Just make sure you don’t throw quads in as only fishy shapes 5 of mine are high performance shorties or guns, I agree about begginers and single fins. My surfing changed drastically first time a got a single, Ahh so that is what the rail is for!
Here’s something other than a thruster being ridden well in some decent surf…
…on his backhand no less. Actually, I’m just stirring- I agree completely that the thrusters really work - seems like you can graft that setup onto nearly any board and it surfs well. Put it under the feet of the right guy and it’s amazing. There’s a reason why they’ve dominated surf design for a while, but it’s great people are modernizing and tweaking the twin and single fins too- I’m all for the full buffet of boards.
highline of the decade.
…FINALLY !!
well, here it is , the latest quiver addition …
[i was going to surf it this weekend , but copped a dose of the 'flu]
… to be continued …
11x 6’6 x 19 1/4 x 14 x 2 5/8"
fcs M7 fins
[so far , i have only ridden two knee high waves on it , last friday morning ] …
I think a more more appropriate title could have been Thrusters are good boards too!!
Back in 1982 I ran a surf shop in La Jolla. Thrusters and quads were just becoming popular. I’d just come out of 15 years of surfing singles and twins. Twins were great for pumping up speed in weaker conditions. Singles were great for control in more powerful conditions. I got a couple of quads at that time. One of them was shaped by Al Merrick. Both quads were fun at the Shores. They developed more speed than a single in medium waves and had better control than twins. But, I was surfing Black’s and the Reefs predominantly. So, thrusters became the design I really started focusing on. Thrusters allowed you to surf shorted wider tails in more power and with more control. They were to me at that time the perfect middle ground between twins and singles. So, for 20 years we refined the thruster to the point where they worked great in anything from shoulder high to double over head. They are fantastic in recovery and Kelly Slater became the master at making that attribute shine in contests.
But, it’s kind of like eating vanilla icecream all the time. After a while you realize that there are certain waves, certain conditions and certain styles that could get a performance boost if you look outside the same old same old. One day I was out at the Shoe riding my 6’10" semi-gun. A buddy of mine bailed his board right in front of me and I had a choice to run out on the flats and get eaten by the white wash or bottom turn right in front of my buddies board and hope I missed it. Well, I hooked my bottom turn, heard his nose ripping a hole in the bottom of my board and proceded to get shacked across the reef. I went straight to my car and pulled out a Bonzer that Malcomb made based on my daily driver. I went back out and found that I could square off my turns tighter and get more projection out of my turns on sucking square reef waves. But, when I rode my Bonzer at Lower’s it was kind of boggy and nothing special.
Then I started checking out Cole’s Fire Fly Quads. I found at Lower’s that when right is lined up and sectiony, a lot of the guys aren’t making it around the sections. But, on my Fire Fly I’d be maching around the sections. I get more drive and tighter turns with out washing out. So, for the past year and a half this board has been my daily driver for everything from shoulder high to DOH.
Finally, I made a run to the North Shore last November and pulled out one of my older DD thrusters that I had stashed over there. The last day I was there I’d already stashed my 6’10" semigun away and was going to leave my 6’5" DD thruster in the car for my Dad to take back to his place from the air port. On the drive to the airport, we passed Sunset and they were setting up for the Excell Pro. An unexpected DOH swell had arrived over night in the thunderstorm. It was dawn, I hooked a Uey went straight to V-Land. I caught it with three other guys out FIRING. And, my tried and true thruster felt like slipping on an old familiar pair of sneakers. It just did exactly what I wanted even when I did not think I’d pull it.
So, the thruster is the great averager. It fits right in the middle of the performance envelope. Occassionally, it will even allow you to surf outside you comfort zone due to it’s recoverability. But, that same recoverability can be giving up some power or some manueverability at the extremes.
If I were going on a trip to some wave I’ve never surfed before, you better believe I’d have at least one thruster if not two in my quiver. But, there are lots of times that it will be months or even years between times that I’ll pull a thruster out.
…another fine alternative to the thruster is kind of 2+1 but in shortboards
I rode that for 5 years with great success
the back fin with more height, less rake; so more high aspect than a normal thruster one
very loose board and it s keeping the action and momentum
here in a tiny day
Quote:
" aaaaaaaah FINALLY! The Chipster is going FINLESS
Eef
"thrusters ARE good boards , TOO !!! " …there you go …just for YOU , Tom !!
