I have a board which I’ve owned for a few years now, though I’ve recently progressed a bit & just went back to riding it again after spending some time on a 5’ board made by “Rachel” (yeah, I’m that crazy friend).
It is a relatively generic swallowtail thruster, dimensions are available from the annotated picture below.
Today I had trouble holding the board on rail after a fast drop, it wanted to draw the bottom turn out longer than I cared to.
I was hoping for some advice, regarding whether I should convert it to a quad (Rach thought that might help) or if I just need to swap out fins. ( or if this is something I need to accept, and look for something different from a different board) It has FCS g-am right now.
Cant is around 4.5 degrees absolute, not relative to bottom.
Rails are a little bit boxy & thick… may not be helping.
Possibly lame advice but whenever I’m questioning my fin choices I always start with a GS trailer fin and then move up in size until I find the feeling that I want out of the board. I’ve used both the GS and GX with G-AMs up front and liked the added spark it gave a dead board.
My experience with quads so far is that you can hold a finer angle than what you can on a thruster. Probably because the 'ole centre fin on a thruster doesn’t favour either rail.
I’m in a bit of a rush, but it is a 6’2’’ x 20 1/4’’
Will add more later thanks for the help!
[Edit]
The 5’ is 22’’ wide, fish type rocker, thumb-ish tail, and a bonzer 5 fin setup.
Plus one, I can take center fin measurements tonight.
Ken, it is an “Angulo” board, Ed Angulo is the “shaper” and they are out of “Hawaii” though I’m not sure if Ed has any control over his boards or not, and I doubt they’ve got much to do with Hawaii.
That said, a local shop is the US distributor for them, and I can get a good discount through them- about half the cost of the usual big name PU/PE boards.
Deanbo, that is the basic idea we were thinking about when considering converting.
Thanks for the help everyone, I may make or buy some different fins, I just wish the conditions were more consistent so I could get a better feel for the changes that the fins make.
The first thing I’d do is get some stiffer fins… I stick with fiberglass or Performance Core fins from FCS. For me, the flex is as at least, if not more, critical as the template.
Before you go putting more holes in your board, buy some fins, then you have them for whatever board you want. My advice is: build up a “quiver” of fins and USE THEM. You’ll learn a lot.
Yeah those two boards are miles apart in perf and feel. You might just be feeling something you havent felt in a while. But NJ’s advice is good…flexible plastic fins can give you that slow stick feel too. One thing I know for certain is that larger front fins with a small/medium center will give you a turning boost. One of my favorite 3 fin setups is Rusty fronts with a G3000 center. hth.
not that price is the be-all-end-all, but those plastic fins you are riding IMHO are probably the root of the probelm, even the fcs M series fins are a little on this side of mushy, the fg series for FCS are pretty much the shizznit(as far as the fins you can get from fcs)
You may all be right, I’ve only been able to really feel issues with fins since late fall or so, despite surfing for around four years now.
I finally started getting in the water a lot, working to the point of true top turns, cutbacks, and more powerful bottom turns. (also, have gotten pretty good at launching my body off the lip of a wave, but the board stays on the water, so i wont call it an air )
I noticed some severe fin hum back in the fall & fixed that (glass-on keels on a fish), it may follow that I’d find the limitations of these fins shortly after.
Do you think that a baltic birch (veneer core birch ply) core fin of similar profile to the G-AM would fix my problem? Any particular changes to make to the profile? I have 1/8’’ thickness available, and can easily laminate two thicknesses together.
I can hand or vacuum lam some glass onto it with epoxy (how many layers?)
…or should I just buy some this time around?
[edit]
Leaning towards just picking up some production fins until I figure out exactly what it is that I’m looking for out of them.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here. I think you’re feeling the effects of going from a very fast and skatey 5’ board, to a longer railed board that requires some effort to push it around. Give it a couple of surfs before you go changing anything. I had a similar experience this past fall after riding a full bodied fish, my 6’-4" quad felt too loose! Exact opposite of what I expected. My point being that two opposite style of boards, that require different forces to turn, just aren’t going to feel the same at first. Give it time…
