Sami is in Finland.
He was laughed at the first time he brought a surfboard home with the intent on finding waves. The windsurfers told him ‘there are no waves in Finland, what were you thinking’?
As he related the story to me, Sami has surfed other parts of Scandinavia. I have at least one guy that bought a Stoker V Machine in Cali and took it home to Denmark or Sweden. He sent me a picture of a wide open beach with abundant surf. Sami knows the coast areas and didn’t agree with the windsurfing crew.
He studied maps, talked to lots of fisherman, and after many long hikes into remote spots of suspected coast… HE FOUND WAVES.****
I’m working on a board for him this week and he will pick it up at the airport in Helsinki. I don’t think he is too concerned about me blowing his ‘cover’, and his ‘secret spots’ are quite likely to remain his secret for a very long time. He might be the ONLY board surfer in Finland?
As far as the extreme flexiness of the old Aussie Vee bottom fins being used circa '67 thru '69… yes, they ranged from 10" up to 13" with varying degrees of flex. The big glassed on flex fins on the “Wilderness” stubbies around '69-'70 were laid up using something like 32 layers of 8 oz. Volan if I recollect right. Those were all foiled and tuned once glassed onto the boards to flex around 1/8" or 1/4" side to side when pushing the tip with your little finger. Larry Allison or Chuck Ames probably will recall this better for verification?
The Greenough Stage IV-A and IV-C aren’t super flexy. I offer those with the Stoker V8’s, which is the model Sami is getting. Chuck Ames told me a couple weeks ago that the fins start with this amount of flex and will eventually flex more as planned, due to FATIGUE. So, in a sense, you ‘break in the fin’… like you might a new engine.
The crazy looking fin in Proneman’s foto is a cousin to the sailboard “football fin”. That was an era where fins on sailboards deviated from typical surfboard fins. It was also the time that all of us were trying to learn how to land 50 feet of air without landing wrong and spinning out. Cavitation was a big problem sailing in heavy wind and chop. That, subsequently lead to cutaways, slotted fins and eventually the best solution “forefins” aka canards.
Eventually after we all blew out too many fin boxes to count, we learned to launch off the wave slghtly upwind, use the sail like half a hang glider wing, then land slightly off (down) wind to keep water attached to the fin on landing.
Here’s a short review of some fins that we rode back then with varying degrees of success. Once I got used to my molded Greenough Stage 3 fin, I would do controlled drop knee turn spinouts with it…