…and for you , “Smallwaves”…
yes yes yes yes yes 
none of that “modern” stuff for me, i’m into keels at the moment:
greetings,
Eef
Thruster is just an industry term used in place of saying “Single fin with training wheels”!
update …here are just a couple of the literally DOZENS [?hundreds?] of options available for thrusters [not to mention superchargered ones , extra plugs on the side and back fins / back fin box options…]
How’s it paddle compared to your mal? 
thrusters are for poofs and just the name “thruster” is hell poofy
the only thing i like about thrusters is that they are an aussie invention and it warms the heart to see the rest of the world copying in second place
i don’t own any thrusters. when the waves get big and good i have a few certain singles i reach for. they work here in Australia and they worked well at Blacks in San Diego and some places in Central California too. i even took a few to Grajagan and they worked there also.
my friend Mark is a sold out thruster surfer but he always says he loves watching my friend Craig and i on the singles when the waves are good.
then again, maybe i don’t surf the way you guys like to see people surfing.
either way, i’m happy doing what i do…
I think the thruster is obviously a valid design, but I am not willing to call it a primary design. It’s primary because until recently " all " experimentation on other designs pretty much stopped by the majority of shapers. Not only that…magazines, Surf shops and Pros have been driving the industry for awhile and it was not in any of their best interest for things to change. Why do you think the blank companies simply have no clue…and not a single one of them does as they are still making blanks that fit skinny surfboards with narrow tails that are thin. Change means inventory sits stagnate or that whatever empire or business you have built around the status quo is threatened by new things.
I see just as much promise with modern singles, quads or twins as with thruster.
Not that I don’t like thrusters. I just think they are boring as all get out, just like the style they spawned. Bam, bam, cutback, air.
Good thread, but I’m a little confused here… Isn’t the ‘thruster’ a particular fin setup? A thruster ‘outline’ today bears barely any resemblance to Simon’s original.
Don’t get me wrong-I love thrusters, but without getting pedantic, the original thruster outline was an extension of McCoy’s single fin Zap experiments and came about because Simon wanted a board that surfed well for him in mush!
One of the aspects that has made the modern thruster so versatile surely has to be the time and research put into their journey by the sheer number of both top-drawer surfers and shapers in the last 20 years?
This thread on the UK site Magicseaweed is interesting:
I do feel it’s unfair that there is an assumption that people who choose to only ride thrusters are labelled as ‘following the herd’ in some communities these days. People can ride what they want as far as I’m concerned.
I’m also interested in what would have happened if other designs such as the single fin shortboard and the fish had developed at the same rate/mass in the last 25 years.
Good post. I disagree about a couple of things though… maybe I should have explained what I meant better.
I do not think the modern thruster is versitile AT ALL. The modern thruster ceases to be a modern thruster when it gets much over 6’8’'. The entire concept of the " modern " thruster is a board that under floats, is thin and narrow so it can be overpowered by very young rippers or elite surfers. That is just a fact.
The orginal thrusters on the other hand as they were at their best around 1985 were slightly more versitile because they were still built around float with a slightly wider tail.
I say follow the herd with regards to the so called modern thruster because that is exactly what it is. Whenever something changes about that design almost everyone that rides them changes right along with them. When they went from 20’’ wide to 17’’ wide you had 30 years olds that weighed 190 pounds attempting to ride elf shoes ( and looked like crap doing it btw). Now some of the leaders are going slightly wider and shorter and you see folks jumping on that. We even had a thread here about Slater riding a blunt nosed platter thing and asking if that is the next best thing ( as if it has not already been done before …mostly in Australia ). If it takes off, the claim will be that Slater just has what it takes to be a shaper designer as well as a surfer and come on down and get yours before they run out etc. See a trend?
The modern thruster is all about the herd. Again…most folks over 200 pounds have to be really good or go longer or wider to ride one and then they are not really a modern thruster are they?
I don’t mind giving proper credit to the thruster design as a whole as they work very consistent, come in a variety of board designs and are easy for most to ride, but when you add the term “modern” to it ( which is a contrived term anyway)…your talking about something I consider the most ridiculous board design ever invented for your average surfer. Low float with little glide. I think the footage from Jefferies last year was very telling.
Not that I am condeming a single person who likes that design. Folks should ride what they want, but it is what it is.
Totally agree with Solo’s comments and to add further…
Thing is most surfers egos (and attitudes) put them in denial when it comes to board choice.
Especially when they are getting on a little.
There’s always talk of older guys still surfing shortboards and ripping on them but the vast majority of 40yr old+ are just wanking when they think they are surfing as well as the 20yr old rippers.
Sure there are some. But only some.
Most just look sloooowwwww.
Lol! Painfully true…