I used a 7 1/2" greenough style fin in my longboard the other day. I normally use 10" dolphin, or a 9 1/2" greenough fin, so I figured it would be a bit small. It went very very well, enough drive, and obviously more manouverable. Today, I thought I’d try the 9 1/2 again, but it honestly felt too stiff, even though its a flex style fin. I’ll be going back to the small one now. Being a round pin tail probably helps.
Thoughts?
One time I went to go ride my longboard and realized, at the waters edge, that I had no center fin. I already had my wetsuit on and didn’t feel like driving back home to get it. I rode it with just the two little side-bite fins, and was surprised that it handled fairly well. It was at a point break that normally has a lot of kelp. Not having the big 9" center fin made it easy to cruise right through the kelpy patches. I normally hate hitting kelp because it hurts my back when my board jerks to a sudden stop.
I also left my center fin out once on my 9’1" squash tail longboard.
The surf was knee high an breaking in very shallow water. So I thought that the center fin would hit the sand.
I put standard thruster side fins instead of my sidebites and left the center fin out.
I was very surprised too that it worked extremely well.