeks on that dark blue Horan replica from Ricky Carroll just need to beef up my thighs to linebacker size like Cheynes…
i used to make boards with 7 fins , you could ride them with 6 or with the centre 7th being optional , they always went better with 7 , which always highlighted the importance of the centre fin for control ...
3 is the benchmark for the largest range of functional performance in the largest range of condidtions ....
any other number and you can tune for a very specific condidtion , but them the board itself needs to be adapted as well , which means 3 fins can still be tuned for those same specific conditions ...
in any case 1 to 5 fins can be made into a functional surfboard, actually 0 to 5 fins , more than 5 and your just complicating things ...
regards BERT
[/quote]
I was searching for pics of Griffen 5-fin to add to my "wish list", when I came across this post, in an old thread. Interesting!
