Single Fin Essay....1969

[Big H]

Saw this online....author is a man called Barret Stoller....was before my time but I enjoyed reading it, so here it is for all of you:

I've been thinking about stories and maybe some of them were OK if you were and 8 year old girl, but after last weekend and having to get into some kooks face, I've started to get a little more real. Now to the point. In California we are blessed. The round rock bottoms allow the wave to come in so that energy is moving in a circular fashion. Drops are smooth, with maybe a little chatter. It is different that a reef or NorCal where the bottom is more stair stepped and the energy moves like rolling a hexagon. The wave jacks in surges. There are places like ours in Austraila, and South Africa but between 1969-1979, how many red hot surfers were there from those places compared to California? During those times I have eluted to, the vibe was so different. Our music was not hidden in distortion and the bands had something to really say. Example, 1969, Abby Roads, Cream, Big Brother, and on and on. We practiced what I would call "Down the line power surfing". Graceful, controlled, and shredding. Crowds were not as big a factor. So, paddle out into 12'-16' faces (6'-8"), glassy, hollow, perfect waves. Flip it around, take 4 good paddles, and you're up. Crouched with a low center of gravity driving to the bottom for all it's worth to make your first turn. done right, full extension and perhaps one hand touches the face. You drive up the face, low again, wheel it aroud and reset for the next bottom turn, only going faster. The section looms ahead so as you come up the face and pull into the trim positon. Weight is foward, center of gravity is somewhat low. Back foot slightly angeled to the rear, front foot slightly extended, arms at about chest level, power on, afterburners lit and driving. You make slight adjustments in the barrel-but you got this. Blast out of the barrel and bottom turn on edge, fin almost out of the water and just flying you pull up the face and arc off the top and if the wave has let off some, the next turn has a slight fade so you come off the bottom absolutely square. Repeat as needed. This is how I remember it. It took until I aquired my 7'2" Yater Pocket Rocket to pull off this kind of surfing, I was 17. 1969 was a very, very good year for a lot of things. But this is about single fin surfing, not girlfriends, politics, and any other of that crap. We were young, proud, and we ripped. Actually someone like Jeff Crawford should be writting this. After seeing him at Pipe, I realized that he was better at it than me, a humbling experience. Florida guys can do it too; you know there is that Slater guy and he has made his point-but not on a single fin, from what I've seen.

[oldmansurfer]

Nostalgia. I used to single fin and it was great. Now I use a quad (and so does KS). I loved the feeling of turning a single fin board from back in those days. It was like the harder you turned the better the board held. The more you push the tail the deeper the gouge in the wave. But even way back then I used to pop the fin out above the top of the wave and do a kind of rail grind on the lip. I used to throw up such a huge spray when I carved a hard cutback that I would surf through it as I went back the other way a kind of self generated saltwater shower. I love my quads though and have little desire to try single fins......maybe if I put in more hours in the ocean...... When I quit surfing I was still single fin surfing because I saw no advantage to the multiple fins. I didn't see anyone doing anything that I couldn't do with my single fin board (at least not back then). When I restarted it was on boards with three or four fins and I found my instincts were still for single fin boards and in certain critical situations that was not good. On steep waves with my single fin I would turn at the top and sideslip down the wave and as I got off the vertical face the fin would engage and shoot me forward. This allowed me to take really steep drops. With a multiple fin board this would lock me up in the lip which caused for some spectacular wipeouts but once somewhere back right before I started to develop new instincts I caught myself doing that and turned back straight but by the time I did that the waves was concave below me. I airdropped to the bottom and some how landed it and managed to make a bottom turn back up into the wave and keep surfing. I recall bringing my legs up to a crouch as I fell and the board stayed on my feet because of the air resistance then as I got close to the bottom (maybe an 8 foot drop) I extended my legs to push the board back down into the wave as I landed. I hit the bottom and thought "Wow! can't believe I just did that." and just kept surfing. Anyway I now no longer have those single fin instincts and don't want to risk getting them back. I guess life goes on and he obviously wrote that a while back or he would have mentioned John Florence or maybe even Jamie Obrien.