Surfing Waves

Hi, I picked up a 9'2" pin tail longboard from Local Hero in Wadebridge a few years back and enjoy riding it but find difficult to maneuver. When bought it came with a three fin set up; two small and one larger middle fin. I have been told that by dropping the outer and putting a large middle fin the board should be more responsive... does anyone have any advice/experience to offer? Are pin tails just generally slow/sluggish to turn? Is the answer a square tail?

Cheers

Hello Fantana,
If you want to loosen the board up more I would put a 6 or 7" cutaway fin in the back of the board, and leave the side biter fins on. I used to ride a high performance Stewart long board with that set up and it was super responsive and turned on a dime. The bigger the fin you put in the back, the more stability and drawn out your turns will be. If you put a smaller fin in the back, and move it forward you lose stability and hold in, but loosen the board up a lot. That is why I leave the side biter fins on when going to a smaller back fin. This helps give you a little more hold in and drive. You may need to experiment with a few different fin sizes and set ups to see what works best for you. Remember that if you go to a smaller back fin it may not give you the hold in you need on bigger waves. I like the feel of a looser board so I try hard to stay on the tail when dropping in to bigger waves so the fins still bite enough to handle a bigger drop.

I will also say that sometimes bigger surf requires bigger fins for stability and hold in.You should keep this in mind when changing your fins. Do you surf small waves or bigger waves?

Yes a squash tail or square tail will be looser than a true pin tail. Pin tails give added hold in to a board and also make it harder to turn quickly. If you have your back foot on the tail you should still be able to turn the board. There are lots of pin-tail longboards out there that still turn fairly easy. If your board is a rounded pintail with a fuller tail it should still turn fairly easy. If your pintail is really narrow, it will be more difficult to turn, but provide more hold in and stability. Try out some different set ups and see what you like.

Hope that helps!

To Tony's excellent comments I will just add (hopefully not telling you something you already know) that to turn a longboard will often require you to consciously step back a foot or maybe even more or so in order to have your back foot over the fins/at the back of the board and consciously move your weight to your back foot. This way you create a 'pivot point' - if you just stay in the normal standing position, its hard to do anything other than a slow trim turn (and even that can take a lot of effort).

Saying 'take a step back' is much easier than doing it! Try it in the white water when you begin - at the end of the wave, when you are surfing in the white water, push your back foot back and move the nose around and see what happens. On the wave you dont want this to be a violent turn (unless you are 'snapping off the lip' or one of those mythical manouveres) so getting enough but not too much back foot weight is (like all things) a matter of practice.

All the advice so far has been really good, the other bit I'd add if the centre fin is in a fin box not only would I shorten the fin length but I would experiment with the fin further forward in the box, pulling the fin to the back of the box will tighten the board up.
The step back is also a valuable tool to add for your turning, bending the knees and unbending to add ressure downwards onto the board will also speed up the turn. Turning is a great skill that is learned and when you consider what good surfers could do on the original logs it becomes more obvious.. Longboards require walking on the board to optimise turn, shortboars were invented to allow turning and speed generation to be in the same spot.
Get it right, and remember, "one good turn deserves another".

Wow! Cheers tony g, dtc and jaffa1949. Thanks for taking the time to give what sounds like excellent advice. No doubt it will also be of use to many others.

I'll experiment with moving the fin forward and aft in the lock box to loosen/tighten the board and also experiment by removing the biter fins. A mate has lock box type fin on his board which has a large straked lobe, so I'll give that a go too before I go out buying one.

Regarding the stance, placement and weight distribution; I have to say I haven't made a conscious effort to put my rear foot over the fin box and maybe that's the problem I am having. When the next swell appears I'll give it a go.

Cheers again chaps!

Thought I would just add:

- dont move the fin too far at once - as little as 1/4 inch might be noticeable (dont be like me and shove it 3 inches forward then spend the entire session falling off)

- on this thread viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13131 there is a comment (parrysurf and oldgrom) about not having the middle fin too closely aligned to the side fins, or the drag from the side fins will adversely affect the performance of the middle fin (I'm not sure of the science here, but it seems logical).

Also, have a look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbZM8BTSgHc

These are no pros, they are a bunch of regular guys down at a beach I often surf at (although I don't live there and don't know any of them - and whenever I go the waves never seem to be anywhere near as good!) Anyway, have a look at what they do to turn and how they move around the board and so forth. I like the video because they aren’t pros who just do everything flawlessly and subtly and you can never tell what they have done to achieve a result; its guys who are pretty good but you can see are making an effort (and make mistakes) and you can clearly see what they are doing (or trying to do) to turn or whatever. Which, for me, makes it a really useful learning tool.

I thought I would bring it to your attention because you are interested in weight transfer and turning, and the video has some really great examples of this. For example, you can see how far back a lot of the guys are in order to turn - often the nose is pulled clear out of the water. Others shuffle/cross step back and forth, there is some good weighting/unweighting of the back leg, as Jaffa talked about - might make it easier to visualise.

dtc, one of my favourite breaks in that video, I occasionally get up for a Mollymook contest and a lot of the guys come down for the Merimbula mal comp. Good crew and a good demonstration video.
Let me know if you coming further south. PM me and have a local session.

Thanks for the invite Jaffa, I think I'm several years away from being able to justify surfing with you! Thought you might know some of the guys - I had a chat with one of them one day who turned out to work at a local shaper, which was interesting.

I have to confess I have surfed that break only once. Usually I'm there in summer and there are no waves, or if there are it’s too big or too crowded. But, really, I get nervous with the rock bottom - not so much at take off point because there is usually enough water for comfort; but I (unlike reasonable people) get worried I will be caught on a wave/white wash at the end of the wave and not able to get off before surfing (or being surfed) straight into the rock shelf. On a beach you can jump off the board, but jumping off onto rocks doesn’t excite me! The waves in the video would be ok, but anything with bigger white wash, doesn’t matter how much you 'stall' the board, you get pushed around. That said, the guys in the video sometimes just jump off, so maybe I'm worrying over nothing. I've had embedded urchin spines before and survived. And, of course, I could just surf over the back of the wave earlier (if I get my bearings right) or sail out into the bay. I may be the only person ever to worry about this!

I've told my brain this is the year for a better effort!

dtc what a load of rubbish, mate, no-one has to justify surfing with me but thanks for the compliment, I think
I've been an average surfer for a long time that's really an apt description.
Been doing it since 1958,
I've seen plenty of people surf, and no matter what their level, some I would surf with again and others well, hmmmm, and it is something about their attitude that determines that for me.
A weird description, I'm a loner that enjoys company
Think about the 3 hour drive down as Merimbula is all sand bottom.