Surfing Waves

hey guys amd gals. i found this forum not to long ago and have done alot of searching around on here. i like what i see. so anywho heres my situation. iv been surfing for about 11 years now. i started out on shortboards and am just recently converting to longboard because thats just more my style. i have the basics down. i can catch waves, ride, turn with almost anyboard i use once i get used to it. and i have used a wide variety of shapes and sizes. long story short...i recently bought a 9'' longboard. my first real true longboard. now i understand no piece of equipment is going to do the surfing for me, but heres my qustion. iv been dabbleing with cross steps latley and deff need more practice but i got it down enough to get on the sweetspot on the board and trim. once i go to the nose i pearl. now my qustion isnt what will make me nose ride. my qustion is how much will a better fin really help me? i actually read on this forum somwhere someone said somthing along the lines of equipment dosnt make us surf, equipment helps us surf the way we want. when it comes to nose rideing/cross stepping or longboarding in general im fairly new and know getting out there and surfing is the best solution. but the fin i have on it now is only an 8 inch fin i belive so i was thinking about looking into a new fin, i just dont know if its even worth the mony. opinions and advice are much appreciated. (i wiegh about 150. board is 9'', 23.5 wide and 3 thick and i ride mostly waist-head high waves, not to steep)

on a side note 2 kinda silly qustions. this longboard i speak of came with a 2+1 setup. since it was my first longboard i figured id try it and could always take them out, witch i did. iv rode smaller boards with single fins and just loved the archey turns. but now that these side fins are out, is there like a insert that should go in there so the bottom of the board is flush instead of having holes where fins used to be. and my second silly qustion, i just got back from a sesh and went to repair a ding on my board useing suncure. the suncure is prob like 5 years old by now and when i squeezed it out of the tube it was chunky and wouldnt smooth out or stick or anything. so does suncure go old? haha

sorry for the long and random post but any input will deff help my some. thanks in advance

i asked the same question on the side bites issue...aparently it doesnt matter that they are empty, yet to ride it as a single, but we will see
my info came from uncle jaffa, check out his bit on fins in the forum!

thank you i feel much better now, iv been trying to sneak peaks at other peoples boards trying to figure it out haha.
and i actually came across this jaffas fin post through research and it was very infromative especially since on my shortboards i never really paid attention to the fins. after reading i have a much better idea as to what kind of fin id be looking for now. the thing is i know my board isnt meant for nose rideing(which donst mean it cant be done) im just wondering how much a fin will help and how much of it is on me to just practice practice practice. witch ill be doing anyway. even with a diffrent fin i know i will still have hours of practice ahead of me. if i could be a few bucks richer after all that practice that wouldnt be such a bad thing

also id like to add im not looking to spend hours on the nose, id really just like to feel more stable while stepping to my boards trim spot and not have to worry about steping to far and digging the nose. throwing some piggies over would just be a bonus

Uncle Jaffa here, nice set of questions there. Let's encourage you to go further.
Don't worry about the side bite plugs/boxes etc with the fins out, I would just try a bigger single say 9" to 9.5" if you are short of moolah.
Then try different positions in the box till you get your prime positioning. Then apply as you rightly said practice, practice, practice.
but rather enjoy enjoy enjoy
Have a look at your board's rocker if the nose and tail rockers are too great then it is a board designed to surf from the tail and if you go to the nose then the tail is likely to break free and slide.

An answer here too is to post a picture of your board and you can get advice from others on the forum.
Now about the sun cure, like Uncle Jaffa it gets older and chunkier but unlike Uncle Jaffa, you have to throw it away

Uncle Jaffa, does that mean if you have less nose/tail rocker you can be further forward to turn (am talking a more slow archy turn) rather than on the tail?
Re suncure, I've had some that took almost a week to dry in the sun rather than the 5min advertised

Good question, going forward to turn on a board with less rocker is difficult ranging up to impossible, a higher rockered tail lifts the nose even more for a turn and just makes it easier, the usual routine for a long board was to turn from the tail and move forward to trim and gain speed , the short board idea was to place all the control of the board at the one spot thereby speeding up the boards response time and having the shorter arc of board to fit the tighter and steeper parts of the wave at different angles.
The more further forward you go the more rail you have to engage in the turn and it becomes physically harder and harder,
one thing you can do when forward is break the rail and tail free and side slip side ways to a lower track on the wave face, watch video of Miki Dora at Malibu or Phil Edwards in some of Bruce Browns early surf movies and you will see all of the above.
The arching in a turn was both, style emphasis and position the body and gaining torque on the turn through body twist.
Again I would recommend watching really good log surfers and how much their bodies contribute to their turns.
BTW I place myself near the higher end of average as a surfer, I've just been doing it for a long time around the world.
My former vocations as a Chiropractor and sports coach gave me insights as to how these things are done, and sometimes I can do them too

Never thought about the dynamics of rocker , nose lift and turning. Will have to give Endless Summer another viewing this weekend. I've seen guys on longboards standing with their feet quite close together and turning from roughly the middle of the board, admittedly gentle turns. Is it a specific type of shape of board? Or is it a matter of shifting centre of gravity by leaning?

In the longboard era there was prior to the burst of going short, a surge of board shapes with varying positions of the wide point on the board with it forward with it back and this was allied with rail shapes very early rails were just round or egg shaped all these changed the turning characteristics of the board, modern longboards are revisiting the design features of that era. If you follow this link, http://www.surfresearch.com.au/ and browse through the catalogue section there are many Aussie and international variations of shape size and plan, worth a look.